Saturday, February 18, 2006

FT Weekend on Blogging

FT Weekend has a piece, regrettably offline, on blogging and bloggers. The piece is written by a fellow named Trevor Butterworth, who mentions the Guardian as one of his previous writing stints, so it takes little imagination to discern his bias.

Butterworth concentrates on Gawker and Wonkette, and describes the political side of the blogosphere as fleas feeding on fleas feeding on the mainstream media, which are a pack of fleas themselves, come to think of it.

Just to give an idea of his own journalistic accuracy, Butterworth neglects to mention Mickey Kaus' former stint with The New Republic.

Just another fad, fed by prolix scribblers and wannabee journalists, the FT article sums up. The NYT has nothing to fear, Butterworth says, and will remain the narrative touchstone of our daily lives, or some such blather.....

Given the flotsam and jetsam that fetches up on the White House Press beachhead, some sort of different narratives might be less mortifying to thoughtful observers....

1 comment :

Anonymous said...

Hi dave,

Thanks for the comments - but I'm a little puzzled. Nowhere does it say that I worked for the Guardian. It says Martin Walker, whom I quote, works for the Guardian.

As for my bias? Well, go to www.stats.org or www.trevorbutterworth.com and then tell me which way I'm biased. I did after all give Coloring the News by William McGowan a GOOD review in the Washington Post.

I'm not sure why Mickey Kaus's former stint at the New republic is relevant - he's been at slate for as long as I've been paying attention. Which I concede, may not be that long.

And Ana Marie Cox makes the point about the New York Times enduring.

Again - thanks for reading!

Best - T