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.”
They also ran a mis-informed, slanted piece on Page One of the paper about death by blogging, saying that we work ourselves to death.
Not me though, this little girl blogger is at home, where I belong, baking cookies.
Posted by B.L. Ochman
This is a hugely important illustration as to how sexist the Times is. I mean, they did the same thing to Hillary Clinton. It isn’t just the Times, either — there is an institutionalized sexism that is really appalling and I am happy to see you reporting on this, BL.
“dead tree journalists”
ha ha! I like it… it could well catch on…
Well, who really pays attention to the NY Times, anymore? Mostly grey-haired men who have always been threatened by strong women.
I’m not much concerned by what the Times writes – about Blogher, or Hillary, or bloggers. The world will go on…and women will continue to move forward, while the Times slowly disintegrates into pulp.
Yvonne – i don’t think it’s quite so black and white. The NY Times is still the paper of record on many levels, lame as it often is.