Head-in-laptop MSM

For somebody who professes to be turned off by smarm, Cathy Seipp sure seems to have a taste for the stuff.

The noted blogger wrote this meow of a column for National Review Online about her time at TCA press tour. The headline reads, "Head-in-Sand MSM," though it could just as well have said: "TV Critics Still Don't Get It." Romenesko linked it, so good on her, even if the column was disingenuous from start to finish, including her oddly unreflective closing wish that there would be "less smarm at these things, not more."

So here's the setup.  Seipp writes:

I was at the Television Critics Association twice-yearly press tour in Pasadena and overheard a guy across the table at lunch — a TV critic from some paper in a minor American city — announce to the person next to him: “I’ve never read a blog in my life. Who has time? They’re just for unemployed people who stay at home all day. No one’s ever made any money from blogging.”

Seipp goes on to make fun of this "minor" critic and his backward MSM ways: "Then he looked at the lifeless form of the newspaper in front of him on the table and said, 'I do believe in fairies. I do, I do, I do believe in fairies.' Just kidding about that last part, but really, he might as well have."

And just like that, "he" morphs into "they," as Seipp assures her readers that the cranky, small-time critic was speaking for all his TCA colleagues:

It’s amazing how, even in 2006, the mainstream media can sound like it’s sticking its collective fingers in its ears and yelling “Not listening! Neener neener neener!” at the mere thought of online competition. ... “Never fight with the consumer,” (NBC's Alan) Wurtzel told me, about these MSM types who seem so sure of kind of news the public ought to want, “you’ll always lose.” He added: “Boy, there are two businesses I wouldn’t put money into right now — newspapers and TV stations. There’s just too many other ways to get news.” 

I guess Seipp didn't want to let her readers in on the fact that this particular critic was just about the last guy in the room who didn't believe in blogs. Probably because she would have had to find something else to write about this week.

The MSM that stands athwart the blogosphere yelling halt!  is a straw man and a convenient fiction, at least at TCA. As Seipp well knows — but failed to point out in her column — occupying several tables on the left side of the ballroom (where the power strips were), throughout the tour, were bunches o' TV critics blogging away all day long.

Early on I began compiling links to our bloggers at the TVCritics.org Web site. I handed off to Sue Trowbridge, and when she got done the count was 39 TV critics blogging from press tour, nearly all of them from newspapers. Some were podcasting, too. That's up substantially from last summer's tour and that total didn't include some trade papers that were also blogging nonstop.  My guess is that next summer, most of us at TCA will be adding some online content to whatever we do for our profit centers.

So there's that. Another thing about Seipp: For a self-proclaimed member of capital-P, capital-M PajamasMedia (TM), she sure doesn't blog a whole helluva lot. At press tour she posted six times in two and a half weeks.  And one of those was chiefly to rave about another blogger's post, Ray Richmond's tongue-in-cheek but mostly useful list of do's and don'ts at press tour. (I'll summarize: Don't clap, don't kiss ass, don't mind if I yell my question out over yours, don't take crap from panelists — right, Cathy? — and don't expect much of the food, since it is, after all, free. Well, except for the trips to the In n Out, located a mere five minutes from the hotel. Hooray Burger!)

To that list of rules, one now needs to be added: When writing a column about press tour, make sure you write yourself into it as either the coolest or smartest critic in the room.

Besides Richmond's alt-primer and Seipp's piece, this tour also produced a condescending writeup from Heather Havrilesky that obsessed over TCA food (which I understood better once someone pointed her out to me — she's pregnant) and Glenn Garvin's indignant fantasy about Roger Ailes taking on the Fightin' Liberals. (My take on that.) 

There may have been more, but please don't forward them to me. I'm too earnest to enjoy this game, as you may have read.  My agenda at press tour is shockingly retro — to get stories and interviews for my newspaper and blog.  Then again, that's why TCA exists: to help us bring our readers interesting news from our beats.  Obviously, some members' mileage may vary. 

Comments

[Fred Farrar]

Aaron:

I agree almost totally with your thoughts on this.

I think Ms. Seipp is pretty far off base. Those who see evil in everything the "MSM" (or, for that matter, Fox News or the WSJ, etc) produces end up missing some pretty compelling stuff.

It is yet another sad reflection of the current practice of many in the media (and politicians) filtering everything through their own political prism.

On the other hand, while many of the TCA blogs this summer seemed full of news and solid, knowledgable opinion, there were also boatloads that were a best precious, self-serving and filled with stuff like "I kicked a field goal at the Rose Bowl" or how close a reporter actually came to a real TV star at a network party.

It seems to me that many of you and your serious hard-working colleagues would be better served by your bosses if they came up with a collective news blog -- get a couple of folks with wire service and/or TV experience to blog the "news" non-stop to all the blog outlets (sort of like an AP) and allow you all to get your interviews and then post once or twice a day with a bit of reflection.

