Worst Journalism About Blogging

I know the first thing you’re gonna ask: “What, are you a glutton for punishment??” Why do you go around collecting these clunkers?

I have to admit I love (in a very perverse way) coming across the worst journalism about the blogging phenomenon. For me, it’s something akin to that Time or Newsweek reporter in the Bob Dylan Don’t Look Back documentary who asks such incredibly inane and offensive questions of Dylan and ends up being savaged for his trouble. You don’t exactly relish Dylan’s cruelty, but you do relish the fellow getting his comeuppance for being such a square.

While much journalism about blogging is becoming more sophisticated and useful, there is still so much crap out there. And I’ve found another one. This is from Ellen Simon, AP Business writer, Bloggers Find Clicks Don’t Mean Cash. The title pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Don’t know ’bout you, but the only reason I got into blogging was to make big bucks, didn’t you?

Articles like this only succeed in retaining blogging’s reputation for being an arcane, and rather obscure obsession for those of us who are gay gun nuts (like one profile she uses in her story).

If you think those Web journals of opinions and obsessions are a way to get rich, consider Jeff Soyer, a self-described “gay gun nut” in Vermont.

Soyer, who runs the journal Alphecca.com, pleaded for donations last month alongside an image of a tip jar topped by gun-toting cartoon character Yosemite Sam. “Ten bucks buys a box of bullets or feeds my cats for a week,” he wrote on the blog.

Days passed and he received nothing. “By next week this domain could belong to a porno site,” he subsequently posted. “Maybe you folks think that would be a better thing. I’m starting to think so, too.” Only after other bloggers linked to his request did he receive enough donations to pay the $117 for a domain name and a year of Web hosting fees.

Why is it that the Jeff Soyer’s of the blog world are pointed up as a representative sampling of all the rest of us??

The writer then continues with mostly anecdotal stories about people who are earning $1,000 a month or $120,000 a year from their blogs. She mentions Andrew Sullivan as an example of someone earning money off his blog. Blah, blah, blah.

Will someone tell this woman’s editor to take her out and either shoot her or give her the dog racing beat? Get someone in there who can figure out some serious subjects to write about regarding blogging. “Cause this sure ain’t it.