Spoutblog’s Karina Longworth takes a long look at how the bloggers themselves have reacted to the latest media guy to jump in the shark tank, Patrick Goldstein, “Journalist Starts Blog; Earth Spins Off Axis, Universe Explodes,” Longworth writes. Goldstein, who writes the Big Picture for the LA Times seems well suited for the blog format it’s a wonder he didn’t start out that way. Then again, what are blogs but an endless sea of op ed?
Longworth checks out the chatter on Goldstein — and then digs into a story about the blogger’s dilemma; how to get the mainstreamers to pay attention to the news you break? Longworth suggests that it’s to do with the difference between how bloggers get and report their info versus the journalistic standards the big media folks live by:
It’s sort of odd that the authors of the story don’t go into the fact that at least one major reason for the trades’ reluctance stems from the processes by which these sites often get their news––they’ll talk to an actor or a filmmaker at a junket for one project, and get them to give details on what they’re doing next; technically, these details are considered “unconfirmed”, even if they’re accurate, until the studio makes an official statement about the new project, and if the trades regularly gave credence to earlier reports, it would open up a whole can of worms about the legitimacy of rumor and gossip.
On the other hand, it can be frustrating always being a back door source for big media outlets who never credit you back. Then again, why would big media ever want to admit that they get their news from unpaid nobodies on the web? They lose a good amount of credibility. Was a time when this site, when it was Oscarwatch, broke awards news faster than Variety but were we ever credited? Nope. Now, Variety breaks it faster and seems to have made deals with certain outlets to get the news first. This is one of the benefits of being legit. If you’re a blogger and a scrapper you have to live with that choice. What you gain in freedom of expression you lose in credibility. Or something.
Longworth closes her post this way:
But rather than discuss these technicalities, Peter Bart reinforced the “bloggers are bottom feeders” meme: “If someone has a big story in the entertainment business, the first thing they are going to do is get it toVariety. They are not going to start saying, ‘Which bloggers can we feed?’
