Posted on 09/05/2002 5:57:14 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Kurt Andersen, the author of Turn of the Century, is now at work on his second novel. He's also the host of the public radio program Studio 360. Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at the New Republic, writes daily for andrewsullivan.com. Slate has asked them to discuss the Weblog phenomenon as well as two new books about blogging, We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture and The Weblog Handbook.
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From: Andrew Sullivan
To: Kurt Andersen
Subject: The Blogosphere Weighs In
Posted: Wednesday, September 4, 2002, at 12:06 PM PT
Hi Kurt,
Wanna meta-blog? I'm sorry to have waited a little to respond, but I got blogged down on my own site and also wanted to check out responses to our e-mail exchange in the blogosphere. Here's Meryl Yourish, an excellent blogger, lacerating yours truly on the issue of whether blogs are inherently individualist:
Rebecca [Blood] can write earnestly about weblogging communities because so many of them exist. A quick look around the Internet will show that. Sullivan is a perfect example of the kind of blogger that permeates the blogosphere these days: Ignorant, unknowledgeable about anything save his narrow little slice of blogdom (and that not much), yet thinking that he has been informed from on high as to exactly what constitutes blogging. It is exactly the thing that drives me crazy whenever I read something like it on any blogger's site. Here's a clue, people: There are thousands of blogs out there, and just as there is no one way to write a book, no single person has the claim to the "right" way to write a blog.
Actually, I'm completely in agreement with Yourish there. I was merely expressing my own opinion that blogging is more suited to individualism than collectivism. Which is not to say that collective blogs like this one don't have merit. Or this one. But my deeper point is that I'm not a big fan of bloggers who are chippy, who seem not a little snarky about bigger blogs. The point is: A blog works if it addresses its audience, whether that audience is five or 500 or 5,000. In fact, many blogs, by their precise nature, are never going to get that big. So, why worry about the bigger fish? Enjoy yourselves.
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Al-Qaida Isn't the Problem |
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Blogger NZBear weighs in as well, in a meta-meta-blog on this meta-blog. He writes: "Slate should have provided a counterweight to his journablogging heavyweight status. Picking a non-journalist, lesser known blogger to complete a trifecta with Andersen and Sullivan would have made the discussion deeply more interesting." But here's another piece of blogging's genius. We just did that! You can rectify editorial choices in real time all the time. If this conversation takes off, we can even continue it without Slate at all!
I want to make two quick points before clicking send, Kurt. The first is the question of whether blogging will actually change the media in any big ways. The small ways are already happening. Check out this embarrassing correction in the New York Times today. (Scroll down to the "Editor's Note.") Now, it wasn't only bloggers who exposed the Times' error in characterizing Henry Kissinger as an opponent of war in Iraq. But they certainly helped raise the volume. Blogdom has forced the Times to correct itself many times over now, which can only help improve journalism. But will bloggers actually deeply undermine editorial and corporate power in the media? So far I think the answer is no. Blogs aren't replacing mainstream media; they're infiltrating, supplementing, and buttressing it. Look at two blogs, kausfiles and altercation. They're housed by Slate and MSNBC. Same with Joe Conason's at Salon. Does this weaken or strengthen their reach and power? Or are they in danger of being co-opted? One obvious way in which blogs strengthen independent writers' hands is that when a piece is chopped up, or killed, or mutilated, a writer can now publish it himself if he still thinks it's worth something. But one obvious way in which blogging undermines a writer's independence is that he doesn't get paid anything to speak of. At the rate I'm going, my media criticism may make me unemployable and has already led to a steep decline in free-lance income. So, it's a two-edged thingy.
But at a more profound level, I think the real power will be unleashed by unknown writers finding a way to get their work in front of readers more easily than ever before. The whole process of interning, or begging for work at local papers, sucking up to agents and editors, and so on can now be supplemented by real self-publishing. You can make your own clips! This can only help—however marginally—discover new talent. The discipline of writing for a real paper or magazine is still very, very useful. Blogging well is not as easy as it sometimes looks. But all in all, the new form and new medium can only advance a writerly meritocracy. And that can only be good, no?
Cheers,
Andrew
From: Kurt Andersen
To: Andrew Sullivan
Subject: At Least Blogging Beats J-School
Posted: Wednesday, September 4, 2002, at 4:56 PM PT
Hey, Andy!
Does anyone ever call you Andy? I assume not.
Anyhow, if Drudge and Romenesko count as blogs, then of course blogs have already changed the media. (Yuck, "the media": I cringe at that phrase the way you do at "community.")
And as someone who, back in the day, co-conspired (with Graydon Carter and Jann Wenner) to invent your journalistic sub-genre, or sport, of nipping at the ankles of the New York Times (as the boss of Spy magazine's pseudonymous J.J. Hunsecker), I know that such nipping can indeed change the direction of that particular battleship by a quarter of a degree or so over time. (It can also, as one would expect and as you too insistently remind us, make important enemies.) What the relentless focus of bloggers like you and Kaus on the Times and other big media institutions must surely do is make writers (poor Paul Krugman!) and editors just a wee bit more careful about accuracy, fairness, and all the rest, since they know you overcaffeinated watchdogs are watching, just itching to click Send. And speaking of anti-Times obsessives, I think Ira Stoll's blog Smarter Times, now in suspended animation while he edits the New York Sun, may be proof that blogs are not scalable conceptually: As an informing principle for an entire daily newspaper, fear and loathing of the New York Times is not quite sufficient. (By the way, I'm not a subscriber to the Sun, but this morning they delivered four unsolicited, unaddressed copies to the front door of my house in Brooklyn. Desperation marketing?)
Are blogs ever going to drive a transformation of the press as significant as, say, cable TV news has? Nahhh. Providing a self-publishing outlet for professional journalists' rejected print pieces isn't exactly, as we used to say, not so far back in the day, a killer app. I agree that providing talented unknown writers a means of getting prose in front of readers and editors is a nice hypothetical blog virtue: As a father, I think I'd much rather subsidize a year of blogging by my daughters in 2010 than pay for a year at journalism graduate school. Yet, as you also say, even this is a marginal expansion of opportunity: As we've learned in every digital realm, the proliferation of groovy new tools to make and distribute media (music, movies, bloggers' pensées, whatever) does not expand the more or less fixed pool of genuine talent in the world.
However, as a souped-up column format nesting within larger media entities (a la Kaus, Alterman, and Conason), I think this is probably just the beginning, since those guys, like you, speak to one smallish audience about one smallish set of subjects. (By the way, why doesn't Michael Kinsley blog here under the Slate umbrella? I'd PayPal for that.) There are obviously passionate constituencies and suitable big-name blog voices for other subjects. Mightn't it make sense, for instance, for Time.com to turn Joel Stein into a blogger, or for nytimes.com to do it with Alessandra Stanley, or villagevoice.com with Michael Musto? That is, it would make editorial sense—not financial sense, obviously, not today. But if more bloggers start being paid by rich institutions like Microsoft (Kaus) and GE (Alterman) to blog, then maybe we can start getting some real reportorial fiber into the very, very starchy blog diet. Which could betoken the beginning of a glorious Third Generation of journalistic blogs with impact and influence that would no longer be in question. Right?
Kurt
Does anyone have a recent Newspeak dictionary? I'm having trouble translating this.
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