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June 24, 2008

Welcome, Luddites!

So now the two biggest internet bashers in entertainment journalism, Patrick Goldstein and Peter Bart, are bloggers. All I can say is…

Welcome.

Really.

Having been an advocate of Patrick getting off his ass and actually getting back to journalism for a couple of years now, specifically as a blogger, I am pleased for him. The column has gotten more and more lunchified, arrogant, and meaningless to anyone who isn’t one of his potential victims/subjects… a group who just happen to be the last people left who worry about the ramifications of every word run in print in a major newspaper.

Patrick is a smart guy. He is, most often, a good guy. He was, amazingly enough, an early fan of The Hot Button, back when I was harsher, more arrogant, and less knowledgeable… also, less of a threat and wholly unlikely to make fun of him in an MCN headline. He has been quite angry with me for years now, avoiding contact after I said, “Hello,” as recently as last week at a screening at which he sat a row and 2 seats away from me.

But in spite of this and in spite of his only mentions of me or MCN at LAT being excessively negative and even in spite of him setting a tone that has kept me from working with LAT on joint projects when paper newcomers have sought me out… I really, really hope that he rises to this occasion and becomes not only a good blogger, but a special blogger.

Blogging, it must be said, tends to “out” us all. It is one of the hard realities of being this engaged in daily interaction with civilians, offering more opinion than we would as straight journalists.

And so far, with just a test run of items, Patrick is showing his rust. He still hasn’t figured out that pasting up blog entries once a week is not a column. If he wants to continue to also be a columnist, he needs to find a way to save up something for a weekly column. As I have struggled with for 2 years now, these are not the same muscle groups and the seduction of the immediate in a blog tends to drain the energy needed to do even a weekly.

(Note that La Finke hasn’t done a real column in six months or so either. My personal solution is now to separate long form pieces from short in two blogs. Will it feel right once I’ve been doing it for a while? We’ll see. When I don’t feel I have to pitch the Hot Button Blog on The Hot Blog is when I will be comfortable that the experiment worked. But it may not.)

And Patrick still has that tone like he is doing someone a favor.

He’s going to have to get over that.

I don’t think Patrick is going to go all Crazy Nikki on us and start attacking everyone he can in a desperate attempt to get attention. But if he is honest and direct, he can offer a really clear view from where he sits… a view no one else on the web has really offered.

I think one of the reason that former print people stick together and only want to support one another after they have come to the web is that they are attached at the source. I will put my relationships up against anyone’s but I do not hang out with agents and I do not milk studio reps every day. I don’t trust them… even the ones I like. (If you recognize yourself as someone I do like and trust, consider whether I have mentioned anything you've said in virtual print more than once a year. You are an exception to this rule and bring added insight, but not news to my life. But this is not a column about my schizo life.)

I rarely find agents and other suits anything other than self-serving. The reason that Michael Fleming, who was the highest paid trade reporter in the business a couple of years ago (may still be), went from being a superstar to a “what was his name again?” is that getting a “scoop” – really a press release - 10 hours before everyone else is no longer terribly important or distinguished. The reason that Finke has become “important” is that she is a lay down for all the people who think they are more important than those they represent or the overall goals of the groups in which they have a part.

But Patrick has the chance to be something greater. Patrick has the chance… not to take down the agencies and studios… but to offer us their voices with some clarity and then to offer us perspective on those voices coming out of his experience.

This does not mean that his perspective will be right. His whole style these days is way too pressed up against the glass for my tastes. But that need not remain the case. And even if it does, that doesn’t mean that he won’t add enormous value to the overall conversation.

I pray that he does.

And I guess I haven’t said anything about Bart.

Well… after mewing about desperate pleas for attention by “bloggers” who work for him, he is now having his likeness plastered all over the site, you can hear the muscles being ripped out of Anne Thompson’s arm as she is forced to pat Variety backside in her blog endlessly and often to the exclusion of people who actually broke news or offer better perspective on the news, and Bart’s history of 30 years ago is still a dominant theme.

The funny thing is that Bart, actually, does offer his perspective in a very tangible way. He is a historic figure, even as he continues to rule his shrinking fiefdom. He’s not a crazy uncle, but there is more than a little Joey Nichols in him. If you ever got him to really talk about The War, he’d probably be as fascinating as anyone you’ll meet… but he has his schtick and rarely the twain shall meet.

Also, he posts once or twice a day, doesn’t really engage anyone else of note, and doesn’t understand that the entire medium of blogging is call and response, not call and genuflect.

But he’s a generation older than Patrick… I don’t expect him to learn.

One last note for Patrick… no one gives a damn what your kid or your mom or your aunt thinks of a movie. And much as I know the temptation, you have to realize, they are NOT a focus group… they are not professional… and they are not relevant to anyone but you. Beware becoming the Personal weBLOG that you have derided all these years.

It’s a funny thing about blogging… as much as it’s about you (the royal you), it’s really not about you at all. Much more than anything you have ever done in a newspaper, it is about your readers. It is about your community. It is about building something… an act which no one at a major paper has ever had to do on their own.

If you want to get it, go back and read all of the Carr stuff on Carpetbagger… especially the earlier stuff, before he got more self-conscious. He is a Picasso, that guy.

Be whatever you are, Patrick. Don’t hide. Don’t be coy. Don’t be shy. Get ready to thicken your skin… a lot. But even when it hurts, try to hear it and to separate the rank attacks from the suggestions. Give into the form… and it will keep you employed. Fight it and you should really be getting prepared for that book deal and the offer from Sitrick.

You can do this and do it well. Please do.

(Noth: The length of this entry should have it in Hot Button... but this really is a blog piece, so... sometimes, you just have to do what feels right.)

Posted by dpoland at June 24, 2008 10:48 AM

Comments

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