Not to mention time to get to In-And-Out, a true Southern California treasure as you have discovered.

It must be very difficult to try to actually listen to what is being said (even if much of it is PR fluff) at the same time you are typing a blog entry.

You and (in no particular order)Rich Heldenfels, Tim Goodman, Maureen Ryan, Charlie McCollum, Alan Sepinwall and a host of others posted a lot of good work from the TCA tour.

But I wondered as I read it what you were missing as you posted -- and how many good questions you might miss asking.

(I noted that no one seemed to question CBS execs about why their's was the only network not announcing starting dates in the fall, for example.)

[Aaron]

A valid concern, Fred. I like the idea of doing a Romenesko of TCA blogs every tour. It's easily enough done. My take generally is that if network people can listen to press conferences while working their Blackberries nonstop, we scribes can listen while blogging. After all, when it comes to typing with the TV on, we're trained professionals!

[Melissa]

Aaron,

You make some good points. Seipp enjoys employing straw men to make her points, she gets a lot of mileage out of minor slights and misbehaviors,and she is actually pretty mainstream media herself. But, just as you had to backtrack on Heather Havrilesky, I'm afraid you stepped into it by criticizing Seipp's lack of regular blogging: she's got big-time health issues of late. Oh well ...

[Cathy Seipp]

I'm flattered you think I don't write (or blog) ENOUGH, because lately there's been a theme in my comments section that I'm writing (in particular, getting published in places like the LA Times) TOO MUCH for their taste. I guess you can't please everybody!

As it happens, I have written before about all the new TV blogs at TCA. Because yes, I've noticed them. But the fact remains that while most of these are indeed solid and knowledgable and hardworking and earnest etc., I'm afraid few seem to be particularly successful as blogs. They're not engaging readers (judging from the sparse comments) or gaining many readers (judging from what people tell me about their hits.) To do that, blogs need a certain attitude -- an attitude I haven't found much among most of my MSM colleagues. The attitude I HAVE noticed is a certain defensiveness, illustrated that day by the guy I described across the table from me at that lunch.

SO there you have it. And thanks for reading and linking my pieces!

PS: One way to engage, rather than alienate, blog readers is to allow them to comment without going through an annoying registration process. And also to allow html comments, which I notice yours doesn't. The essence of blogging is its interactivity. The comments process you have here is old-fashioned, off-putting, and all too typical of newspaper blogs and traditional media's penchant for keeping readers at a distance.

[lurkertype]

"Off-putting"? "Annoying"? Huh? I use this TypePad account on blogs all over the net, like TVGasm, which is as TV bloggy as it gets. No problem. And who cares about HTML comments enough to forsake any blog for just that?

Also, Ms. Seipp has perhaps not taken into account the fact that there are very few comments here because there is a lively interactive group over at TVBarn2, which predates all this blog stuff. That's where we're "engage"d with the Chief's writing and each other's thoughts.

[Howard McEwen]

Hi babe.

[Aaron]

Do we still have registration here? I thought I turned that off ... in fact I know I turned it off because I'm commenting right now without being signed in.

If Cathy has had health issues, that's another matter. (It's also her business, and I note she didn't raise the topic.) I thank Cathy for her friendly response.

But I don't see how Cathy can now complain about the quality of the blogs. That's moving the goalposts. Either we (MSM->TCA) get it or we don't. On the whole, I'd say we totally get it. And whatever the deficiencies in individual blogs (de gustibus?), I think all the talking we crix did about our blogs (it was the No. 1 conversation topic on this summer tour) will improve the overall product.

I disagree about the relationship of comments to a posting's impact. Cathy gets a ton of comments on her blog, but how quickly they often veer off into other topics. And you'll notice people chatting back and forth in her comments, So it's community, the kind that used to show up on bb's. By the way, her columns on NRO don't have commenting at all, probably because the NRO types all know where to get together to gab.

That said, the tvbarn2 people know I've been trying for YEARS to merge their community with TV Barn. But I've been loath because all the solutions I've tried have required getting rid of email delivery, which some of my diehards swear by. We're looking into Drupal which, last I checked, almost had this solved. Stay tuned.

[Ed Dravecky III]

I must admit that Ms. Seipp has a "certain attitude" but fail to see why all blogs, in her view, should cop that certain attitude nor how allowing unfettered html commenting is the one true sign of a "real" blog.

It's true that the TVBarn2 community still largely revolves around a mailing list but is the point of interactivity the community and the communication or is it just a specific software model with Seipp-approved features? I sure hope the answer is "community" otherwise I've been doing this online thing wrong for far too many years.

Oh, and just so certain bloggers feel more at home...

