May 8, 2005
nick denton disses bloggers
From The New York Times: Gawker Media’s Nick Denton dismisses the “Blogging Revolution”:
“The hype comes from unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals and people who never made it as journalists wanting to believe,” he said. “They want to believe there’s going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed.”
“Unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals”. Sounds a bit like me. Heh.
Gawker Media’s blog format notwithstanding, Nick is basically in a traditional, Old Media, advertising-funded biz model. The last thing his business needs is clients discovering blogging for themselves, or believing they can spend less money on advertising.
I like both Nick and Gawker Media, so if they’re making a profit, all power to them. That being said, I really don’t see what the big deal about nanopublishing is. With the advent of blogs, it’s simply too easy for a writer to create their own brand/body of work without a publisher, without the controlled and compromising input of a third party. This is true with both small and large publishers, online and off. So why the Big Media fascination with Gawker?
I suspect the real reason is that it allows them to write about the blogosphere without having to mention the real, and for them, painful and depressing story, as summed up so eloquently by Clay Shirky last year:
“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”
There’s nothing wrong with Big Media per se, they just have the same problem as Madison Avenue. Their product is extremely expensive to make, and they have no earthly clue how to realistically make it cheaper. Long-term that situation is untenable.
[Nick Denton’s homepage is here.]
Funny old world — I was just musing on a cycle ride how Gawker’s stuff is just traditional journalism re-packaged for the web.
Yes Euan, Nick’s biz model assumes a lot will remain unchanged.
If Mr. Denton is merely trying to make the point that the majority of blogs will be of no importantance to the majority of people, he would be correct. In this regard, blogs are no different to television programs.
However, if he is trying to suggest that blogs as a whole will be of no importantance to the way that society communicates & functions, I think he would be wrong. Very wrong. We are at the start of something that will make the introduction of television look small.
The rules are still being made. The rules are almost always broken right way anyway. A few bloggers will get to deal with celebrity, but most of us will continue life as before, albeit with a new tool with which we share thoughts & idea’s faster than ever before.
PS Why can’t I ever seem to write a comment in less than 25 words?
Stephen, also, with blogs I think a decent writer doesn’t need publishers anymore. Not even nanopublishers. It’s simply too easy to use a blog to create your own brand/fan base/body of work etc.
Seems to me that “professionals” with standards of credibility are going to have to break off from the generic “blogger” to be seen as viable for the long term. When quotes from bloggers within term papers are accepted by high school English teachers, I’ll believe they are more than a passing blip on the media radar.
Seems to me that if someone wants their life changed by blogs/blogging, it probably will be. I don’t think we’ve yet seen all the uses to which blogging COULD be put, so we don’t know yet what effect they will have. Sounds like Nick Denton has some turf he wants to protect from somebody like me (not unemployed, or partially employed; not a marketing professional, never tried being a journalist — you don’t know me Mr Denton, so don’t try and tell me how my life will or won’t go).
If it’s not a revolution, why are they writing about it? Surely what’s unimportant is just ignored and allowed to dissipate by itself without any fuss whatsoever.
Great comments, great points.
Indeed, Nick .. why bother making any noise at all .. just go back to managing your people and your business .. keep at it, and when the time is right make way for other, more interesting propositions that WILL come along
Something very similar is going on within (yeah, not so much outside of it …) the field of journalism and the time worn “ethics” discussion:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_05_08.html#009627
What this piece points out extremely well that it’s about TRUST — trust as an individual’s decision and not as a corporate or institutional code or policy.
Of course, this is an immensely political issue, hence all that lashback by the powers that be or, rather, were …
Hugh,
I agree completely with your comments about decent writers no longer needing publishers. This point is exactly why I am trying to brush up my writing skills, and I don’t think I am unique in this regard. I think there are many people like me who don’t give a toss about “Free Media” as a movement, but who *do* recognise the advantages that are offered by the changing landscape in publishing.
Re: upthread comment
When quotes from bloggers within term papers are accepted by high school English teachers, I’ll believe they are more than a passing blip on the media radar.
On at least two occasions, elements from some pieces found somewhere in the dusty annals of my blog have formed footnoted parts of graduate theses in communications and power … not exactly high school, but getting there.
Gave me a tingle, it did, when I found out.
Two in one day
Gwaker story and Op/Ed on Ethics ( for the Times it’s called the Blair Witch Project )
Reading both, I had the image of the Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz.
“I’m melting, I’m melting .…”
Pattern to the shrinking circulation, shifts of readership to the blogosphere, among other channels.
Might as well challange the opposition
Keep up the good work(s)
New York Times — Well, there’s always Fish
When I was younger, my Mom used to have a fairly standard ritual on Sunday; that being the reading of the New York Times: Sunday edition. Regardless of what town/state/country we were living in, that was fairly standard fare in my house. I’m on the
Denton Stiff-Arms Blog Evangelists On His Way To The Bank
Nick Denton, publisher of Gawker Media’s bevy of blogs, debunks the revolutionary nature of blogs in the New York Times, calling them, “just the latest iteration of Internet media.” It’s an interesting piece, given that Denton’s a leading figure…
Very clever juxtaposition of opposing ‘ways’, that of the old school middle man cum work through me agent and that of the new school stand alone voice. I’ve read a fair number of shirky’s essays over the last few years, but hadn’t, for whatever reason, read anything, from him, quite like the linked piece. The man can write. (Anybody can, if they just let themselves get out of the way.) Strip the control and compromise from the publishing, head for the personal truth, and you end up with some very engaging writing — Clay’s cultural mashup, the Midwestern American in the NYC Iranian Bud Bodega, implies some greater insights — both personal and universal — more than the mere and routine ‘Gee isn’t NYC great.’ I now have some notion of him beyond his ideas, which also puts his ideas into a more shapely context. This is the type of writing that will become ‘regular’ — running to the vast sea of producers idea. This is a threat to the old school. It undermines, as shirky implies, cynicism, snarkiness, sentimentalism, censorship, and aggregation. People aren’t watching when they’re creating. Big Media and their mini-media Gawkers will be left holding onto to nothing but Fred Dirst’s penis.
If Nick was 100% true about the make up of bloggers, so what? The only hope for change is that there is someone to “…believe there’s going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed.”
What these “unemployed marketers” et. al. are doing is developing books and selling Bespoke Tailors and remapping the Web every 24 hours. It sounds like these folks are doing something.
We’re All Journalists in the Age of Ordinary Art
Now which blog did I read an
Hugh Macleod on Nick Denton In The New York Times Piece
Hugh is dead on: [ from gapingvoid: nick denton disses bloggers] Gawker Media’s blog format notwithstanding, Nick is basically in a traditional, Old Media, advertising-funded biz model. The last thing his business needs is clients discovering blogging …