I, too, did not hate "Swingtown"

You'd think after doing this website/weblog/blog/content-management-system thing for 9+ years I would have learned a very simple lesson: People who read blogs don't read print stories slapped up on websites. Even if they're written by bloggers.

I was reminded again of this when my BFF at Time, James Poniewozik, claimed that he was the "only TV critic who really liked Swingtown," the retrodrama that CBS loved so much they decided to save it until ... um, June 5th to premiere. (And it improved on the demo from "CSI"? Which was a rerun? Airing opposite the NBA Finals? Will miracles never cease?)

I really liked it, too — to my surprise. And actually, I think JP knows that because he included a link to Metacritic (is that still around?) which included a link to ... my Kansas City Star column. But I still stand by my point. You come here to TV Barn to read the Barn. The Chief. Doctor House. Whatever you call me, you come here, you follow a bookmark here (if you're old-school it still reads "http://tvbarn.com") or RSS feed, but in general if you are not in Kansas City and want to know what's on my mind you come here. Which means that unless I explicitly link you to my column somewhere here on the blog, you do not read my columns. As of this week, I have two more-or-less regular places in the paper: Sundays, in our gorgeous, ready-to-frame A+E section; and Thursdays, in our newly-combined FYI+Preview section. (We folded FYI into Preview, which is tabloid format, at the request of our subway readers.) That's a lot of high quality journalism you're not seeing. (True, there is that "Barnhart in Print" widget up at the top of the page, and that does have links to all my stories. But that cheesy design makes it look like an ad you don't want to click on.)

The kicker is that I used to repurpose my columns in TV Barn. Then I stopped. I'm not sure why, either. How about: Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Yeah, that's the ticket. I stopped repurposing my columns because it was turning me into a mindless automaton. As opposed to what two hours a week of Idol did to me.

(A reader reminded me that Emerson actually said something about a "foolish consistency," but as I recall, he was outvoted by Lake and Palmer.)

I was also reminded of this yesterday. I went looking for what I wrote in the paper about the Sago Mine disaster two years ago and I couldn't find it, so I had to substitute a lame podcast where, I must say on listening to it again, I was a lot more wishy-washy than I was in print. Had I posted that story to TV Barn, it would still be here.

So as of right now, I'm going to start copy-pasting my columns in TV Barn again. Until I stop.