It’s an interesting experience: You get to hone a topic to 90 seconds, memorize it, and talk into a camera in an isolated room. Plus, they send a limo for you. (It’s possible they pay, but I forgot to ask.) They’re nice people and were happy with the two pieces I did for them. But…

They want reports on what moderate left and right wing bloggers — “Nothing out of the mainstream,” the producer told me yesterday — say about a “major” topic. What the hell does that have to do with blogging? And when two of the producers yesterday independently suggested that I report on the blogosphere’s reaction to a Vietnam veteran spitting on Jane Fonda, I blurted out — because the flu had lowered my normal Walls of Timidity — that this wasn’t a job I’m comfortable with.

What makes the blogosphere interesting to me is not that there are moderate left and right voices talking about mainstream topics. Mainstream major stories are about issues such as freakish celebrity pedophiles, a spit match over a fight from 30 years ago that the press is hoping to revive, and whatever unfortunate child has been reported missing and presumed (better for the story) murdered. I’m in the blogosphere to escape from this degradation of values.

In the ninety seconds MSNBC gives over to blogging, they want to pair A-Listers into a he-said/she-said report on a Major Topic. Yippee for the A-Team! You do two of those and the last of the three segments should be something “fun,” i.e., humorous and trivial because the news no longer knows how to operate without a closing joke. It’s downright pathological.

I have mixed feelings. I’m genuinely glad Jeff Jarvis, Ed Cone, and others are doing it. It’s better that they get to squeeze a few new voices into the MSM, even if those voices aren’t always as diverse as we’d like. It’s good for the MSM to acknowledge their viewers aren’t passive. And people who follow the URLs may find other voices worth listening to. The odd thing is that the two I did for them (1 2) didn’t follow the pattern they want, but they were happy with them nonetheless, so I probably could have kept on if I hadn’t raised the issue. But I just couldn’t face implicitly confirming the idea that the blogosphere consists of big voices arguing with one another — spit fights! — instead of 10 million real voices engaged in every variety of human conversation and delight.

So, fuck it. I quit. [Technorati tags: msnbc msm media]

April 23, 2005: There are some things I didn’t express well in the post above. Thankfully, the blogosphere is so damn conversational that it doesn’t take long for at least some of the weaknesses to come out. So, sorry for the bad writing, and here are some things I should have said.

I should have concluded my second paragraph by noting that after I said that I didn’t think this was going to work out, we continued our amicable conversation and found three topics — two of which I’d suggested, one of which they did — for my segment. It was definitely not an “I quit!” and stalk out moment. The two producers were both great to work with and treated me well. I like them both.

Jay Rosen, ever sensitive to nuance, wonders why I used the word “quit” in my last sentence, instead of “stop.” The answer is that I was instilling the episode with false drama, as a type of self-aggrandizement. That’s a disservice to truth and I apologize. My word choice throughout the piece also reflects some anger, some of which is directed at [Warning: Generalization ahead] the MSM’s laughably corrupt values but some of which is born of my own disappointment at not getting to be on TV any more. It’s complex.

And speaking of complexity, Jeff Jarvis does a great job teasing apart the skein of ideas and emotions here and here.

Categories: Uncategorized dw