Mood: gruntled
Attitude: certain
Listening to: Brave Combo "Polkas for a Gloomy World"

[Mark Jeffries]

All I ask is that blogs do include opportunity for comments.

Eugene David, the One-Minute Pundit, that includes you. You don't know how long I've been waiting to smack your smarmy, elitist butt.

[Jason]

I find it laughable that Seipp is lecturing Aaron about how to behave online. Who the hell is Cathy Seipp? Aaron's been "blogging" about TV issues since before the word "blog" existed.

But then, that's her schtick, I suppose. To lecture other people and act like she knows it all.

[Mo Ryan]

Thanks, Ms. Seipp, for enlightening me regarding the popularity of my blog during TCA.

The meters for my blog racked up around 160,000 page views while I was in LA, which is down a bit, but it was summer, and more typically my blog gets more than 300,000 page views a month. I know, what a poor showing, eh?

And I read all of the lively comments from my readers while at press tour, and conversed with them in comments about what was going on. I sure had fun with comments, even though I'm now informed that they were sparse and unusable. Sure, the commments weren't at an all time high -- I've gotten as many as 200 or 300 for particularly popular items (boy, some CSI fans really didn't like that show's finale).

The fact is, I think Ms. Seipp found one of the few old-schoolers at TCA who doesn't get blogging. I've heard my share of stories about press tour, but what I found there -- and maybe, like Seipp, it's just a matter of finding what I was looking for -- plenty of hardworking folks who not only got good, meaty blog mileage out of the tour, but plenty of stories and solo interviews banked for future pieces.

I worked my butt off at TCA, in print and online. And I saw a lot of my colleagues doing the same. And if Seipp is going to do a piece how MSM types "don't get it," she should talk to more than one person (whom she actually just overheard). I've been blogging for a few years, and I'm late to the game compared to Aaron and others.

You know, I'm as tired of "MSM types don't get the blog world" as I am of "Are blogs journalism?" Both are straw men set up to take down one side or the other.

Can't we all just get along?

By the way, Cathy, if you want to see if I have sufficient attitude, please feel free to check out my blog. And if you detect a note of defensiveness here, sorry. I don't have any free CBS ice cream in front of me to up my blood-sugar level.

[Calvinist]

Cathy Seipp is a long-time writer of and about Los Angeles and its media industry. I like her (and read her) as she has a nice take on my old home town and its follies. I do understand she can be slightly arch for some people.

Aaron, I'm afraid to say I had forgotten you existed, although I used to enjoy your NPR stuff in previous decades.

Blogs can be many things for many people. Some allow comments, some don't. Some people post every couple of hours. Cathy Seipp uses hers to work on material that is often refined into paying pieces (like the column you read).

And FWIW, she has discussed in her blog and in the LA Times the very serious medical condition (cancer) she has dealt with the last couple of years.

[Mo Ryan]

In all seriousness, I wish Cathy the best of luck with her health issues.

[lurkertype]

Mo, I greatly enjoy your columns thanks to the web. (And I really LOVED the last scene of CSI! So there!)

While I sympathize about serious health issues, I'm not willing to give a pass on the "it must have HTML comments to be a proper blog" idea. No, it mustn't.

That, and Aaron being on the net before there was a web, before most people even knew what the net was. I remember the old rec.arts.tv days. He certainly "gets it" -- being Net before he was MSM.

As for the "attitude"; he's from Kansas City!

[Aaron]

NPR?

Weren't you on NPR or Fresh Air at some point? My apologies if I'm mistaken.

I used to enjoy your work and was thinking that was were I was exposed to it. Honestly I've drifted away only because I'm not so interested in your subject matter. I've always thought you were a good writer.

Where you you before you were at the Kansas City paper?

[tomalhe]

Does anyone actually read the National Review Online for TV criticism?

"Gosh, Mr. O'Reilly's hair looked great today."

"The evil mainstream media characters on Sesame Street seem to be mocking the president's terror alerts by not featuring enough of the colors yellow and orange, except for one rather large winged creature."

"Michael Medved has spotted 10 more penis shaped formations in the sequined tiles on Wheel of Fortune. Please go to our Action Alert to the FCC!"

I'd sooner get competant TV advice from Cosmo or Maxim.

[tomalhe]

But seriously. Ms. Seipp came there with a story prewritten about how the liberal media establishment aka Satan Worshippers doesn't take her elitist attitudes seriously (because THEY'RE ELITISTS!)

She came to pick fights and call names seemingly to show her strength and courage in the face of hostility which probably exists only in her publications mindset. Ms. Seipp came to antagonize and deliberately cause controversy and Mr. Barnhart played his part all to well in allowing her to claim victim status since she's "obviously being picked on unfairly" while being the attacker in the first place.

[Aaron]

Watch who you're calling Mr. Barnhart.