Writer of Inane Newspaper Columns Decries Inane Blog Topics
L.A. Times columnist Al Martinez today has the following charming description of bloggers:
. . . I have learned that, with some notable exceptions, blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls.
I guess I could say with equal accuracy that newspaper columnists are, with some notable exceptions, people who get paid far too much money to write frivolous nonsense in a disdainful tone about things they know almost nothing about.
But, as we will see below, Al Martinez does more than that. He also writes columns about things he knows well — but which nobody else cares about.
Martinez continues his rant:
A blogger occupies a website from which comments emerge in various forms to clutter cyberspace with his or her opinions on politics, war, movies, sex, music, medicine, health, aerobics, food, marriage, animals … and, well, just about everything. No subject is too lofty or too inane for the blogger.
Martinez is hardly one to complain about others writing on inane topics. While Martinez occasionally writes about lofty subjects like war and America’s unpopularity, he has done his share of insipid columns — like the one about buying a puppy, and a particularly mundane piece about injuring his shin.
That last column is particularly banal. After explaining at length exactly how he injured his shin, Martinez goes for paragraphs about the details of his health care insurance, including what his co-payment is, and what procedures are not covered. We get to hear about his visitors at the hospital, and his interactions with the nurse. Here is the stirring conclusion of the column:
I am well cared for by this wonder of all women, but I am still not happy with my condition. I am generally miserable around the house — which isn’t too different from my usual conduct — but I am beginning to shower again and comb my hair a little. Tomorrow I’ll go back to brushing my teeth.
Thanks for sharing, Al.
Martinez’s anti-blogger rant continues:
The term [blog] is a short way of saying Web log and is thought to be the modern version of a person who keeps a diary, the difference being that a diarist rarely runs around shoving his words in everyone’s face. The computer allows one to do just that in a sense, to hurl messages at us whether we want them or not.
Right — because every time Al Martinez logs on to his computer, he does so at gunpoint. The armed man then angrily demands that Martinez log on to several blogs, so that bloggers’ opinions can be shoved in Martinez’s face, whether he likes it or not.
It makes me wonder what I would do if I were forced at gunpoint to read Martinez’s columns about puppies, reading a book, seeing a play, injuring his shin after the play, his grandson starting school, his insurance co-payments, and his showering and dental care habits.
I think I might take the bullet.
Shouldn’t Al be writing about something useful? Like the joys of having your paper delivered right to your doorstep?
Vermont Neighbor (456914) — 10/9/2006 @ 9:54 amPoor Al has mistaken being grumpy with being wise.
JVW (938b14) — 10/9/2006 @ 10:08 am“This too shall pass…”
The Times I mean, and Martinez. Like a kidney stone, it’s a bit painful, but soon the Times will be nothing more than a painful memory.
MTf (438b94) — 10/9/2006 @ 10:09 amSome of our friends who are fortunate enough to be paid to write do so enjoy their feeling of superiority over those who aren’t paid to write.
And if we were all as poor writers as the denizens of The Lost Kos, Mr Martinez might be excused for that arrogance. Unfortunately for him, too many sites, including this one, are outperforming his current employer.
Maybe he’s got to get in one parting shot, now that the publisher of the Times has been shown economic reality.
Dana (3e4784) — 10/9/2006 @ 10:34 amCan’t you just imagine old Al Martinez standing in front of his VCR (which he bought in 1988), turning and yelling to his wife, “Honey, I can’t git the damn thang to stop flashing ‘twelve o’clock’ !”
Al has probably seen Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt tell a banal anecdote to Jay Leno on the Late Show which elicits studio-audience laughter, then translates that in to thinking that “the people” are hungry for his equally banal columns about stumbling around and bruising his shin or shopping for the doggie-in-the-window.
Al may be too proud to admit it, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that the declining subscriptions of the Times reaffirms the eclipse of old MSM by the rise of new media such as the internet, cable news, and talk radio.
