NY Times to Women Bloggers: Shouldn't You Be Home Baking Cookies?

The NY Times has a love/hate relationship with bloggers. They delight in portraying us as journal writers; insignificant, naiive ranters who can't get a story straight. But now they've gone too far. The Times' story about the 1,000+ women who attended the recent BlogHer Conference ran on the Style Page, not the in the Business or Technology section.

As blogger and social media maven Connie Reece pointedly noted: "A story about men who blog, especially if they had built the kind of powerhouse network the BlogHer folks have, would have run in the business or technology section of the newspaper. But women’s accomplishments in the blogosphere are celebrated in Fashion and Style."

Tricia Romano of Pop + Politics asks the Times "Do you need a suit and a penis to be in the Business Section?"

Now Amber Naslund at The Brand Box says a Times editor called and asked her to change the content of her Letter to the Editor, in which she complained about the placement and tone of the story. She says the call smacked of an attempt at censorship. I think it's just a sign of the Times' general cluelessness about blogs and bloggers. Mack Collier's post on the topic is headlined "New York Times shows how out of touch it is with bloggers."

The surprising part of the story may be that anyone expects dead tree journalists to be objective. See: Mainstream Media is Objective - and I'm Queen Elizabeth

The Times is a particularly major blog basher. Sadly, I've been posting about the Times' cluelessness about blogging and bloggers for years.

The Times has kvetched that "...citizens talking back to the media "has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Not me though, this little girl blogger is at home, where I belong, baking cookies.

Posted by B.L. Ochman

Comments

Posted by: Chris Abraham at July 31, 2008 5:41 PM

Posted by: Andy Walpole at August 6, 2008 6:54 AM

Posted by: Yvonne DiVita at August 9, 2008 2:10 PM

Posted by: BL Ochman at August 11, 2008 12:09 PM

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