It is with a heavy heart that I write this post.
You see, I like Christie Blatchford. I really do.
Yeah, she can be simpering at times, and she has never understood the meaning of the phrase “save the drama for your mama” … but she’s a good columnist: quick-witted, nasty as she needs to be and tender enough to write about dead babies and actually seem like she cares about every one.
She’s Rosie DiManno, only about 18,000 times better at what she does. And she’s a nicer person to boot.
But like all newspaper dinosaurs, not only does she not understand the age of digital publishing, she treats it like American Southerners treated the end of segregation.
Have a quick read while I take a few sips of Haterade.
“You mean … they’re here? Among us?! Covering the same events, writing about the same things?! You’re giving them EQUAL ACCESS?”
“Oh this is well and truly the end of our society. What, Oh Lord, will be left for us to cover in print editions the next day?”
Sigh. To quote an ancient, and fictional, king of men: ‘What can one man do against such reckless hate?’
Well, he can blog about it, for one.
I need to get some kind of groove back, and this uninformed rant, boiling over with generational jealousy and technophobia is like batting practice for journalism critics everywhere.
So I’m taking a few cuts.
The race was about an hour away when young Mr. Sekeres said the five words I have most come to dread: “I’m going to blog this.” And he did – and on the 18th day of the eighth month in the year 2008, so it must be a lucky omen.
Forgive me, Christie, but are those really the five words you have most come to dread? I’d have gone with “Your house is on fire”, “BellGlobeMedia files for bankruptcy protection”, “Rosie DiManno wins columnist award”, “Show this intern the ropes” or “We’re all out of scotch”.
But that’s a judgement call. We’ll move on.
Or rather, after a few desultory efforts in the early going here, let me say that I shall not blog. It is not because I take a principled stand against blogging. It’s not that I don’t love the Web. It’s not that I’m a Luddite, or at least not just that I’m a Luddite.
It’s that, as Michael Farber, the great Montreal sportswriter and Hockey Hall of Famer who works for Sports Illustrated, said the other day on a bus, “I have only a finite number of words in me.” He is guarding what’s left, properly determined not to squander them.
(Attempting to resist urge to take obvious potshot … attempting … and … failing utterly.)
Well … thank God for that.
I however, don’t believe any such thing, so I’m going to waste as many as I feel like here to have a good ol’ time romping on the Internet with Blatch.
The attempted point here is that Ms. Blatchford has nothing against blogging, or bloggers, or the Web. It’s just that she won’t blog because she doesn’t want to waste the words she has left.
This would be well and good, if she didn’t continue on to insult the skill and craftsmanship of bloggers, bemoan the ramifications of Internet technology and bitch about the impact all this has on what is quite clearly the best way ever in life of doing things — having a reporter take notes with pencil on paper and carefully craft one story that will appear 12 hours later in the print edition of a newspaper for all to see.
Right. Got it. Next.
Michael Phelps’s last swim, as with all swim finals thanks to NBC, took place in the morning here, prime time back home. It meant that most Canadian papers could just barely squeak into the next day’s editions the news of his record eighth gold. Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star was poolside; she had five whole minutes to write and file the story. It does not make for thoughtful copy.
So … that means … that … perhaps … just maybe … places where print deadlines aren’t such a problem … like, ummmm, the Web … could … possibly … produce more thoughtful copy than a newspaper that is tied to traditional and often unwieldy time constraints? Even if the newspaper does boast the well-composed musings of one Rosie DiManno. Is that a possibility?
Ms. DiManno’s work ethic is legendary. When I remarked to her colleague Doug Smith that she had written five stories one day last week, he grinned and said, “Well, the paper has five sections.” On one of those multistory days, Ms. DiManno got a snarky comment about one of them on the Star website, “comments” being the remarks Web readers are encouraged to post about the stories they read.
Hey, you know who else writes lots of stories every day? Full-time bloggers. They even get some snarky comments. On occasion, the comments on blogs can be even more snarky than this nasty bit of venom spewed at our friendly reporter who is charged with providing thoughtful comment:
“This feels more like a blog post, Rosie. A good blog, but a lame article,” wrote someone identified only as HEC30.
Ooooooh. Burn. Rosie DiManno just got served, as we say in the unprofessional world called the Blogosphere.
Seriously? That’s all she got. I say worse than that about Rosie DiManno’s articles just about every day.
But here’s where I really lose it:
You see? Everyone’s a writer now. Everyone’s an editor. It’s as if the College of Physicians and Surgeons not only encouraged patients to read all the medical websites, but also to do their own diagnoses.
Are you fucking serious, Christie Blatchford? Are you really comparing writing for newspapers to making professional medical diagnoses? Who put you up to this?
Yes, Christie, everyone is a writer now. And everyone’s an editor. It’s pretty fucking cool, isn’t it? Everyone’s always been a writer and an editor, it’s just that you didn’t have to trouble yourself with them slipping a toe across the borders of your hallowed ground until recently.
If you can write, you can write. Some people go to school for it for years, and still can’t fucking do it. Some people sit down and start scribbling, and their sentences are structured. It’s a gift — and even in the middle of ripping you a new one, I will admit that you possess it — but it’s certainly not a gift only those learned-and-wise, capital ‘J’ Journalists possess.
