Choose Your Own Adventure: The Blog Post @4:00 PM
It’s 4 p.m. on a long Monday. Of course you could get some work done, but your boss is elsewhere, you’ve got a headache from trying to cut back on caffeine, and it’s drizzly outside. Plus they stole an hour of sleep from you over the weekend! Meaning: you’d rather just cruise the net, floating on a raft of hyperlinkage toward that horizon of informational numbness. But before you can say “choking on the pen cap you were absently chewing,” a perfectly outrageous blog post title loads in your browser, begging for—or perhaps openly provoking—your attention.
Do you… ignore the inflammatory headline and continue surfing?
Or immediately register your disgust in the comments section?
Or do you begin reading in earnest, though with some skepticism? 17
Are You a Chronic Meta-Enabler? @10:30 AM
A number of us (and I am thinking her and her in particular) are sometimes mounting, and sometimes are not, an opposition to what Yahoo! News' Andrew Golis is calling "meta-enabling," in a coinage that isn't really going to stick but is fun for a while. For more explication: "Meta-enabling allows blogs to treat the way in which the posts are presented as the thesis of the post itself (hence, the necessity of the prefix meta- to the term)." Meta-enabling, and its prettier sister, the treatment of the highbrow in a pop culture way (which is, not at all incidentally, our own more-frequently-employed method here), are the hallmarks of our ironic, sarcastic, I-can't-actually-tell-what-you-really-mean age and it is causing a problem. READ MORE 67
The Future: When the Editors Hire the Publishers @10:35 AM
At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place. (This person compared this moment to Gutenberg, which might be a little bit far afield but not that far off!) That is that Joshua Micah Marshall is hiring a publisher for Talking Points Memo, the blog he started all on his own in 2000, a bit before all the warbloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds came onto the Internet, and four years before Michelle Malkin. (Oh yes, how soon we forget.) My friend's point was: here is an editor, who built and owns his publication, who is now going to be the editor-owner, who will employ the publisher. For those of you who have worked at any sort of publication, the implications of this are staggering. READ MORE 18
The Future of Journalism: Ira Stoll's New Business Model @12:20 PM
Did you know that former New York Sun vice president Ira Stoll is back in business? He is running a website with the impressive name The Future of Capitalism. It launched two months ago, and where have we been on this important news? What is most wonderful is his business model. This man has a plan! In it, the more money you give, the more influence you have. Ta da, capitalism and the future of it! For instance, for $250K? You will "support a reporter to cover the Federal Reserve, Treasury, Congress, White House, or other beat designated by the sponsor in consultation with the editor." Hoo boy. Though! For just $75K a year, you get to call and email Ira Stoll anytime you want, night or day. Which, you know, I'm pretty sure we could do that for free? For now at least. Soon he will be so rich and powerful that he will not accept our free phone calls and emails. 11
Lost in History Already: Blog to Book Deals @2:01 PM
Apparently there is now a mass inability to remember anything. I have it bad. But yesterday Rex Sorgatz couldn't remember the first blog-to-book thingie that happened, while he was looking at Urlesque's timeline. One of his commenters notes: "The Suck.com book (Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet'), came out in 1997." What a wonderful world. 6
The Dlisted Divide: Women Love Michael K! Women Hate Michael K! @9:49 AM
From a lady, in our inbox: "I found your interview with MK condescending—if you find his site so vulgar, why write about it? Those of us who are regulars love it, as you can see from your post's comments…. I'm not impressed."
And from another lady, in our inbox: "i will no longer visit your site and i have stopped following you on twitter because of this. you featured the most misogynist blogger on the web. what kind of impact do you think it has when his readers (and now your readers) read slut, bitch and whore on a daily basis? shame on you. i hope your site closes down one day due to poor revenue." 13
And That's When I Clicked "Close Tab": A Continuing Series @11:20 AM
"Like Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to a church in Wittenberg — itself a disputed bit of reporting — in April two Los Angeles bloggers posted a suggested Food Blogger Code of Ethics." 10
The Finance Press Becomes Ever More Willfully Obscure, Clubby And Unhelpful @10:34 AM
Yesterday, Matt Taibbi explicated the response he got from Goldman Sachs about his piece in Rolling Stone. (A piece that is only on newsstands, um, except in pirated versions—which, when will Rolling Stone let themselves enjoy good web traffic?) One thing Goldman definitely did was "make it clear that both I and my sources are simply not as smart as they are and don't understand what we're talking about," Taibbi writes. This is standard operating procedure when it comes to bankers—and also when it comes to financial writers, some of whom are now sniping about how Taibbi actually doesn't understand. (Undoubtedly, he probably doesn't understand it all!) READ MORE 17
Will Leitch Hates You, Reader @3:14 PM
Uh oh! Another author goes postal in the quick-publish Internet age! It is famed sports-blog shouter Will Leitch, who shares his outraged private letter with the world to bring maximum shame: "My first book was reviewed by rangersfan4324. So who are you, tomtom24? WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? Your Twitter page says you are from 'Tehran.' SO WHY AREN'T YOU SPEAKING IN FARSI?" Oh Will Leitch, are you a victim of the performance-enhancing drugs as well as the Age of Venti Venting? 11
TMZ and Michael Jackson: The World Won't Listen @10:11 AM
Not only will we not be able to see Sasha Baron Cohen's "interview" with Latoya Jackson in Bruno, and not only will we never find out what "stage move" he was feverishly creating "to succeed his famous 'moonwalk,'" (crueler Awl staffers than I suggest "the Demerol flop"), there are other, sadder concerns. Like, when will America learn to respect TMZ? READ MORE 20
Social A's: How To Deal With Blog Comments From Yo Auntie @10:30 AM
Dear Answer Lady,
Tell me you deal with shit like this:
"A new comment on the post #1 "Clip from [my recent standup performance that I posted on my website, which is intended primarily to get me more comedy gigs]" is waiting for your approval.