Instead of adapting to a changing marketplace, Al opts to dismiss his competitors.
By the same token, in high school gym class, you know that Al was the un-athletic, out-of-shape sarcastic dude who muffled wisecracks about the buff, bronzed, athletes who made all the females go weak in the knees—-somehow thinking that he had a leg up on them on Friday nites when he was hanging out with his buddies from woodshop class while the athletes were scoring touchdowns…and chicks.
Desert Rat (ee9fe2) — 10/9/2006 @ 10:58 am#4
Had the column been based on facts and not fear, it would have been an entirely different read. Include the fact that it’s like a horse-and-carriage guy trying to spit on Henry Ford. Cars? never!
Aren’t newspaper guys, even opinion writers, supposed to do a little research? Now is not the time to question the importance of blogs. Dozens and dozens of credible sites right now, and growing.
Shame on you Mr. Martinez. You can’t continue to live in a protected bubble in which stories and responses are heavily edited. Come out into the real world and catch some sunlight.
Vermont Neighbor (456914) — 10/9/2006 @ 11:06 amHis antidiluvian opinion on bloggers is redeemed by the fact that he goes to town on nutjob Ken Reich.
Steve Smith (1f162a) — 10/9/2006 @ 11:24 amWhat, isn’t how everyone here started reading this blog? I mean, the pop-up ads – the one between “Get a Free IPod” and “Free Viagara,” was “Patterico’s Post of the Day.” In fact, that’s how I get the blog now. I wish I weren’t forced to read it.
Also, the daily Patterico e-mails – or was that Volokh? The subject line of: “Volokh: Read or We Delete Your Hard Drive,” made me read them.
Yes, blogs aren’t some sort of meritocracy where tons of competition means that those who strike a chord get readers. No, they oblige you to read them. Not like newspapers; every town has dozens of competing newspapers which keeps quality high, and the self-policing mechanism allows criticism to be prominently displayed.
Some might think that newspapers do some things better than bloggers, and they ought to appreciate the efforts of others to analyze, discuss, and occasionally discover the news. Cynics might think that newspaper reporters are simply bitter over not having a monopoly on news. But none of this is true.
Blogs are evil. Stop it, Patterico.
–JRM
An editorialist’s comments occupy a newspaper from which comments emerge in various forms to clutter the pages with his or her opinions on politics, war, movies, sex, music, medicine, health, aerobics, food, marriage, animals … and, well, just about everything. No subject is too lofty or too inane for the editorialist. –
Totally inappropriate statement.
JRM (de6363) — 10/9/2006 @ 11:47 amNew Media Power…
It’s beyond dispute that the blogosphere played a role in the 2004 elections. How big a role it can be disputed, but that doesn’t matter. The new medium has made its mark, and politics will never be the same.
La Shawn Barber's Corner (1b383c) — 10/9/2006 @ 12:02 pmThe Foleygate fiasco is the m…
So this felow’s trying to be the Andy Rooney of print media?
Robert Crawford (aa888e) — 10/9/2006 @ 12:37 pmWith the exception of the bit about “shoving words in everyone’s face,” I think he nailed bloggers just about perfectly.
No offense.
But if you really think about exactly the sort of people who “blog,” and their psychological motivations for blathering about nothing to no one … well, he’s right. No question. Regardless of political persuasion, he described 99.9% of bloggers perfectly.
C’mon. That 99.9% just echo each other back and forth, commenting on the same stories and same issues in the ways. And 99.9% of it nothing but empty, useless noise.
Our children are going to look at bloggers the way we look at really stupid fads from 1972. Guaranteed. And someday, everyone who “blogged” will only admit it with a sheepish grin. Like people who wore big sideburns when Ford was President.
Don’t take it personally. You know it’s true. Besides … as Martinez pointed out, there are some “notable exceptions.” You could be part of that 0.1% of bloggers that aren’t an embarrassing waste of time.
