I‘ve been trying to put my finger on what it was that bothered me about Andisheh’s treatment of the blogosphere and assessment of it as “dim,” and Joseph crystallized it for me:
Maybe the blogosphere sucks, but if that’s so, you have to wonder why Creative Loafing is struggling so hard to make itself more bloggy. In the past 6 months, they have started putting much more content up on their main blog, not to mention the comments they started allowing a while back at the bottom of their articles and the podcasts they produce. While the Creative Loafing site is still very clunky, it’s obvious that they’re being influenced by blogs, and realize that at some point in the future, their readership is going to vanish if they don’t find some way to compete with forms of media that are more interactive (or at least flexible) for the reader.
So, yeah, if we suck so bad, then why again are you trying to adopt so much of what we do? Does… not… compute…
Joseph suspected bomb-throwing to attract traffic as the motivation, something I alluded to earlier, a motivation Andisheh specifically denied in an email we exchanged.
In another thread, I was accused of inconsistency in my reaction to this article versus doing “a preteen girl happy-dance when the MSM gives his PodCamp some ink.” That’s totally valid.
There’s constant tension in my mind between:
- The future I can see (that’s already starting to happen) where people define what’s important for themselves and make their own media to suit those needs
- The practical reality that MSM still has a big, big megaphone, even if it is in many cases getting smaller by the day. A desire for validation comes from that.
- The big, fat question mark of what happens if and when the dinosaur media companies that aren’t embracing this stuff topple because they’re too slow to react and/or can’t offer people enough ownership of their media, since no, we’re often not creating our own news as it stands (though there are several sites, even in the “dim” Altlanta blogosphere that are… Joseph’s Dorablog, Peach Pundit, and EAV Buzz, a message board, among them are putting out stuff that blurs the lines between news and activism)
That will lead to some inconsistent statements sometimes, and I own up to that.
Rusty, I find it particularly interesting that Creative Loafing is going to cast judgment against anyone for anything regarding journalism.
Creative Loafing has four purposes:
1. Talk about how much we hate the estabishment, maaaaaaan!
2. Promote bands no one cares about, but are suppose to be so hip that it makes all of the CL staff too cool for the room.
3. What strange event is happening in Atlanta that insures that the GLBT community will have something to do other than question why they have the equipment they were born with.
4. Whore advertisement.
Seems like hard hitting journalism to me. If they could leave the hookah bars long enough they may have time to do actual research on the stories that they write.
I just saw Joseph’s post before I saw this one, and I totally thing he nailed it too. I think the whole thing is just silly, to be honest.
I mean, this isn’t like doing a critique of a peer reviewed journal or anything; your blog is whatever you want it to be. If you don’t like that, don’t read it. It doesn’t make it any better or worse than anything else on the internet, in my opinion; as Martha says about wine (and as is totally applicable to this situation), if you like it, it is good wine. If you don’t, then, well, that’s bad wine.” Same with the internet and blgos. If you like it, it is good to you, and if not, then move on already.
It is the one that constantly must point out what they deem “dim” or “bad” that are producing the asinine commentary, not us that are actually providing unique content.