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Valleywag
Joseph Rago's takedown of amateur media, in the Wall Street Journal, has elicited a predictably defensive response from his targets. The pullquote -- the Journal editor's incendiary contention that blogs are written by fools to be read by imbeciles -- is taken as further evidence that mainstream journalists just don't get it. That kneejerk mantra is about as worn out as the liberal label applied by the Republican attack machine to every competitive Democrat. My sympathies are with Rago. It's refreshing to see a print journalist depart from a default cringe in the face of the internet mob. And Rago's insults are at least well crafted:
A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion.
