The NYT's Unconscious Elitism, Take 17

Matt Welch | August 5, 2005

The Gray Lady for some reason editorializes today about the size of the blogosphere (no really), casually farting out this bit of comical self-importance:

The conventional media - this very newspaper, for instance - have often discussed the growing impact of blogging on the coverage of news. Perhaps the strongest indicator of the importance of blogdom isn't those discussions themselves, but the extent to which media outlets are creating blogs - or bloglike manifestations - of their own.

That is the serious side of the blogosphere. But blogs are often just a way of making oneself appear on the Internet.

Because we all know that self-expression isn't "serious." Maybe instead of, "All the news that's fit to print," they oughtta try, "It ain't serious until the fat lady participates."

Comments

|8.5.05 @ 1:25PM|#

Not to play the fauning fan, but, "casually farting out this bit of comical self-importance" is a great phrase.

|8.5.05 @ 1:26PM|#

Ugh. Reading that quote, all I could picture was some old fuddy-duddy guy in a suit spouting his pompous b.s. on a subject he obviously knows nothing about.

I worked in newspapers for around 8 years and you know what I say? If they're a dying breed, GOOD. Let them go!

|8.5.05 @ 1:36PM|#

Yes, a blog is a way to appear on the internet, just as a column is a way to appear in a newspaper.

|8.5.05 @ 1:44PM|#

casually farting out this bit of comical self-importance

Somehow, I knew without scrolling down that this would be a Matt Welch post.

And you gotta love the pseudo-sophistication of "blog-like manifestations."

|8.5.05 @ 1:49PM|#

She seems to think that this phenomenon of "making oneself appear on the internet" is recent and limited to blogs. I had a webpage nearly 10 years ago. Like most personal web pages, it was stupid and pointless and mostly just served to teach me html. I would say, if anything, blogs have turned personal pages into something constructive and community oriented. In other words, they're actually an evolutionary step up from they way she describes them.

My guess? She probably just learned to use email this year.

ed|8.5.05 @ 2:44PM|#

Too bad so many of them remain self-indulgent public diaries.

Larry A|8.5.05 @ 3:30PM|#

Now that newspapers are finally figuring out that bloggers are making an end run around their news monopolies, can the government be far behind?

After all, bloggers and gamers are making way more peaceful contacts with people from other countries than the State Department, and not even bothering with a passport.

|8.5.05 @ 4:16PM|#

and not even bothering with a passport.

Shhhh. Don't give them any fancy ideas.

|8.5.05 @ 4:43PM|#

The extent of the NYT's grasp of the internet may be seen in the company's comical purchase months back of that steaming pile of worthlessness, About.com, for over four hundred million dollars, thinking that this would somehow catapult them into the new media game because About was somehow kinda sorta like blogs.

|8.5.05 @ 5:47PM|#

I have given thought to starting a blog of my own. The trouble is that...

a)I don't really have the time in a day to keep it updated to an appropriately current level. Successful blogging is a full time job and I've already got one.

b) Who the hell would want to read what I, a fat geeky curmudgeon, think?

|8.5.05 @ 7:13PM|#

i have a blog...and it is just there so I can have a presence on the web....and if the NY times want to call it unserious i can't argue with that...The ny times is an elitest paper but this is not an example of them being elitests.

|8.6.05 @ 10:31PM|#

Now that newspapers are finally figuring out that bloggers are making an end run around their news monopolies, can the government be far behind?

As a matter of fact, there is thinking along that line in the MSM. Consider this bit of wisdom from David T. Z. Mindich in his article The Collapse of Big Media: The Young and the Restless, available online at Wilson Quarterly.

There's no reason why print and broadcast news shouldn't be a bigger part of the school curriculum, or why there shouldn't be a short civics/current affairs section on the SAT for college-bound students, or why all high school seniors shouldn't have to take a nonbinding version of the civics test given to immigrants who want to become U.S. citizens. And why shouldn't broadcasters be required to produce a certain amount of children's news programming in return for their access to the public airwaves? These are only the most obvious possibilities.

|8.8.05 @ 3:16PM|#

If Americans and Pakistanis playing a game in which the US Marines fight against the Middle Eastern Coalition while repeatedly calling one another "Nigger Fag"s is making peace around the world, then games are creating peaceful relations.

Oddly enough, they are.