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December 11, 2005

LAT's Blog Story Ignores LA-Based LGF, Opens With Personal Journal Attracting 15 Hits Per Day

Cathy Seipp wonders if this is a guild protecting its own interests:

How obscure are the blogs discussed in Calendar Weekend? The story opened with one that gets just 15 daily visits, and closed with another that no longer exists. What kind of L.A. blogs did these upstage? Just as one example, Little Green Footballs, which played a major role exposing CBS' National Guard memos story as a hoax last year, gets at least 50,000 hits a day. A cynic might suspect that The Times tries to make blogs seem as boring and inconsequential as possible, in order to staunch the flow of readers and advertisers from newspapers to the Internet.
"Politics runs heavy too," staff writer Scott Martelle wrote, "with intense, phlegm-flecked rants…." That would be spittle, obviously, in such an instance, not phlegm, and thanks a lot for making me stop to consider the difference. Then there's his strange reporting and analysis. "Blogging has yet to break out of its relatively small corner of the Internet," he (mis)informs readers. "Only about 5% of all adults contribute to blogs."

I'd guess that also less than 5% appear on TV or write for magazines, so are these enterprises therefore minor corners of the media world?

Staff writers at The Times often turn in very little copy (one story a week is not atypical), which means some are getting paid around $2,000 per mediocre, grudging piece. Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on freelancers (or bloggers!) who, if they can't work themselves up into something worth reading, don't get paid? Let the heads roll, I say.

As Traffic Non-Santa might say: Heh and/or Indeed.

Meanwhile... Michelle Malkin is less than impressed with the NYT's Sunday piece on blogs. Same old same old -- we have "message discipline" (read: we're hacks without the capacity for original thought or self-scrutiny) and of course we have the famously conservative media in our pockets.

posted by Ace at 06:26 PM

Comments

"A cynic might suspect that The Times tries to make blogs seem as boring and inconsequential as possible, in order to staunch the flow of readers and advertisers from newspapers to the Internet."

A nitpicker would note that you don't staunch a flow any more than you run a gauntlet. Other than that, good piece.

Posted by: Dave (in NYC) on December 11, 2005 07:35 PM

I luvvv miss cathy. But, Ace you gotta put some duck tape on the sweet thing`s eating hole!

LAT, second only to NYT, provides some of the best straight man material any blogger could wish for. Except for Babs Striesand (who can`t take a frickin joke), this fishwrapper is the juice that starts your day dude!

LAT= Liberals= Laughs= Lose elections= Laughs

Posted by: Reverse Sy-col-o-jist on December 11, 2005 07:47 PM

Dave (in NYC),

Nitpicking. A "gauntlet" is mostly considered a medieval glove. A "gantlet" is the thing you run, buck nekked, where injuns clobber you w stone T-hawks, clubs, whips, fists and rolled up copies of LAT... Other than that, good piece.

Posted by: Reverse Sy-col-o-jist on December 11, 2005 08:03 PM

Everyone says gauntlet though.

Posted by: ace on December 11, 2005 08:08 PM

I think one might well staunch a flow but I prefer to stanch a flux. OT but there are just some words that are fun to use, like staunch (stanch), or hostes humani generis.

Tob

Posted by: toby928 on December 11, 2005 08:21 PM

Only five percent of adults read blogs. Wow!

Number of adults in the U.S. = 243,000,000 more or less. Five percent of them read blogs = 121,000,000 and that's only the U.S. Then there're the other countries and numbers can go way up because there are six billlion people on this globe and a lot of them are adults.

Lefty newspapers are ridiculous. Den Beste, and aren't we all glad he's back, says "Tomorrow, editorial cartoonists are going to protest layoffs at newspapers with a day of editorial cartoons about the subject. They're calling it Black Ink Monday." They'll be posting those cartoons on their web site so that we can all view them without buying newspapers. Can't you just taste the inconsistency?

Posted by: tefta on December 11, 2005 08:38 PM

Sorry, 5% of 243,000,000 is 12,500,000. I got carried away with zeroes.

Posted by: tefta on December 11, 2005 08:43 PM

Au contraire bon ami Ace,

When I published a piece in Newsweek in 98, the effin editors insisted I use gantlet v gauntlet. Not that there`s anything wrong w Newsweek....

Posted by: Reverse Sy-col-o-jist on December 11, 2005 08:56 PM

I appreciate Tefta's link, but I'm afraid he didn't get the URL correct. It should have been this.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste on December 11, 2005 09:12 PM

Reversie, my dictionary offers the following as an alternate definition of "gauntlet":

"a punishment formerly used in the military in which somebody was forced to run between two lines of men armed with weapons who beat him as he passed"

There is no such definition for "gantlet"...

Posted by: Steven Den Beste on December 11, 2005 09:57 PM

I think blogs that get 15 daily visits should be covered by somebody! Why not a newspaper section with 15 daily readers?

Posted by: Karl Maher on December 12, 2005 10:38 AM