Sunday, September 26, 2004
Free the Real Billmon!
So Billmon kills his comment section because they got to be too much to manage. Then he says he's taking an ocean voyage and will be gone for a couple of weeks. I still hit him every day and finally realized that last post was on August 15. So I resolve to be patient because I love the guy's writing.
Harumph. Now we find his writings, not at the Whiskey Bar but in the editorial section of the LA Times fer chrissakes. And what does he have to say?
Bloggers are sellouts, their sites look like "glorified billboards" because of all the ads, we're being co-opted by the "media-industrial complex" because the ad money all goes to the top few sites.
That's bad enough, but then he twists the knife:
I gotta tell ya, this whole piece just did not sound like the Billmon I know. Or thought I knew. Maybe he's been taken captive and forced to write this through some finger-holes cut in the duct tape binding his hands together. There are still pirates out there you know.
Okay, you bastards, he's done your bidding. He's heaved a world-weary sigh and denounced us all for doubleplusungood thoughtcrimes, and a desire to avoid bankruptcy.
Now let him go. He sounds like a man who needs to start a blog.
Harumph. Now we find his writings, not at the Whiskey Bar but in the editorial section of the LA Times fer chrissakes. And what does he have to say?
Bloggers are sellouts, their sites look like "glorified billboards" because of all the ads, we're being co-opted by the "media-industrial complex" because the ad money all goes to the top few sites.
That's bad enough, but then he twists the knife:
As blogs commercialize, they are tied ever closer to the mainstream media and its increasingly frivolous news agenda. The political blogosphere already has a bad habit of chasing the scandal du jour. This election season, that's meant a laser-like focus on such profound matters as the mysteries of Bush's National Guard service or whether John Kerry deserved his Vietnam War medals.So let me get this straight...because within the last few months a few blogs have become profitable enough from ad sales that the authors can quit their jobs or otherwise go full-time, this is a sign we've sold out? Because the sites that get ads will make money and get mentioned in the "real" media which will bring them more readers? And then, gasp, because we're not "egalitarian" enough to all starve together in our garretts, this is somehow the end of Left Blogostan?
Meanwhile, more unsettling (and important) stories — like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or the great Iraq weapons-of-mass-destruction snipe hunt — quietly disappear down the media memory hole. And bloggers either can't, or won't, dig them back out again. As the convergence with big media continues, I suspect there will be progressively less interest in trying.
I gotta tell ya, this whole piece just did not sound like the Billmon I know. Or thought I knew. Maybe he's been taken captive and forced to write this through some finger-holes cut in the duct tape binding his hands together. There are still pirates out there you know.
Okay, you bastards, he's done your bidding. He's heaved a world-weary sigh and denounced us all for doubleplusungood thoughtcrimes, and a desire to avoid bankruptcy.
Now let him go. He sounds like a man who needs to start a blog.
