Jaclyn Schiff

Your Attitude Towards Blogs is a Reflection of What You Think of People

by Jaclyn Schiff on 04/02/09 at 7:33 pm

This post was originally published on The Schiff Report, my blog that focused on media coverage of Gen. Y. Click here to see the original post and comments.

A friend sent me this New York Times article, which summarizes a heated confrontation that took place on the HBO sports media show Costas Now. I’m not usually interested in professional sports-related topics, but this discussion got my attention.

On the show, Buzz Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights and other books let rip on Will Leitch, the founder of the sports blog Deadspin. Shortly after the show started Bissinger interjected himself into the conversation.

“I really think you’re full of shit,” he said to Leitch. Bissinger then launched into a full critique of blogging.

“I think blogs are dedicated to cruelty, they’re dedicated to journalistic dishonesty, they’re dedicated to speed,” Bissinger said. “Here’s insight in blogging, because it really pisses the shit out of me,” he said before reading some offensive comments he pulled from the blog.

Later in the show Leitch acknowledged that some blogs are abusive and not responsible, adding that those are not the ones that become very popular. “The nice thing about the Web is it’s a meritocracy. Sure anyone can start a blog, but to get a readership you have to be serious, you have to be consistent, it’s hard goddam work…”

The Real Disagreement

This debate isn’t new, but here’s what this particular discussion made me think about.

You get the people in Bissinger’s camp who don’t like what bloggers are doing. Like Bissinger, they say blogs are dumbing things down. Blogs are vicious, uncensored and bloggers don’t have the same accountability as journalists, which negatively affects the quality of the content, they say.

Then you get the people who think like Leitch. Perhaps bloggers aren’t accountable to editors and news organizations in the traditional sense, but they’re accountable to their readers, they say. In response to criticisms about the tone in the blogosphere, they say that the large variety of blogs cater to many different tastes, some are snarky, others aren’t, it’s a question of taste.

Leitch points out that the Internet is a meritocracy. I don’t think you can argue with that — you don’t have to read, listen or view anything online that you don’t want to. Popular blogs are widely read because people like what they’re reading. They keep coming back and sending the stuff they read to friends because they’re gaining something from the content.

The real disagreement between these two camps is over how much faith they have in readers.

Bissinger and others who espouse pro-establishment views obviously don’t trust the average person’s intelligence. If you buy what they’re saying, then almost anything that’s online — no matter how dumb, profane or poorly written — could become popular and mainstream. I mean that’s the fear, right? They’re concerned that everything that’s bad about blogging could become the modus operandi.

On the other hand, Leitch, who is a young Gen. Xer, and the rest of the pro-bloggers have absolute faith in the intelligence of readers. They’re counting on the fact that people aren’t going to keep coming back to Web sites that continually get the facts wrong or defame people to the point of disgust. They acknowledge that there will always be garbage online, but their faith in people makes them believe that the Huffington Post will always hold more authority then Perez Hilton.

As a blogger, I predictably tend to side with Leitch. Bissinger’s arguments really didn’t speak to me. During the show, they both touched on the idea that this could be a generational issue. So maybe that’s it.

Bissinger is a baby boomer and his argument about blogging dumbing us down, sounds a lot like Susan Jacoby, another boomer, who makes the same point. It could be generational, but the person who sent this to me is a millennial who strongly agrees with Bissinger and many people have pointed out that most Gen. Ys don’t read blogs.

But I do have to give Bissinger credit for one thing. Towards the end of the show, the host asked him whether his distaste for blogs arises from feeling like bloggers are threatening his job. There aren’t many journalists who deal with this honestly, but Bissinger acknowledged that bloggers make him nervous. “This guy [Leitch], whether we like it or not, is the future,” he said.

Check out the clip from the show here.