[Do you see any irony in the fact that you’re commenting on a blog? — P]
PN (c65bfa) — 10/9/2006 @ 12:43 pmOther benefits to blogs: No Ikea monster catalogues falling out to clip your foot… No slippery inserts that cascade all over the floor causing you undue physical effort to deposit heap into nearby trash… The plastic wrapper on dry days and no wrapper on wet days… Your favorite blog will never get swiped from the front porch…
Vermont Neighbor (456914) — 10/9/2006 @ 1:27 pmIf these are my only choices, I guess I’ll take “people who pass their time doodling.”
DRJ (ccb97e) — 10/9/2006 @ 2:14 pmSad, sad little man is Mr. Martinez.
Gbear (c22f1c) — 10/9/2006 @ 2:32 pm“I guess I could say with equal accuracy that newspaper columnists are, with some notable exceptions, people who get paid far too much money to write frivolous nonsense in a disdainful tone about things they know almost nothing about.”
My experience with newspaper columnists was that they were usually people who had messed up editing and reporting in about 90% of the newspaper’s departments (excluding advertising), but had friends in high places (or the goods on friends in high places) and so couldn’t be fired. Either that, or they were disgruntled copy editors for whom management dangled the Wednesday column as just so much carrot to keep them from noticing the drudgery of changing reporters’ misuse of it’s and its.
sharon (dfeb10) — 10/9/2006 @ 2:33 pmWhat a bizarre mid-20th century view. Cluttering cyberspace with information — even trivia — is like cluttering the ocean with water.
Maybe his computer is uniquely infected with a hitherto undiscovered form of adware — blogware — that pops up windows with blogs in them.
-Holmwood
Holmwood (76cebf) — 10/9/2006 @ 2:41 pm“… blogs are largely the habitat of unemployed writers, enraged misanthropes, retired teachers, aging journalists and people who normally pass their time doodling or making obscene telephone calls.”
He’s probably reading only DailyKos, Democratic Underground and Glenn Greenwald.
nk (956ea1) — 10/9/2006 @ 3:22 pmIn a way, I think you miss the point about Al Martinez. I’d rather read his human interest trivia columns about buying a puppy and a shin injury that his endless rants about war and America’s unpopularity–the latter seeming less suitable for the Calendar section than the Op-Ed page.
James Fulton (71415b) — 10/9/2006 @ 4:27 pmOr maybe I’m wrong. Judging from what I read in the Calendar section, the Times may believe that IS the anti-Bush Op-Ed page.
Al Martinez is an exMarine–I believe he served in the Korean War, so he’s seen the elephant as it were. Most of the time his stuff is harmless trivia, but he occasionally goes into the full Robert Scheer mode–and should join Scheer in unemployment so far as the Daily Dog Trainer is concerned. He’s written a long essay or a short book about taking his dog “Barkley” off on a long car trip because the critter had cancer and he wanted to show him a good time before he died.
Now there is nothing wrong with all of that–he’s getting paid to write this drivel and some of it is mildy entertaining. And he is aging, so blogging should be in his future.
Mike Myers (52f02a) — 10/9/2006 @ 4:38 pm– Martinez let his jealousy and petulance show. The MSM drive-by press will never get over RatherGate. 20 years from now they’ll all be writing memoirs about how the internet community used Rather’s screwup to destroy the legitimate press. The Left will write stories about how the evil NeoCons used their monopoly of the blogsphere to suppress free speech, and undermine the DemoMarxist party.
Big Bang Hunter (9562fb) — 10/9/2006 @ 4:41 pmThe content of Mr. Martinez’s columns is irrelevant; the only reason he has a column is because his last name is “Martinez,” and the LA Times needs a certain quota of Latino bylines in the paper. If his name was “Murphy” or “Olson,” he would be a columnist. But because his name is “Martinez,” he can never be fired.