Author: Auntie [redacted] (IP: [redacted])
Comment: Well sweetie, Umm I know things are different in the big city but let me tell you….people are the same everywhere. They are going to read into what you are saying [about bikini waxing] and think you are talking about things you were raised better than to talk about. Which, we know, isn't the case. I'm just telling you this because I am older and have more experience and you are just an innocent lamb living in a wolve's [sic] den (NYC). That aside, you are cute as a button! And, btw, when did you go to Brazil? That must have been a fun trip. Love you bunches- Auntie [redacted]"
Signed,
More Blog-To-Book Deals! How Wonderful! @2:10 PM
News today that popular blog "Look At This Fucking Hipster" has been picked up by St. Martin's Press to be turned into a book reminds me of something very eerie that I received over the weekend. It claimed to be a dispatch from the future, although it was hard to tell, since the entire message was written in a difficult-to-understand language that bore only the slightest resemblance to English ("UR 1 HOPE 4 WERLD, PLZ SHARES lol" etc.) I'm not quite sure what the attachment was, but my best guess is that it is a table of contents from an updated version of Harold Bloom's The Western Canon. (It had a 2034 copyright date, if that's any indication.) The attachment somehow self-destructed before I was able to download it, but here's a quick transcription that I was able to make before everything disappeared. READ MORE 10
Understanding "Off The Record": An Intro For Angry Bloggers @3:37 PM
Lord knows, The NYTPicker, a blog devoted to lightly annoying the New York Times, is probably penned by some disgruntled, drug-addled acquaintance(s) of mine. But that does not mean that they/he/she are not wronger than wrong today. READ MORE 2
Goths In Hot Weather @1:30 PM
Goths In Hot Weather. Sure, it's just a blog now, but in two years it's going to be a Sam Mendes film called Endless Summer of the Damned starring Owen Wilson and Sandra Bullock. [Via] 10
Jake Tapper Opens Floodgates Of AMERICAN OBAMA-MUSLIM FURY @11:30 AM
While Politico trumpets that the President is busy speaking Arabic in Arabia — "'Shukran,' Obama said, using the Arabic word for 'thank you.'" — they are losing the morning to ABC's Jake Tapper, who today blew the lid off how Barack Hussein Obama is not afraid of his SECRET MUSLIM ROOTS. And America is so happy to have this truth validated! READ MORE 9
WSJ Culture Blog Live, Wacky, Hard To Find! @12:30 PM
The long-rumored Wall Street Journal pan-culture blog is up and running. Called Speakeasy, it is very different for the Wall Street Journal! Although only we on the Internet will know that. You can find it by clicking on "Life & Style" on the newspaper's website front page, and then by clicking "Speakeasy" on that page's sub-menu. 4
Co-Ed Dorm Rooms Offend Clueless Parent @10:56 AM
Apparently conservatives have just cottoned on to the fact that a huge number of college dorms—and dorm rooms!—are co-ed. (Wait till someone tells them that the bathrooms have been going co-ed for a while now.) So this crazy woman takes to The Blogs to announce that she's horrified by her daughter living with a man in a dorm room and how they couldn't get out of it and how she stopped paying her daughter's tuition at Stanford. And her daughter was forced to explain the actual truth in the comments section of a Times blog. Isn't that just like parents—betraying their children on the Internet to their kids' bafflement! 16
Please Be Dignified, Reporters! @4:52 PM
The bloggers have thrown down now. They are demanding that fancy news reporters start acting as such, not acting like les blogeurs. This is frightening. Says Wonkette: "YOU DO NOT 'PARODY' THE NEWS IN THE PROCESS OF REPORTING THE NEWS. You people are supposed to be covering things, writing articles about those things, doing research, conducting interviews, filing your articles, and then going home to cry, the end." And then it gets ugly and shouty. 0
The Ethicist Blogs @9:46 AM
Oh good. Randy Cohen, the NY Times "Ethicist," now also has a blog. Just what we needed, more people commenting on the news and offering unsolicited opinions to Madonna. 0
