Maggie Shnayerson

Well yes, ninety9, but these are still terribly urgent matters, especially in light of the fact that the panel where you discuss nobler things (oh, this is sxsw? ha) absolutely just never ever gets live-Twittered. What more can one possibly say about the world and its handbasket home?

SO!

Not true:

“After one year, Gould resigned from her editor position at Gawker due to constant, overwhelmingly negative feedback on her Gawker blog posts.”

Very true, and smart!

“With respect to women,” says [Mediabistro editor Rebecca] Fox, “keeping your mouth shut has long been tantamount to being ‘good,’ and the virgin/whore complex is alive and well both online and off.”

Awkward on so many levels:

“‘Women are girlified way more than men, but to be fair, Emily was young when that article came out—25—and it openly portrayed her vulnerability as a neophyte in a new situation,’ Sklar writes via e-mail.”

Misinterpretation:

“‘When he was at Gawker, blogger Alex Balk wrote in the character of ‘My Cock’ for more than a year and still blogs about his affinity for blow jobs, yet he’s like the Teflon man when it comes to how the blogosphere collectively regards his writing,’ Fox says.”

The afore-chewed-over double-standard is less responsible for Teflon Cock’s esteem than the man’s acute dexterity when it comes to the art of satire, a form that—if you will—flummoxes folks on occasion. Like here!

[All via The Austin Chronicle, which is a real (alternative) live (weekly) newspaper owned by its own goddamn self! Amazing.]

“We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

In some ways, I’m awfully glad Murrow didn’t live long enough to see all his predictions keep coming true.

I’m guessing that it’s not a good thing that, of late, most urges of mine to be “creative” (by which I mean subjecting whichever idiot happens to fall into this site in his search for a terrible terrible Rod Stewart song to the random trappings of my brain) have been inspired only by the creative acts of others. Good Lord, did you see that run-on sentence? I’m so glad we both made it safely out.

As such, I don’t have anything to add to Michael Duff’s Friday column during which he raised a pen up to Alex Balk and Choire Sicha, among other Bloggers Missing In Recession. (Well, maybe that the “superstar bloggers” Duff’s doffing his cap to would (and did) get a good chuckle out of that oxymoronic description. Superstars are supposed to get paid, no?) Duff’s right and God (and I) love him for it.

Hey, wouldn’t it be fucking hilarious if someone threw a startup website of the canned and laid-off bloggers who have talked about doing that very thing for years together at various Manhattan gin mills and everyone came and it was awesome? Just saying.

Finest Writers On The Web Are Ready to Work For Coffee, Beer [Michael Duff]

Oh, CNN, he did not. This looky-here headline implies that John Edwards gave Barack Obama the Heisman after the Democratic nominee asked him to be his running mate. What does CNN’s story actually say? Edwards is doing the de rigeur political courtship thing: “Oh no, not for me, thanks anyway, though, gee shucks,” whilst likely angling for a spot with more punch and less profile inside an Obama cabinet. Should have read “Ticker: Edwards would say no to being Obama’s VP,” but then again, I wouldn’t have clicked on something so dull, so I guess CNN wins.

To employ a heavy-handed but probably apt metaphor, headlines like this are the journalist's version of using the cop code "NHI," for No Humans Involved. Good luck to the reporters working for a newspaper with an enfeebled operations, sales, or circulation department. Your job just got a lot harder, and you're probably next.