[They fired Michael Ramirez . . . — P]
Ali-Bubba (9939da) — 10/9/2006 @ 5:07 pmIf his name was “Murphy” or “Olson,” he
Ali-Bubba (9939da) — 10/9/2006 @ 5:07 pmwouldwouldn’t be a columnist.Say Ali Bubba, let’s not go there with that idea–are you suggesting that a Hiltzik can get his column/blog taken away from him, but a Steve Lopez can not? ROTFLOL
Mike Myers (52f02a) — 10/9/2006 @ 5:23 pmI have not studied enough blogs and bloggers to know what 99.9% are or do. I have found (easily) a few blogs where there is opportunity to exchange ideas, facts, and see what stands scrutiny.
The newspapers I have been acquainted with routinely promote what they want with (near) impunity, as they control the editorials, the letters to the editor, the amount of coverage on a news story, the slant in the title, the captions of the photos…
I assume that true journalists rejoice in “Rathergate” in that truth came to the forefront. If someone has a problem with the expose’ of a forged document I would like to hear how their reasoning promotes intellectually honest reporting.
As far as hurling messages go, I have never been smacked by one flying out of my computer. I have been smacked by messages out of my telephone receiver, however, as recently as yesterday (Sunday) morning at 10:30 when Mayor Street called to tell me why I needed to vote for Ed Rendell for governor so he can “change Harrisburg”. (Oh, he’s already been there for 4 years… why is he waiting until now to “change it”?)
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 10/9/2006 @ 5:24 pmThe LA Times is conducting an experiment and Mr Ramirez is particpating. The experiment is to see if they can bore their last 10,000 readers to death,. Actually, that is close to the actual readership but the statistics are confused by people who are still being carried as subscribers because the business office is unable to process their attempts to unsubscribe. Let’s hope they finally get it right ( the experiment, of course, not the paper).
Mike K (b64507) — 10/9/2006 @ 7:21 pmDead people still vote in Philadelphia, so I guess the LA Times circulation could be inflated, as well…
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 10/9/2006 @ 8:05 pmMr. Myers, I hated to “go there,” but somebody needed to point out the obvious: Martinez is a token, sort of an affirmative-action talisman to ward off accusations that the LA Times is insufficiently “diverse.”
No matter how bleak the economic outlook at the Times, or how little news value Martinez adds to the product, his symbolic value is such that they’ll lay off dozens of reporters before they’d ditch Martinez. Welcome to the modern MSM.
Ali-Bubba (9939da) — 10/9/2006 @ 8:30 pmLAT Columnist’s Misplaced Rant Against Blogs; Enraged Misanthropes Respond in Kind…
Sometimes I think the whole “old media vs. new media” is overblown. Then I read things like Al Martinez (LA Times columnist) giving his description of the blogosphere:
Independent Sources (dd41d6) — 10/9/2006 @ 10:18 pmSince then I have learned that, with some notable exceptions, blogs ar…
Off topic alert…
John Kerry Jokingly Threatens to Kill George Bush?
Wild Bill has the details (originally from Bill Maher’s show). 1:08 into the video, in response to a Maher statement about “killing two birds with one stone” that had nothing to do with President Bush, John Kerry says:
What the heck is that?
Christoph (9824e6) — 10/9/2006 @ 11:23 pmHolmwood wrote:
Dang! I need some of thst stuff, to increase my traffic! Any software geeks out there who can get that going for me?
Dana (3e4784) — 10/10/2006 @ 4:49 amIf Martinez thinks bloggers are as he described, maybe he should read this. He won’t, of course, but it might help his research on blogs. The Times is an example of a declining industry railing at the paradigm shift. Maybe blogs won’t be the new medium and someday will be seen as a transition phase but the traditional newspapers are all dying. Their blindness and bias are speeding the end. I still read the Times’ sports section on the web but wouldn’t have the thing in the house. I don’t have a bird anymore so have no need of cage liners.
