The Emily Gould/NYT Mag kerfuffle, while dull in itself, points to a larger trajectory that has the Cod a bit puzzled.
A bit of background:
Once upon a time, there was the state.
Then folks noticed that the state did not always do like they wanted, and they started to talk about it.
Eventually, newspapers came along, offering a more concrete form for the people to discuss affairs of the state.
Newspapers had power, but not everyone who read them agreed with them all the time.
With the invention of the internet, and the development of blogging software, it became possible for just about anyone to point out the follies of the newspaper, via occasional commentary, or more sustained critique.
For some, a form of news delivery that did not have to be retrieved from the bushes every morning, and was Stuart Scott-free, to boot had a certain appeal, and in some cases, well-written, informative and entertaining blogs became news vehicles in and of themselves. In some cases, representatives of older forms of media freaked out.
But not all. If the Bissinger/Leitch contretemps is one facet of the uneasy coexistence of blogs and older media, the NYT's recent emphasis on blogging is another. On one hand, many Times staffers are now responsible for their own blogs, above and beyond their reporting duties. On the other The Gould piece is the most prominent example, but last Sunday's piece on hating Park Slope was essentially a print media response on blog reactions to a neighborhood. If one function of blogs criticize newspapers, and another is to aggregate news on topics of particular interest, what happens to this relation when newspapers start covering blogs instead of the news? As Gawker and Radar offer various metalevels of coverage of the NYT coverage of the story about them, its hard not to feel as if the whole shebang is in danger of collapsing into a black hole of metadiscourse from which no light can escape.
A bit of background:
Once upon a time, there was the state.
Then folks noticed that the state did not always do like they wanted, and they started to talk about it.
Eventually, newspapers came along, offering a more concrete form for the people to discuss affairs of the state.
Newspapers had power, but not everyone who read them agreed with them all the time.
With the invention of the internet, and the development of blogging software, it became possible for just about anyone to point out the follies of the newspaper, via occasional commentary, or more sustained critique.
For some, a form of news delivery that did not have to be retrieved from the bushes every morning, and was Stuart Scott-free, to boot had a certain appeal, and in some cases, well-written, informative and entertaining blogs became news vehicles in and of themselves. In some cases, representatives of older forms of media freaked out.
But not all. If the Bissinger/Leitch contretemps is one facet of the uneasy coexistence of blogs and older media, the NYT's recent emphasis on blogging is another. On one hand, many Times staffers are now responsible for their own blogs, above and beyond their reporting duties. On the other The Gould piece is the most prominent example, but last Sunday's piece on hating Park Slope was essentially a print media response on blog reactions to a neighborhood. If one function of blogs criticize newspapers, and another is to aggregate news on topics of particular interest, what happens to this relation when newspapers start covering blogs instead of the news? As Gawker and Radar offer various metalevels of coverage of the NYT coverage of the story about them, its hard not to feel as if the whole shebang is in danger of collapsing into a black hole of metadiscourse from which no light can escape.
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