What you are saying here is the equivalent of declaring that anyone who has not studied at a conservatory or as an apprentice shouldn’t be allowed to play music for a living; that you shouldn’t be able to make a movie without going to film school or being approved by a major studio; that you’re not qualified to put charcoal to canvas without some sort of accreditation from a visual arts body.
Everybody’s writing. Everybody’s editing. You’re supposed to be a fan of words … but you think this is a bad thing? Why is that?
This is the democratization wrought by the Web, and if it has actually helped open up closed societies such as China’s, in the West its chief effect, at least upon journalism, is to diminish whatever craft, and there is some, is left in the business.
How? Does 20,000 kids strumming on guitars diminish the craft of the Beatles? Really, I could go on for days, but there’s more ridiculous and pathetic idiocy to come, so I’ll just smile and nod at that nonsense.
It is not true that anyone can write. It is not true that anyone can write on deadline. It is not true that anyone can do an interview. It is not true that anyone can edit themselves and sort wheat from chaff. It is not true that even great productive writers like The Globe’s Jim Christie or Ms. DiManno or Mr. Farber can hit a home run every time they sit before the laptop. But the odds of them doing it are greatly increased if they haven’t already filed 1,200 words to the Web, shot a video, done a podcast and blogged ferociously all day long.
See, here’s the problem, Blatch: I went to journalism school. I paid out the ass for it. I learned how to interview, how to edit, how to write on deadline. I already knew how to write, but we’ll leave that part alone. I worked, and still work, at daily newspapers doing all of these things.
And y’know what I was told about writing? The one constant in every piece of advice I was given — from my high-school English teachers who started me on this path, to the journalists who teach and Canada’s finest school for the trade, to the grizzled reporters who imparted tips and shared stories over beers — was this:
Keep writing. Write every day. Write lots. Practice. That’s how you get better. That’s how you refine the craft.
In fact, when I can’t write, and I have to write something on deadline, you know what I do? I write something else first. Sometimes I blog. It’s like a pitcher warming up in the bullpen, like a jump-shooter going out for an early look or 12 at the basket.
But superstars, like Christie Blatchford and Allen Iverson, don’t need to practice.
Whatever, Blatch.
(I’m skipping over some of her semi-coherent rant about reader comments here. It really doesn’t make much sense and the writing doesn’t even feel like Christie at this point. She’s in some sort of fevered rage now, I think.)
We’ll pick it up here:
Journalism wasn’t meant to be a conversation, anyway. It was maybe a monologue, at its most democratic a carefully constructed dialogue. If readers didn’t like or agree with the monologues in paper A, they bought paper B. What was most important about their opinions was that they thought enough to spend the coin.
Now this … this here gets to the heart of the matter. When lots of writers — some of them very good ones, a fact which I know from frequently choosing to read blogs over newspapers — offer their opinions on the Web for free, there’s no reason for readers to choose paper A or paper B, or even tabloid paper C, or even the National Post.
This is the real reason for this article. If the “respect” that everyone has traditionally had for newspaper columnists over things written by non-newspaper writers continues to erode, subscription and advertising numbers will continue to fall and the whole system will collapse.
Then Blatch might have to get herself a blog. And that, my friends, cannot ever be allowed to happen.
Most important, Michael Farber is right. We all have a limited number of things to say, informed opinions, funny lines, quirky observations. We have only so many words in us. Do we really want to spend them on something as ephemeral as a blog?
So blogs are ephemeral, according to Christie, but daily newspapers are absolutely not.
Funny thing … I have written lots of newspaper stories, and lots of blogs. I can find every single blog post I ever made — on this blog and all the ones that came before it — within seconds. I can find the newspaper articles I am proud of, too, if I dig around in my filing cabinet where I have carefully stored them and protected them from the recycling bin, the kitty litter box and the bird cage.
There’s a reason they call this shit ‘fishwrap’ Christie … and it ain’t because daily newspaper articles stand forever.
In fact, for the average reader, a blog’s archives are infinitely easier to access than those of a newspaper, and the newspapers will almost always find a way to charge you money if you want a glimpse of what they wrote about a year or two ago.
But blogs are ephemeral. Got it. Next.
The thing that I know, as all the editors I have had also know, is what I didn’t get to confide or write or commit to paper, because someone else had the good sense to put on the brakes. There are no brakes, and thus there is no joy, in blogville.
No, actually. There is joy in blogville. And misery. And despair. And unfiltered happiness. And intimate moments and idle musings and quirky phrases and thoughtful analysis.
There’s just no joy in your opinion of blogville, Blatch, because you want the doors to your “Important Writers Club” to remain barred to all save those with a press card from a publication you deem sufficiently qualified. That’s not happening anymore. Those days are over — politicians are realizing it, sports teams are realizing it and your own executives are realizing it.
The latter category, of course, is why Mr. Sekeres was wasting his words — biblically spilling his seed upon the ground, as it were — while you sat next to him, hating on this new world that has the temerity to piss on your fire hydrant.
Sigh. C’mon, Blatch. I expect this crap from Rosie. Not from you.
