Calling the Kettle Black


Mark Starr of Newsweek this week gives his opinion of blogging and the "new media" in an article entitled "My Kobe Confession":

"When I was growing up in this business, our collective notion of what constituted the media was pretty uniform and certainly finite. It sure as hell didn’t include every clown with a Web site and a grudge, every blogger convinced that his daily diary contains deathless prose, every shockjock with toilet tastes and even baser values.
All those now claim to be part of the “media.” And maybe they are. But too many practitioners of new media are working relentlessly to drag everyone else down to their subterranean levels. It is increasingly hard for the mainstream to cling to well-established principles when so many others are out to degrade and titillate—all under the pretense of informing. And, frankly, there are way too many folks in the mainstream who are happy, make that thrilled, to follow them down the low road."

As if we malignant purveyors of blogging trash had to lead the "professional" media down the low road. Over the past thirty years, they done a pretty good job of redefining what "in the gutter" really means. I would be the first to agree that many websites are downright loopy and some blogs give idiocy a bad name, but it seems a little rich to be criticized by those who, of course, write only in "deathless prose." Please! During the O.J. Simpson trial the internet (the source of all this evil) was still in its infancy and only reached a fraction of the people it does today, and what a splendid display of professionalism we were treated to then.

Could it be that the "mainstream media" has suddenly developed a conscience and remembered that their reason for existence was to advance the debates in a democratic society, rather than provide the mindless pabulum of infotainment?

Yeah, I didn't think so either.