Salon's Scott ("Not Steve") Rosenberg catches the Gallup people hanging their poll on blogging in a rather interesting but mismatched frame. Turns out that to Gallup, one-quarter of the population amounts to "relatively few Americans." Takedown much appreciated, Scott, but these are the people who don't care to separate out the liars when they publish their religion polls, so whaddya expect?
This follows s.z.'s usual mirthmaking at the expense of Newsweek's Steven Levy's shocking exposé of the dearth of female bloggers he's ever heard of, and Jeff Jarvis' grabbing the wrong end of the stick and beating around the bush with it.
[As an aside here, s.z. is one of our finest Vagino-American bloggers, or rather one of our finest bloggers, period (sorry), who happens to be female. This blog could be vastly improved by simply linking to her every word, if I could manage to keep up with everywhere she turns up these days, but then all this glorious insomnia would go into flipping between The History Channel and Turner Classic Movies, assuming it's not another Claudette Colbert festival.]
Anyway, as I said over there, and because I haven't had another idea since, I really don't give a shite about capital-B blogging. I'm glad blogging exists now as a bee under the expense-account bonnet of what has to pass for journalism these days, and the ability to read and learn from so many great talents, and find new ones I don't have time to read, is right up there on my list of Reasons To Go On Despite Everything. But I care about as much for the Dead Tree Society explaining this whole phenomenon, and the artificial excitement over Convention bloggers and Rathergaters as I do for TV Guide's™ list of Eight Hot New Hunks To Watch. The Goddam Media sold its collective soul twenty-five years ago, and the existence of this new Internet business has nothing whatsoever to do with its well-earned slot between slime mold and Taco Bell™ on the reputation list, and they know it. Blathering about Blogging isn't going to get it back.
2 comments:
Thanks for the link. It's Scott, though, not Steve :-) (For reasons that remain inscrutable to me, whenever people get my name wrong, the wrong name is invariably Steve. Perhaps I was a Steve in another life.)
Problem corrected, Scott, and thousand pardons asked. Though, really, would it have hurt you too much to offer to change it instead?
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