The title is a quote from a
column that slams bloggers (both left and right) by Kathleen Parker at the RW site Townhall. She is a longtime newspaper woman who thinks bloggers are pesky little children who require "adult supervision." No surprise there.
Say what you will about the so-called mainstream media, but no industry agonizes more about how to improve its product, police its own members and better serve its communities. Newspapers are filled with carpal-tunneled wretches, overworked and underpaid, who suffer near-pathological allegiance to getting it right.
I work in a newsroom and that attitude is common. Blogging just isn't taken seriously. A lot of journalists just don't seem to grasp the concept. They see misinformed journalist wannabes shooting their mouths off with reckless disregard for the truth and trying to "crash the gate," so to speak, of MSM. And there is definitely some of that.
But then newspapers also fail to see how they have contributed to this "problem." Newspapers insist on telling people what the newspaper thinks they need to know, rather than what people actually want to read about. Whenever I pick up the paper and see a front-page story about the latest twists in the sewer system saga I want to cringe. Nobody reads that shit.
Publishers see that circulation is in a death spiral and obsess over ways to reverse it. This usually involves adding more color to the paper, bringing in design consultants and adding flashy graphics.
It's putting lipstick on a pig, which does make the pig look better. But it's still a pig. Newspapers could learn a few things from blogs -- like establishing a community with your readers. Instead, bloggers are insulted:
Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. Some bloggers also offer superb commentary, but most babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive.
Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. These effete and often clever baby "bloggies" are rich in time and toys, but bereft of adult supervision. Spoiled and undisciplined, they have grabbed the mike and seized the stage, a privilege granted not by years in the trenches, but by virtue of a three-pronged plug and the miracle of WiFi.
I just hope that newspapers are around long enough that I can collect my pension.