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May 15, 2006

Insert head (A) in sand (B)

by About Last Night

Joseph Horowitz, Enrique Fernandez, and Caryn Brooks all say that criticism needs to start breaking its own rules in order to become more effective. Maud Newton says it doesn’t matter where good criticism is published, so long as it is good. I agree on all counts—but it strikes me that new media, precisely because of their uninstitutionalized newness, are more likely to encourage the kind of rule-breaking writing we need if criticism is to flourish.

I wouldn’t say such a thing if I didn’t know it was happening. Unlike Anthony DeCurtis, who “rarely read[s] blogs on the arts,” I read them every day, and I know there’s far more to artblogging than indiscriminate amateur passion. Of course there’s plenty of that, and I’d even venture to agree with DeCurtis that no more than ten percent of artblogs (if that) are “worthwhile stuff.” But that still adds up to a huge amount of good writing, and my guess is that much, perhaps most of it is being done by people under the age of forty who, like most people under the age of forty, are increasingly alienated from the print media, to the extent that they think about them at all. We overlook their work—and their vitality—at our peril.

Too much of what old-media people write about the new media is foolishly contemptuous. I offer as Exhibit A the following remark:

Blogs will be a continuing part of content output, but only a relative few will be read beyond the narrowest of audiences. Most of them will disappear unnoticed, and frankly unmissed by the world.

Some blogs are conversations among people you’d frankly prefer not to meet, others are cries for help and their writers are clearly in need of therapy. Others are just people expressing themselves, which is an entirely honourable pursuit, but would you like to meet this geek on a dark night?

The speaker is Paul Hayes, managing director of England’s Times Newspapers. I can’t begin to list the number of ways in which he’s missing the point of blogging. I hope his organization doesn’t make the same mistake.

Posted by tteachout at May 15, 2006 5:21 AM

COMMENTS

no more than ten percent of artblogs (if that) are “worthwhile stuff.”

That goes for traditional media as well, or anything else, for that matter. If so, blogs are going make an impact solely on volume. The trick is, of course, how to separate the wheat from the chaff, particularly if you're drowning in the stuff.

Posted by: Todd W. at May 15, 2006 10:04 AM

I agree with your comment on Hayes' point; he's wonderfully schizoid about blogging -- he's clearly contemptuous of the majority of bloggers (and perhaps the medium itself), but simultaneously (given the context) he wants to tout the superiority of the Times's own blogs, the quality of which is somehow going to be guaranteed not by their content but by the Times moniker . . .

Posted by: David Mackinder at May 16, 2006 8:40 AM

no more than ten percent of artblogs (if that) are “worthwhile stuff.”
That goes for traditional media as well...

Yes, as does the part about "... conversations among people you’d frankly prefer not to meet, others are cries for help and their writers are clearly in need of therapy..." etc.

Posted by: Marc Country at May 16, 2006 11:55 AM

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