На замороженном Blog

Интересующ, однако, что когда я принял быстро обзор среди нас, 3 из 4 имели B.A.s в публицистике и или реальном pro опыте публицистики в наших pre-blogging карьерах. The unsupervised and untrained in their basements and in their pajamas with laptops libel didn’t quite apply in Blogger’s row this night.

The elder statesmen of Blogger’s row Wednesday, Eric and I chuckled at our Paleozic Era-like era of copy layout labor with “rulers and wax.”

Earlier, down in the press lounge, the four of us were lucky enough to share a dining table with an extremely hockey knowledgeable reporter from Sports Illustrated. He regaled us with his insider’s knowledge of some of the game’s leading personalities, but then he began a grilling of Eric and the Off Wing Opinion enterprise, and I was struck by the basic nature of his inquiries. SI of course has SI.com, which includes sports blogging, and the two entities share reporter staffing and copy. SI is Old Media, and this was an Old Media reporter, and even with the New brought inside the Old, and lodged there for some years, the culture of the change was still somewhat alien to him. As I thought about this I saw a parallel with the Washington Post’s recent efforts at playing blogging catch-up.

I wondered: can a reporter today be both Old and New? I thought: perhaps, eventually, but not instantaneously. The dictates of the Old are so restrictive, so conformist, and we see this especially with Caps’ coverage. What was the last print file you read from any established outlet in town that bore language, analysis, and perspective such as to merit your clipping it for future reference? Instead, almost always we get pedestrian prose fueled by pedestrian vantage. And yet when I visit Japers’ Rink I regularly copy a JP passage that’s both edified and made me howl and pasted it into email to friends.

Another interesting question: when an Old media reporter attends a morning skate and keys in his observations is he ipso facto blogging? Maybe yes, maybe no. The answer, I think, lies in the freedom or latitude of reflection his editors afford him. Wait — if he’s there by decree of editors, can he truly be a blogger? Wait — if that copy’s edited, by Old media editors, can it truly be blog copy? Wait — is blog text “copy”? Now I think we’re getting closer to the heart of Rob’s protest in press row Wednesday night: they don’t quite get it.

The revolution Rob and e-others talk about has less to do, I think, with digitization and real-time chronicling and perhaps more with a proletarian rise against Old World Elites. Bloggers as Bolsheviks. Technology is its vehicle.

Eric shared with me snippets of conversations he’s had all season long with the print beat reporters, about how much pressure they have reported being under to generate volumes of files in the course of a single day and week. Some big papers now commonly ask that the beat guys file not only game stories but blog accounts from, say, morning skates; “notes” files; radio reports; television reports; and the odd feature piece. What apparently they’re not required to do is catch sleep.

It’s a terrible duty-load, I think, for these well-meaning and well trained men and women pros to try and carry off. They’re in the throes of a landscape-altering funnel cloud, and their editors are expecting them to retain starched shirts.