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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 - 3 Comments »
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Old & New Media Clash On Twitter

Business Insider’s 3rd birthday seems to have given Henry Blodget the urge to swing his dick around and to once again cry crocodile tears for the New York Times.
What strikes me as most pathetic is that Blodget thinks journalism not only safe in the hands of the web, but that it is thriving. I do think it is more consumed than ever before… but the quality is getting shittier by the day, in spite of the many bright spots.
Blodgett is also right about many of Traditional Media’s rote responses to the web… absolutely. But there is a smugness to it… a sense that the ball has been handed off, when in fact it is fumbled daily by the confusion of opinion and news on the web. It feels as though almost every former print journo who found Online Jesus in the last few years is obsessed with taking over from Big Daddy, with all the childish grandstanding and lack of insight into their own work of any child of privilege. And ironically, Traditional Media treats their children like wunderkind while mostly ignoring web efforts that come from creators who were not spawned by TM… which perpetuates the myth of the success of these inbred onanists.
But I digress…
What drew me into this was an exchange on Twitter between David Carr (NYT) and Blodget (Business Insider). It was, to me, quite instructional.
Notice… Carr makes a statement. Bldogett demands a response to the question he wishes to have answered by NYT THREE times before Carr responds that it isn’t really his point. His point is that Blodget buried The Times and had it dead wrong 18 months ago. Blodget responds by beating on the one topic, which Carr clearly will not (and cannot) respond to, FOUR more times… and counting…
This is – and it’s hardly rare on the web or in TM – how propaganda works. Keep pounding on the issue you want people to discuss. Disregard all else. Position it so that The Authority, who you know is not in a position to answer, doesn’t answer… so you can claim you gave them every chance to spin the story. And just keep pounding away.
It’s not that I think I know an answer as to how the NYT can keep going at even 50% the cost of the paper of a decade ago. But by narrowing it down to one unanswerable issue, the blogger controls the conversation, never admitting his own limitations, only “exposing” the other side’s easy target.
As much as I believe in and live by “put up or shut up,” Carr doesn’t have that option. He can’t publicly opine on the future revenue streams of the company that pays his bills. Nor can anyone who works for Henry Blodget, btw. And in this case, it is nothing but speculation… so is it really so bad for people – journalists – to keep their own counsel until they actually KNOW something?
No… more fun to just print whatever drips out of some orifice somewhere and to pretend that is news…
============
(Carr’s tweets in bold)
. @hblodget, amazingly wrong on where NYT is going, takes another swing at it. http://bit.ly/9NZVT6 fix? dump any writers w/o big traffic about 4 hours ago via web
@carr2n Question: How many people will pay for NYT online and how much (average). Fine if I’m wrong, but curious what you’re thinking about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck
@carr2n And my guess is you have huge traffic, so I wouldn’t be worried about it. about 4 hours ago via TweetDeck in reply to carr2n
Ahem, @carr2n, If you think NYT now will be gangbuster online biz, please share actual assumptions: How many subs paying how much? about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
.@carr2n To pay for current newsroom (~$200mm/yr) w/o print, NYT needs ~$600mm of online rev vs ~$150mm today. Can get there? How? about 3 hours ago via TweetDeck
actually henry, am relying on historical analytics of your predictions, not speculating on our revs. http://bit.ly/dbHPc8 shorting @hblodget about 2 hours ago via web
.@carr2n But please speculate! If I’m wrong, why? Because NYT will get way more online subs paying way more than I think? about 2 hours ago via TweetDeck
.@carr2n So if I’m wrong about NYT paywall nums, how am I wrong? You think 3mm subs paying $200/yr each for $600mm revs? about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck
.@carr2n $100mm NYT online sub rev would be nothing to sniff at, especially w/ $100mm of ads. But that won’t pay for ~$200mm newsroom. about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck
.@carr2n Don’t hide behind supposed objectivity! Let’s talk numbers. I think NYT online will get 1mm subs at $100/yr per. That’s $100mm about 1 hour ago via TweetDeck

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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Old & New Media Clash On Twitter”

  1. Stella's Boy says:
    July 21, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    At least we have class acts like Andrew Breitbart and Tucker Carlson ensuring that journalism is done the right way. No taking things out of context, no hyperbole, no intentional misinformation. Just the facts.

  2. christian says:
    July 21, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    The most amazing thing — outside of the administration’s fear of FOX and the blogcentric lack of inquiry — is Breitbart’s minions chiding the Obama admin for actually believing their lies!

  3. Stella's Boy says:
    July 22, 2010 at 5:16 am

    Yeah christian that was totally surreal. In less than 24 hours they went from bashing Sherrod to bashing the Obama admin. And along with FNC they have been distorting the Journolist non-story to make it seem like a concerted effort was made to ban FNC from the airwaves.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

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“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

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