‘Newspaper till you drop’ vs. ‘Blog till you drop’
The New York Times is out with a classic blog-basher of a story, In Web world of 24/7 stress, writers blog till they drop.
Could we rewrite the headline, please? How about “Newspaper Until You Drop”? Or an account of the miserly piecemeal system that so many newspapers use in paying stringers?
Moreover, how about the refusal of many and perhaps most U.S. dailies to pay for op-ed contributions? Or the fact that some newspapers themselves are expecting bloggers to work for free or for very little?
Old story—in more than one way
What’s more, despite the current ado, this is really an old story. I actually agree with the Times about health risks and the financial and sustainability issues, but they’re hardly limited to the blog world or to this century. Independent writers as a group most always get screwed. Trust me. Trust George Gissing. And publishers are hardly the only villains. The public is willing to spend just a fraction of what it should be spending on actual content, journalistic or otherwise. While the tens of billions spent each year on books would seem high, it’s just a fraction of America’s $13.8 trillion gross domestic product, a situation that TeleRead would help remedy in a way that narrowed rather than widened the digital, knowledge and educational divides.
Furthermore, no animosity toward the Times. I cherish the good side, and not just the depth of the reporting (well, most of the time—with exceptions such as the one I’m documenting). Its well-organized and reasonably complete mobile edition leaves rivals in the dust.
One genuine downside of blogging: The fact that low pay or no pay encourages flogging rather than truth-seeking blogging in many situations.
April 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Supplemental reading for that post:
http://shambook.blogspot.com/2008/04/special-bulletin-brad-uses-different.html