Paul Boutin

Bloggers vs Journalists

Bickering like a pair of sitcom characters, webloggers and professional pundits have been arguing for three years over who’s cooler. When will these two crazy kids admit it’s love?

by Paul Boutin

Theyíre at it again:
John is mad at the
BBC for “hyping”
Adam’s post. Meanwhile, everyone is mad at
the other John for calling them ìwannabe writers.î
Dave calls Johnís type ìscaredî because ìwe cover technology better than they ever could,î but accuses
Farhad of putting words in his mouth.

Hard to believe, but the spat between online weblog writers (ìbloggersî for those just tuning in) and mainstream media pros is nearing the finale of its third season. Bloggers vs Journos is easily the most entertaining show on the Web ñ itís less like the Super Bowl, more like the weekly running gags between two sitcom characters who canít admit theyíve got the hots for one another.

Think back to Moonlighting, ABCís self-referential 1985-89 comedy. Virtually ignoring the showís detective drama premise, prissy has-been Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepard) and scruffy also-ran David Addison (Bruce Willis, before his personal trainer) fought like cat and dog for three seasons, all the while letting us know that they knew that we were watching them. Sound like anyone we know?

Even if you never saw the show, you can guess what happened: Toward the end of their
third season, the pair ended another blow-up fight by slapping each other in the face ñ and then collapsing into each otherís arms on the carpet.

In the virtual office of online publishing, Iíve been watching our own Mister Addison and Miss Hayes go at it for three seasons now ñ watching not from the sidelines, but from a desk halfway between them. Iíve been publishing online for as long as Iíve been writing for national print magazines; five years in each case. Even in 1996, self-publishing Web writers and career magazine editors were already sniping at each other from opposing sides of the office at Wired Ventures, my alma mater. ìWhy are you so
snobby?î ìWhy are you so
juvenile?î

It wasnít until three years ago, though, that solo self-publishing really took off, aided by two technical advances: Easy-to-use software that allowed non-techies to publish a well-organized Web journal, and a rush of readers delivered to small sites by Googleís fast-growing, fast-crawling search engine. Today, a law professor in Tennessee can draw 30,000 visits a day - fewer than a story published, say, on Salon, but still more readers than many paid writers for commercial publications can hope for.

Every blogger on earth can (and will) tell you this story in great detail. Yet neither they nor their counterparts in the press seem to realize itís been three years since more
forward-looking journalists stepped up to acknowlege the powerful role of weblogs as a new source of news, information, and especially commentary. Instead, weíre treated to weekly jabs between self-aggrandizing bloggers and defensive journalists calling each other irrelevant - or worse. Like Moonlighting’s David and Maddie, they bicker because they know weíre watching.

The flames have been mounting since early this year, fanned by a sudden barrage of
late-adopter articles in
leading print publications that tell and retell the same story: NEW ìBLOGî PHENOMENON ñ FAD OR WHAT? These articles seem to be spawning one another. Maybe a gathering of newspaper writers found
Rabbit Blog while sulking together on Valentine’s Day.

Not surprisingly, most of these articles seem quickly written and shallowly reported - at least compared to what I do. Most appear as filler between much more prominent news stories and feature articles. Yet the smallest newspaper item ignites a five-alarm fire in Blogville ñ every story shoots to the top of most-linked lists at
Daypop and
Blogdex, prompting another round of They Donít Get It posts.

Sure, part of this fervent counter-punditry is a legitimate concern over how weblogs are being portrayed to thousands, maybe millions of readers who havenít had a chance to explore them firsthand yet. But the unmistakable scent of narcissism wafts thick over Daypop’s Top 40: Look, everyone, itís another story about
us!

With the pressure on to raise readership at most publicationsí online divisions, you have to wonder if traffic-savvy editors arenít just
baiting them. Yet one particular group of journalists really should be worried: Opinion columnists, those professionals whose work most resembles blogging. You donít see the amateurs crowing that they’ll put
Don Clark at The Wall Street Journal out of work. Itís the columnists theyíre gunning for: Dvorak,
Ann Coulter, anyone else whose output doesnít come from hard reporting every day (or doesnít seem to), and isnít subject to scrupulous fact checking and grueling re-editing to fit the overall voice of the publication.

Clever opinions are all over the Web for free, usually with less editorial (and legal) restraint on the writer. Thatís one reason Wired magazine ditched its regular columnists - you guessed it -
three years ago, in favor of more heavily reported and edited contributions chosen for their individual merit, and why Hotwiredís
online punditry has given way to
hard news reporting and
hands-on technology guides.

From the vantage point of an editor or publisher ñ or a reporter, whose career is built on research and self-doubt rather than personal point of view - columnists and bloggers are more alike than different. That makes their infighting cute, but also telling. Itís no secret most commercial publications have been struggling financially. As more people get more of their information online, the math is simple: Readers wonít pay for something they donít see as more valuable than the free stuff all over the Net.

How many columnists are worth their salaries in that equation? Those who canít regularly bring new information or more learned understanding to the table had better work on becoming unique voices with a proven following ñ otherwise, thereís an army of eager replacements one click away. I can’t help but notice that several of my worst critics from the Hotwired days are now successful self-published pundits themselves (don’t worry, I deleted your email), while some of my fellow journos are starting their own weblogs to get things off their chests that they can’t sell for publication.

Thatís the core of this three-year battle of prattle: a mutual, two-way envy. Columnists envy the freedom and hipness of bloggers, who in turn envy the huge readerships and
paid-to-blog careers of columnists.

Beyond the op-ed page, weblogs removed any doubts about their reporting value on the morning of September 11, when
Scripting News outran bogged-down TV news sites in delivering photos and eyewitness reports from New York City. In that respect, news media are seeing bloggers not as a threat, but as a promise. The New York Times hasn’t tried to discredit Dave Winer for his posts on scripting.com, some of which critize them sharply. Instead, they
take him to dinner. And just now, Patrick Di Justo was contacted by Agence France-Presse about our
“Hunt the Boeing” Answers.

Are weblogs going to replace newspapers, magazines, and their online commercial spinoffs? Not at all. A
Fast Company article everyone and their blog are linking to claims that major newspapers do little original reporting or newsgathering. Thatís the kind of exaggeration only an opinion columnist could get away with in print, and only a blogger would repeat as fact.

The truth is that traditional, commercial media, love ëem and/or hate ëem, arenít going away ñ even if they do keep cutting their budgets and staffs. Look around: The writer who forecast a
Way New Journalism online in 1995 was last seen gushing about the new iMac for
Time magazine. More likely, weíll see commercial writing and blogging practices continue to merge and overlap - I already know of two weblogs maintained by hired ghost writers.

Pro and amateur pundits still act like sworn enemies, but itís obvious to the rest of us whatís really going on between them.

Get a room, you two.