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When Blog Networks Make News, Silence Abounds
1sockchuck writes "It's been a bad week for transparency and disclosure in the blogosphere, demonstrating that once blogging starts making money, the rules change. Nick Douglas was dismissed from ValleyWag, Jason Calacanis bolts from AOL, and co-founder Duncan Riley abruptly departs from b5media. Where do we get the real story? From The New York Times, or not at all. If we've come to expect honesty and straight talk from blogging icons, it's because so many blogospheric leaders have told us we should. And now suddenly we're getting the snarky insider accounts of blogospheric dirt from The New York Times?"
The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a
correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing
the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and
punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was
saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange.
I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my
health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning
Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on
duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair
with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room
and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers
and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand,
sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door
hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black
cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and
neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing
collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends
hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and
trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his
locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was
concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the
exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee
Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of
interest.
I wrote as follows:
SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a
misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not
the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.
On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points
along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.
The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in
making the correction.
John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city
yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has
fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter
is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake
before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled
by incomplete election returns.
It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring
to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh
impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah
urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate
success.
I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He
ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was
easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:
"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those
cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such
gruel as that? Give me the pen!"
I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow
through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was
in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window,
and marred the symmetry of my ear.
"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he
was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and
fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim,
who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was
me. Merely a finger shot off.
Then the chief editor went on