Mike K (b64507) — 10/10/2006 @ 4:52 amMD in Philly wrote:
True enough, but if you write a letter to the editor, if it’s accepted at all, it’ll probably be edited down to nothing, and it’ll take days to appear, making it stale in many cases. If you are fortunate enough to get a commentary piece (say 600 to 750 words in the Inquirer) it, too, faces the problem of becoming stale by publication.
What our esteemed host provides is a forum in which people can comment at modern speeds, avoiding both harmful (or sometimes helpful) editing and the problems of being stale. The potential for real debate occurs, though not all debates are good or uplifting or informative.
And, most notably for the editors and writers of the old media, the internet and blogs provide an outlet for writers/ goofballs/ deviated preverts/ brilliant thinkers/ polemecists/ actus/ bad haikus/ and anything else that would not have formerly gotten past the editorial wall. Their greatest asset, gatekeeping control, has vanished, and they really miss it.
Dana (3e4784) — 10/10/2006 @ 5:00 amMartinez is employed by the LAT because his name ends in “z” — an affirmative action baby. The LAT is one big jobs program for second-rate writers, which is why its circulation relentlessly falls, now that people can read decent journalism on the internet.
Jack (1afea2) — 10/10/2006 @ 6:32 amMore from the SMELL A TIMES and its leftists babbling from these miserble reptiles this paper isnt worth reading at all
krazy kagu (956b5b) — 10/10/2006 @ 6:39 amI’m with Dana and Holmwood (#30). I didn’t know there was some kind of software out there that allows me to direct virtually every PC to pop-up my posts and grab the user with a mental tractor beam to make him or her read every word. Wow. And I’m wasting my time trying to be the non-99.9%’er that writes some interesting stuff to get some traffic. Go figure.
monsoon (001e7b) — 10/10/2006 @ 6:59 amkagu…get coherent or shut up. The rest of us are trying to maintain, if nothing more, the appearance of an education.
Leviticus (43095b) — 10/10/2006 @ 7:29 amPN: you’re absolutely right. Probably 90% of of blogs are worthless echo chambers.
Which makes the blogosphere different from everything else not in the slightest. Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of _everything_ is crud”.
Dave Wangen (6001a6) — 10/10/2006 @ 9:28 amSo gratifying to learn that Lurch is still eating out his kishkas over getting his butt kicked.
One more time?
Tom (83cda7) — 10/10/2006 @ 9:39 amDana wrote”
I agree with you. I don’t know if you meant to say, “..and if you write a letter..” That was my point, they control the argument and can make a Nobel winner look like a nitwit if they want.
I stumbled upon the following quote in one of my son’s college texts, guess author and date:
Are you ready…(maybe you Constitutional Law sholars know it) Professor Jerome Barron in the Harvard Law Review in 1967
He went on to write:
Apparently in 1967 the “new media” was TV, radio, and publishing conglomerates, and there was a concern that “the voice of the little person with a new idea” could not get a hearing. Those in favor of freedom of speech should rejoice in the power of the blogosphere.
[Author’s note- if I have misinterpreted the legal issues please feel free to address the issue. I am not a lawyer.)
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 10/10/2006 @ 9:50 amHeck, I figured with that handle you were a doctor!
Dana (3e4784) — 10/10/2006 @ 12:40 pmI could claim that “MD” refers to my initials, but I won’t. I wanted to acknowledge I might be overreaching (and if I was, please don’t pummel me unmercifully).
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 10/10/2006 @ 2:42 pmDoes that mean a merciful pummeling would be acceptable?
Dana (1d5902) — 10/11/2006 @ 5:55 pmMaybe he shouldn’t have been so overt in burning his blogging bridges. Now it looks like if he wants to voice his opinion, he’ll be “cluttering cyberspace” like the rest of us “unemployed writers.”
Gabrielle Birchak (d03304) — 6/4/2007 @ 6:30 am