Matt Langer

capitalnewyork / aka gillianmae / aka Tumblr spokesperson for a media outlet which I very much enjoy and whose recent launch I very much anticipated and whom I never would have thought to implicate in my earlier rant because I have very high hopes for them:

But we get it: seeing those posts reblogged by what seems to be every major media company gives us the willies too, even when we do it. Sometimes it’s a bit like being at one of those schmoozy mixers where it’s so obvious that everyone is there to “make an appearance” and pass around air kisses before they go to the bar where their real friends are going to be.

followed shortly thereafter by anthony / aka soupsoup / aka citizen activist and fucking righteous grassroots revolutionary who’s probably (tragically!) not getting very far in his quest to raise $1 million for the Village Voice after Foster’s rather expensive dick joke:

I don’t think there is any issue with media companies following and reblogging each other on Tumblr.

But wait you guys, there kind of is! For three reasons (maybe more?).

First: we’ve seen this before! And while I can understand Gillian’s optimism because she’s just trying to do her job (and kicking ass!), and while I can also understand Mark’s position because he’s just trying to do his job (and also kicking ass!), this isn’t the first time that media have discovered some hip new distribution channel to help them connect more meaningfully with their withering readership that ultimately just resulted in said media all peeing in the pool. Now it’s a part of Mark’s job to hope that trend can change—and I admire his dedication to such a seriously uphill climb—but I’ve got no dog in that fight and I’ll just have to wait to be disabused of my skepticism.

Second: sure, Anthony’s right that there’s nothing wrong with it at face value, and Gillian and Mark both make similar points that media are all very new at this and they’ll all get better once they figure out the ropes, but there’s something very wrong with it as soon their arrival is billed as Tumblr’s official baptism, as if they’re legitimizing a platform that lacked its own legitimacy prior to their participation. You don’t even have to be as old as I am to remember the time when some small-time blogger named Josh Marshall almost singlehandedly brought down Trent Lott, and then Paul Krugman mentioned him in a column and all of a sudden the media world was abuzz with talk of how traditional journalists were officially knighting the new wave and it was like wait a minute, Marshall established his own legitimacy all the way back during the 2000 recount, back when you couldn’t get any decent coverage from the “legitimate” journalists because the “legitimate” journalists were too busy getting played by the Brooks Brothers riot. 

And third: those “schmoozy mixers” Gillian references? They’re exactly the problem. All this business with the established media reblogging the established media wouldn’t be ruffling so many feathers if it wasn’t completely in line with exactly the sort of cocktail party bullshit they’ve been engaged in for so long now. And that cocktail party bullshit is a serious problem! Because it’s a serious problem that established media only knows how to talk to established media, since from within their warped little cocoon they’re able to perpetuate a whole host of myths—some silly, some destructive—such as Sarah Palin’s inexplicably enduring relevance, Al Gore’s invention of the internet, Bill Clinton’s $500 runway haircut, social security’s imminent insolvency, or Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons.

So you’re going to have to forgive me my skepticism, because after spending ten years now watching a bunch of unsung and unshowered masses slaving away in their pajamas on the internet to put together the pieces and do the sort of critical thinking the establishment media seems incapable of doing anymore in this age of the 24-hour news cycle—and then getting made fun of for being a bunch of dirty hippies simply because they refuse to worship at the altar of the White House press pool—I’m not exactly going to rejoice when that same establishment media comes in and “legitimizes” a community that established its merits long before the latecomers ever showed up.