Buzz Bissinger shows an utter lack of knowledge about the free market economy and the American ideal of freedom.

MITCHELL BLATT

Buzz Bissinger debated Will Leitch yesterday about blogging. (Video) Bissinger, a pulitzer prize winning journalist, has been criticized harshly for attacking blogging during that piece. While he has absolutely no clue about blogging, a larger issue is that he and others have absolutely no clue about the economy and about freedom.

Bissinger, who hates bloggers, gave bloggers utter respect during that debate by saying that blogging was going to put newspapers out of business. Blogs suck? Then why the fuck are newspapers going to go out of business?!

Because this bitch has no fucking clue about what drives the economy. It’s assholes like you who are putting newspapers out of business. You can’t get subscribers because subscribers don’t like the crap you pawn off as informed, intelligent articles. (Notice I have ratcheted up my cursing because Mr. Bitchinger criticized blogs for cursing too much.)

Let me lay down a few facts and tell you why your newspapers are or are not going out of business.

This isn’t about the fans or the average person having the voice or any bullshit like this. This is about the offensive loser having a voice. One thing the Bitch mentioned was how blogs are trashy and offensive. No argument there. A lot of them aren’t, but some of the most prominent ones are. Blogs lend themselves to that because there is no corporate eye staring at all the content to make sure it doesn’t offend any readers, cause controversy and lose advertisers.

This is true with other forms of communication as well, not just blogs. Anything that is mass produced, like major newspapers, has to be clean. However, there has always been extremist newspapers on the fringe attacking people in the most vile ways. They get away with it because they have a small target audience that agrees with them.

In modern media history, this kind of off color humor first became broadcast on a large scale with talk radio. Don Imus got fired from his radio station in 1969 for saying “hell.” God knows what would have happened if he made “nigger jokes.” Then in 1971, he got his real show underway, and now we have Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, a ton of other conservative hosts that Media Matters hates, and a few liberal shock jocks like Al Franken and Jerry Springer.

So blogs causing the fall of mainstream media? No, they are just following the same model that other media platforms have.

Back to Buzz…

Let me deconstruct some of his comments.

Buzz:

This guy [pointing at Will], whether we like it or not, is the future. I have a son who is 16 who is going to grow up and be reading much more of what is on the internet, much less of what is in a newspaper or what is in a book. What he’s going to read is going to be glib. It’s going to be profane.

Okay, good job parenting, Buzz. A pulitzer prize winner has a kid who doesn’t like to read literature and he blames it on the blogs.

I wonder why your honors student won’t read books? Is it because Will Leitch stole all your books and burnt them? Or is it because your kid enjoys reading blogs and you never instilled a love of literature in him?

What I’m saying is junior doesn’t open his web browser and go to deadspin.com because he hates Deadspin. Apparently he likes it or else he wouldn’t be reading it. This whole generation of people likes blogs because they are “edgy,” just like an older generation listens to talk radio because it’s edgy.

So what the hell does Buzz and Costas and all these other newspapermen think America needs to do about blogs? Stephen A. Smith, who runs a blog, has an idea:

Someone with no training should not be allowed to have any kind of format whatsoever to disseminate to the masses to the level which they can.

He advocates censorship. And on his off days, he fights for justice on issues like “the social implications surrounding Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens.”

I have yet to hear anyone actually advocate the reasons they support censorship or defend censorship. Mostly people are just saying, “Blogs are terrible! They must be undone!” without mentioning how they plan to do that. That’s probably because they realize that nothing can be done. They know that censorship is wrong, or at least impractical.

What they should realize is that the mainstream media has nothing to fear. Blogs will not mean the end of the traditional journalist.

It might hurt journalism a little–game stories won’t be as in depth, for example–but if the mainstream media did die, blogs would die. Bloggers get most of their material from the mainstream media–and newspapermen often acknowledge that, using it as a criticism. But, if they’re so scared that Americans will stop reading the paper, why would they think that bloggers get their news from there? That would mean that everyone, even blog readers, get their news from the mainstream media. Americans are always going to need news. Bloggers can’t uncover news; they just comment on it.

The medium might change, but the mainstream media is always going to be there. And if they disappear, well, I’m going to be raking in the moolah when I start my own mainstream media company.

Will Leitch: He’s Wrong About the Mainstream Media

Related Posts

Juiced Links-5/11
MITCHELL BLATT -The San Diego Chargers on the Torrey Pines Course that will play host to next mon

Will Leitch is Wrong About Blogs
Is no access good for media? Then why does Deadspin always post pictures of athletes drunk? MITC

Marvin Harrison, Roger Clemens and Leitch vs. Bissinger
COLIN LINNEWEBER MARVIN HARRISON Seemingly wholesome Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Marvin Har

The Week That Was
COLIN LINNEWEBER I welcome you all and thank you for taking the time to give me some of your time

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.