'His tiny Asian wife'....yesterday's Deadspin

the only thing that would beat an asian wife is a tiny asian wife.

 

Great news! Walton's wife isn't just Asian...she's also tiny! It's an exciting time for all of us.

 

You base this on what? I think our most avid consumers are people who are intelligent enough to discern the difference between our expensively produced products and the thrown-together blog that has a staff in the single digits, most often one person. Just as they are smart enough to know the difference between a major metro and a one-man show at the rural weekly. And they assign the two credibility accordingly.

 

oh fucking my ... you shit me not? how in the world do you know this information? are you friends with bill?

 

Well, first, I used the word "among."

Second, bloggers and their readers are a self-selected group of readers who are sports-crazy, very literate (though not always well-read) and hyper-critical. That's the kind of people we WANT to attract as readers, right?

Also, I was just piling on Shaughnessy, whose blog spoof was poorly conceived and poorly executed, as was pointed out by the FJM guy, who -- blogger or no -- is a pretty sharp guy.

(I'm not him, for the record. I don't even know who he is. But I do know I wouldn't have the patience to read as much bad sportswriting as he does.)

P.S. - Tom, it's the wonders of the Internets. I like to call it the information superhighway. I believe someday we'll have the technology to identify EVERYONE who has a tiny Asian wife. Until then, we can only dream.

 

One more thing: I'm not a BLLLLLOOOOOGS!!! triumphalist like some folks around here.

I just think the knee-jerk "Blogs suck and bloggers are idiots" attitude displayed by people such as Frank -- who's always struck me as a wise and experienced veteran newspaperman -- reveals more about us than it does about them.

 

No, I do not think blog readers ought to be our target audience, nor do I believe they are likely to be paying customers. I think mainstream media are for engaged people who don't mind having their point of view challenged, and blogs and small, indy Web sites are for people who want their point of view validated and go apoplectic when a news report differs from their preconceptions. I strongly believe this is the widening great divide. You can be either a bull or a bear and believe it's going to get perpetually worse for us as more and more people seek out only what they agree with, or you can believe that over time, as the novelty of the rare blog scoop wears off, and mainstream media increasingly points out the large blogs' fuckups, that the public will swing the other way and begin to value expensively produced media as the only believable sources for news and intelligent commentary.

 

May I assume you're not a regular reader of blogs?

 

My point is that, if Shaughnessy's editors were trying to prevent him from looking stupid, they failed. Miserably. His attempt at "satire" relied on nothing but trite, tired stereotypes of bloggers and "fanboys." It was a waste of space.

 

Exactly.

Which is what happens more often than not when journalists take it upon themselves to lampoon the Internet as the enemy.

 

I do read a few. More importantly, I know quite a few people who have tuned out our political coverage in favor of blogs and indy media. These people are LOST. We aren't getting them back. They are uninterested in anything that doesn't preach to their choir. They never again will be customers, and chasing them is futile.

 

You're wrong. I read blogs. I write a blog. And my household, which is made up of two people who have earned advanced degrees, subscribes to two daily newspapers, several magazines, and a few online subscriptions to sites maintained by "mainstream" media.

But that's ok -- keep dismissing people like me as some sort of "enemy" rather than engaging me in a conversation as a potential customer. Keep believing that I need to be spoon-fed information on your terms. I'll just find a content provider who can challenge me without condescending me.