Reigning Snark Site Gawker Laments Reader Snark

I had to shake my head and wait for my eyes to come back to rest so I could be sure this was the same site. Yup, it was Gawker - with a comment piece on why newspapers should not allow reader comments. The view was so contempuous of letting the hoi polloi have a say that I was surprised, because Gawker is often one of the snidest and most condescending of sites when it comes to opinions of what others do, say, and write.

The line of argument, I felt, was poorly thought through, assumption filled, and lacking perception, understanding, and even a factual grasp on history. Referring to David Carr's piece in the New York Times Magazine about how bad he used to be and how he had changed brought out "Opening a deeply personal article up to the peanut gallery does these writers a great disservice—and yes, I include Emily Gould here, whose NYT Mag article was similarly pilloried in the comments section.

"The "offensive" comments listed were "If he wasn't a reporter for the New York Times, would we be reading this?" and "Monetizing your shameful past is disgusting. Haven't you harmed your loved ones enough for one lifetime?" and "Who cares. grow some guts. we all have problems. most of us don't blame drugs or alcohol... you want a medal for doing your job and being a father?" Sorry, but all three are perfectly respectible views, and far less harsh than things I've seen in Gawker. If a writer decides to open up his or her personal life, then that person should be smart enough, and thick-skinned enough, to know what will happen.

Certainly the single line of type "w-h-o-r-e" referring to another story is ridiculous. But to include that as if it is on the same level as the other comments is absurd.

You could argue that newspapers should rigorously vet and moderate their comments, or at least require them to use their full names. I'd argue that this is a silly misuse of their time; I'm not suggesting that newspapers should actively patrol their comments, like this and some other websites do. (We're a blog; comments are in our blood.) I'm suggesting they get rid of them altogether. (This doesn't include the blog sections of various papers, which the NYT and Washington Post are stuffed full of.)

The author, signed as Sheila, suggests that newspapers "have more important things to do" than to police comments or even spend time with them. Why? Are newspapers supposed to be sacrosanct when it comes to criticism? At least with comment sections, there is a way for someone to voice an opinion when the newspaper decides that it isn't important or interesting enough to publish a letter to the editor - even if the comment is informed and makes a point important for the newspaper to hear.

Ah, but I forgot, all comments in all newspapers are the same: shallow and not of the quality of real writers like Sheila. Perhaps she might look at some of the blogs at the Guardian's site; the discussion in the theatre section, for one, shows an erudition and level of experience that is laudable.

As for the postscript:

Also, nobody wants to hear the tired old "free speech" argument as a defense of comments. We've had free speech in this country for well over two hundred years, long before it was ever an option to comment on newspaper websites and blogs.

what hogwash. She means that she doesn't want to hear about free speech because, after all, that is for the intellectuals, not the common folk. Unfortunately, Sheila is apparently unfamiliar with the quality and thrust of newspapers at the time of the founding fathers, and how they would regularly attack politicians, public figures, and each other on a regular basis. There was no need for a comments section, because the entire newspapers were just that. But it's far more convenient to ignore fact when it gets in the way of opinion.

Death of a Photo Blog and Why Writers Stop

One of my favorite blogs is called A Photo Editor - smart, informed, to the point, and interesting. Owner Rob Haggart has an interview with a former photo blogger, Alec Soth, who gave up the writing for a number of reasons that are interesting:

• It stopped being a creative outlet and became another "business."
• So many people wanted something from him that he couldn't keep up.
• It began to affect his real life relationships.

It's interesting to see the pressures that can come about even when you want to write something for your own enjoyment.

Romance Writer Loses Publisher Over Plagiarism

According to the Associated Press, Signet Books will no longer publish popular romance writer Cassie Edwards. It seems that Ms. Edwards had repeatedly taken descriptions, sentences, and sections from reference books and magazines without any form of attribution. The problem was first found by a romance lit blog with the great name Smart Bitches Love Trashy Books. Congratulations to them for unearthing the literary theft, and I'm shaking my head at either AP or the Boston Globe, which replaced Bitches with B------. J--z.

Blogging in Middle English

In the throws of some research for my WriterBiz blog, which is about the freelance writing business, I came across Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. If you've ever made an attempt at reading Canterberry Tales in the original Middle English - which is actually a highly enjoyable activity when you start letting the sounds of northern England splash a bit into Scotland and realize that it's almost like being fluent in a foreign language, except taking a lot less work - you'll enjoy an entire blog written in that manner.

Italy Wants to Curb Bloggers

According to Beppe Grillo, the Italian government is trying to restrict bloggers by requiring each one to officially register, and pay a tax. Anyone with a blog or web site would also be required to have a publishing company and "a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director." I don't think the law applies to sites and blogs hosted in other countries, but couldn't swear to that. And here I thought that Italy was a democracy...

Book Author Sues Reviewer

I'm not sure whether this is what the newspaper business calls a man-bites-dog story. Such a tale (or tail) depends on someone doing something you just wouldn't expect. Of course, most book authors probably harbor desires to sue for a bad review - and that's on their good days. (Imagination on the bad days tends toward more graphic and inventive violence.) So I was a bit surprised to read this BoingBoing post about a blogger who saw the subject of a negative review head right to court. As the post quotes the blogger:

He claims to have a revolutionary idea for how evolution works, but his ideas have no connection to reality, and these lovely elaborate drawings he made look nothing at all like actual embryos. The bottom line is that I said his work was more about the evolution of balloon animals than biology.

Obviously this is proof positive that Darwin was nuts and that the fittest aren't necessarily the ones surviving.

The Print Versus Blog Review Wars

The LA Times ran something on a possible rapprochement between print and blog literary reviewers. I didn't kow that there was a fight between the two sides, but am not surprised. There is a power hierarchy in the literary world, and reviewers - mistake me not, often performing a good service of discussing things worthy of attention - are often the gatekeepers. They don't like losing that status, but someone should point out that they're going to lose it anyway. One newspaper after another has been dropping or reducing book sections. Some of the analysis in the article was flawed, I think, as in this example:

Still, the numbers are telling: The literary blogs are reaching a small audience. While larger newspapers have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the Elegant Variation, for example, has an estimated 5,000 to 7,500 hits a day, while Champion's Return of the Reluctant is averaging 40,000 visits a day.

That's comparing apples and oranges. If all those readers were paying attention to the book section in papers, you can bet that the editors and publishers wouldn't be cutting their sections. What newspaper could get 40,000 people a day, every day, to read a book section? If long-time reviewers are truly worried about the level of discourse, and not their own paychecks or control over an art form, then let them join in online, or possibly teach workshops for those who would like to review. Or let them start their own blogs. This is a time where authors are becoming publishers. Why not find a place in the new order?

Fatal Feminine Sales - When Buzz Doesn't Bump Book Buying

The New York Times had an interesting story about the lack of sales on either side of the work outside the house/stay at home mothering debate. At the heart of the article is the premise that although they get tremendous media attention, "these so-called mommy books fail to transform their talk-show and blogosphere buzz into book sales." Instead of reading, women debate the titles based on summaries or excerpts but don't buy copies.

That may seem odd, but it's really not. As many businesses learn, getting press doesn't necessarily turn into sales. Eventually, if people are going to shell out money for something, they have to feel that they're going to get something from it. With a topic that gets so polarizing, those who agree might not buy because they already "know" they're right, and those who disagree are just as sure that the book will be wrong, so why bother? I suspect that many of the nasty political books only do well because they dish the dirt on someone, which is almost irrestible to most people.