If It's a Wake, Shouldn't We Be Drinking?

I was going to write the Greatest David Brooks Post ever.

I still might.  After all, I have it all outlined and everything.

But first, a word from Not Our Sponsors on the Death of Blogging ™.

From Politico:

...

The Andrew Sullivan era of journalism is over. Blogs — defined as "an eclectic, scattered" reverse-chronological journal, "covering everything from foreign policy to TV to religion," often in the first-person — are all but dead. Sullivan is the last of the Mohicans, which is a testament to his success. He was there in the beginning, and he'll probably be there to turn the lights out after everyone has left.

It's a shame, because I'm actually quite fond of Sullivan and what he does. The idea of ditching a beat and just weighing in on whatever you fancy is highly appealing to a writer. But readers couldn't care less -- unless they like you and your worldview so much they're willing to go along for the ride. Sullivan cultivated such a following and turned it into a sustainable business, albeit with apparently diminishing returns. His last moment in the sun was a Newsweek cover story on Obama's gay marriage evolution, and you don't need a blog for that.

Still, Sullivan seems content: "I have enough money," he says. "To earn a living with total freedom as a writer [is] the greatest possible thing to have." Indeed, that's a great privilege. And occassionally something he writes -- on the Republican Party, papal politics, or the gay rights movement -- may break into the mainstream. Alternatively, he may find himself getting in pissing matches over the relative strengths and weaknesses of New York City and Washington, D.C. Fun for him.

For better of worse, the people formerly known as bloggers need to have specialties in order to command a following. Ezra Klein needs to cover domestic policy, Nate Silver needs to make predictions, Ta-Nehisi Coates needs to write about race, and so on and so forth. You can switch beats, but you have to have one.

...

If I had a nickle for every time someone put pennies on the eyes of poor, dead blogging...well, I wouldn't have Andrew Sullivan Money, but I could stop worrying about groceries.

On the other hand, looking back from the distance of a decade, it's clear that a lot of what we dreamed blogging could be back in the Steve Gilliard days turned out to be eternally true --

...Bloggers act as if their treatment in the press and by the press is something new and unique. It isn't.

[Hunter] Thompson had been a newspaperman, had worked for Time and hated it. He didn't fit into the neat box that people wanted to place journalists in. Was it really any wonder that David Halberstam didn't wind up running the Times or that Sy Hersh still has to deal with people who call him a traitor. Journalism wasn't embracing the outcasts, not then, and not now. Thgompson didn't wind up in Rolling Stone because he was in high demand as a political commentator. Just like people aren't falling over themselves to read Bill Grieder finance stories today. He was a refugee from American journalism, just like many bloggers are today. Remember, the people we scorn today were the people who fit the idea of the ideal journalist. Judy Miller is what every editor, secretly dreams about, the sexy, tempestous man-crazy reporter. The fact that she's a tool for those in power doesn't discomfort them.

Bloggers are not some new creation, but the newest set of the barbarians at the gates. They are the people who don't trust the system and it's artifacts. It is to writing, what rap is to music, the coming of democracy to a trade. What Thompson and his peers did in the 60's and 70's, we do today. But free of the constraints of editors and publishers and the need to hustle up work.
...

-- and a lot of it turned out to be bunkum. For example, blogging was supposed to liberate us from the constraints of geography: after all, if great writers could access much of the same information as our Elite Beltway media and digest and comment brightly about it from Topeka or Ames or Chicago, that would mean that a blogger would not have to live and work in L.A. or the New York/D.C. Sprawl, right?  Schmoozing with Tina Brown or Arianna Huffington would not be mandatory, right?

And once the Elite Media Cartel was broken, the truth would seep in through a 1,000 cracks and bring it all down. After all, how could clowns like David Brooks, David Gregory or Mark Halperin survive being righteously and publicly pantsed every day of their professional lives? How could Fox News survive being fact-checked to shreds in nearly-real time, on a platform that only requires 1-2 click of a mouse to access?   Sure we'd starve early, but once we had been at it for years that would start to change, right?  Especially once online advertising came online, and Wealthy Liberals started underwriting the insurgent Liberal media infrastructure as lavishly as the Right built out its bloggers and think tanks and radio stations and newspapers and teevee empire and publishing houses and Fake Grassroots organizations. 

Right?

Yeah, turned out, not so much.

So somebody buy another round for the pixel-stained wretches in the back who are too busy to notice they are extinct.

And wake me the next time blogging dies.

Meanwhile and apropos of nothing...

DAVID FRUM
David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic.

David Frum
CNN Contributor

DAVID FRUM
David Frum is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast...

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