12 July 2005

Blogger Envy

--by Mike Murray

A scribe slurps his suds, searching for a way to impress the babe on the adjoining barstool. After revealing what he does for a living, he adds triumphantly, "You know what they say: Journalism is literature in a hurry."

"You don't say?" she purrs. "So Shakespeare was really just a reporter with a lot of time on his hands?"

One of Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury characters inquires of another why it is that bloggers aren't paid for their work. Pressing on, the fictional radio host implies that, if there were any value to bloggers' missives, they would be compensated for them.

Really? Is money the proper yardstick for determining worth? If so, I guess Ken Lay was actually doing outstanding work at Enron. (Certainly he was making a significantly greater contribution to American society than are all of those much-lesser-paid teachers slaving away in our schools, right?) And what about that poor schmuck Van Gogh? In his lifetime, his paintings barely fetched the price of a bar tab.

And don't even get me started about all those untalented losers who volunteer. They must be the worst of the worst. Monsieur Trudeau no doubt agrees with the fictional Francis Cross, portrayed by Bill Murray in the movie Scrooged, who sneered, "They're volunteers because nobody will pay them." Pity the poor slobs. (Of course, Murray's character also had a banner plastered to a wall in his office with this definition emblazoned on it: "Cross. Something you nail people to." Surely a sentiment near and dear to the heart of curmudgeon Gary Trudeau.

But if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Trudeau reveals that he definitely "protests too much." For what is he if not a morphed blogger? He is "paid," in his lexicon, to write and draw a comic strip. When he sold it to syndicators, he did so on the strength of an assortment of characters who were, you know, funny.

That was then, this is now. These days, blogger wannabe Trudeau offers his "employers" just enough legitimate humor to hold onto his paying gig. But he spends increasing amounts of time using his strip to branch out into the realm of the web-logger: political commentary. His print version of the electronic crowd's offerings has become so political, in fact, that many newspapers now run it only in their Op-Ed sections. Some have banned it altogether.

Then there are those in the mainstream media (lordy, they hate it when you call them that) who trash bloggers while simultaneously copycatting them.

(Now, before I go any further, I will own up to having respect -- more than that, even -- for some who ply their trade in traditional media formats. There are good journalists out there: reporters, columnists, editors, publishers. It's not fair to paint them all with the same brush. If only the MSM would allow as much where bloggers are concerned.)

Mainstream media types of all kinds evince a desire to blog. A reader can hardly pick up a newspaper these days without finding the stuff of blogs in nearly every section. Want to read about sports? You'll be treated to commentary that accuses a dictatorial team owner of practicing "McCarthyism."

Open the Arts and Life section, hoping to read about the local music scene, and you'll be bombarded by commentary that invokes the names of politicians such as Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and Hillary Clinton. What've they got to do with music culture? Don't ask me. Ask the bloggers, er, columnists.

And in some newspapers -- the New York Times sets the bar for this practice -- you can scour the Restaurant section in search of a good place to eat, only to find a reference to some staunch conservative's being "just to the right of Genghis Khan." (Does that mean that a staunch liberal is "just to the left of Joseph Stalin?" Just wondering.) And, again, what does any of that content have to do with the banner under which it runs? Beats me.

Why in the world do editors permit such absurdity? Perhaps they buy into the "flooding the zone" practice pioneered by the NY Times (a method by which editorial content is spread throughout publication sections, co-mingled with news and entertainment). Some people try to legitimize the -- to my way of thinking, inappropriate -- practice by referring to it as "narrative reporting." Or maybe editors are simply indulging their subordinates' desire to blog.

In support of the latter argument, consider this: many editors these days blog themselves. That's right. In addition to overseeing content in the print versions of their publications, many of these folks also post commentary in on-line versions of their newspapers. So, if they themselves engage in blogging, I guess they can't very well deny their staffers some form of the same guilty pleasure.

In any event, at the heart of the traditional media's complaint about bloggers is this: that blogging is nothing but unfettered, unvetted commentary. Do tell. What, exactly, do they think columnists engage in? Opinions about anything under the sun -- unimpeded by fact or relevance -- are columnists' stock in trade.

Sure, they occasionally produce something worthwhile. But doing so isn't incumbent upon them. They only have one directive: Be interesting! It's what I call the Howard Cosell phenomenon. When Cosell finished his first Monday Night Football broadcast, the phone lines lit up at ABC. Some calls were complimentary. Most were not. Many callers demanded Howard's head on a platter.

Some in the sports media opined the next day that Cosell was his-to-ry. Boy, were they wrong. ABC's execs could see what many could not: That it was not important at all that viewers liked Cosell; it only mattered that they tuned in. Whether they watched in nodding agreement with his pointed remarks or threw popcorn at their screens in disgust, he was boosting ratings.

And the same applies to columnists. The key to their success is maintaining audience. It matters little the ratio of supporters to debunkers among their readers. Death for a columnist isn't hateful reaction; it's no reaction at all.

So, excepting the mandate that they not tread on management's sacred-cow issues (no bashing the silent-calamity series here in Greater Cleveland, for example), columnists are pretty much free to write what they please.

Same as bloggers.

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