Fascinating experiment in professionalized ego-blogging Thought Catalog has finally figured out the secret of life. "Wonder What The Secret Of Life Is," Brandon Scott Gorrell muses in the title of a post that begins with a quote from Atlas Shrugged. (Then apologizes for beginning with a quote from Atlas Shrugged.)
Political blogger Ben Smith's career is a series of progressively wackier job moves. He was at the NY Daily News, covering state politics, and was more respected than the average tabloid writer. He moved to THE POLITICO, where he's been blogging about politics and media for the past five years, managing to stay more respected (by us!) than his micro-horse-race-obsessed paper as a whole. Now, he's off to an even weirder destination!
Newspapers, magazines, TV networks and online conglomerates are laying off journalists left and right, but even the sad crumbling world of professional news delivery has a fortunate one percent. This elite group now includes Ben Parr, whose employer Mashable, the tech blog, paid him a $250,000 retention bonus only to turn around and fire him. Meet the happiest unemployed journalist in the world!
One basic characteristic of journalism is this: its content is not bought and paid for and directed by an advertiser. It might be vapid. It might be poorly written. It might be damn near worthless. But it's not an advertisement.
We are now living in a time in which the first generation in history that never experienced life before the internet is coming into cultural power. And it is awful.
Did you know that if you are uninsured or jobless, you should just suck it up? That if you're overworked or underemployed, you should be thankful? Learn all that—and more!—at "We Are the 53%," the right wing's incredibly depressing response to Occupy Wall Street!
For TechCrunch's MG Siegler, temptation came from the clubby world of venture capital. For the New York Times' Nick Bilton, the lure was in the blindingly lit studios of a TV network. The writers made different choices—one took the money, the other turned it down—but the scope of their offers alone is the sign of a world gone mad.
Food conglomerate ConAgra, maker of all remaining food, hired the PR firm Ketchum for a fun promotional stunt: it would invite a bunch of food bloggers to a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant, then reveal that they'd actually been served frozen ConAgra food-like products instead of real food. Mirth and delight would ensue! Alas, ConAgra and Ketchum should have watched the old Chris Farley skit more closely.
There are a few guidelines to being a successful blogger: Update frequently. Promote your posts on social media. And don't describe Sen. Joe Lieberman as "one Jew, who we absolutely must shoot in the face (many times), ASAP."
The staff at The Ledbury, a 2 Michelin Star restaurant in London's Notting Hill, deserve some recognition for two separate acts of heroism during London's riots. A food blogger named Louise Yang wrote about an encounter at the restaurant where looters stormed in and began robbing patrons "around the fourth dish of the tasting course." Yang had a ring taken. Then the staff stepped in:
The Airbnb customer whose home was destroyed by a stranger who'd used the service to rent her apartment says a co-founder of the company tried to convince her to delete her blog post about her nightmare because of the "negative impact it could have on his company's growth and current round of funding." So considerate.
In the olden days before the U.S. economy devolved into a pure gold-and-canned-goods bartering system, Wall Street guys were the ones who rented all the gaudy, overpriced good apartments. Now that Wall Street's been decimated, who will the real estate industry turn to, to unload all those new condos with "Wii rooms?" Oh, they will sell these pricey spaces to "bloggers," it says here. Hahaha.
It's not just murder victims and government officials who have been hacked by Rupert Murdoch's minions. A once-pseudonymous sex writer claims a writer for the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times installed a trojan on her computer in an effort to out her.
Biologist, philosopher, and atheist prophet Richard Dawkins really put his foot in it. The New Statesman says Dawkin's career as a public intellectual is kaput. The Atlantic Wire has him losing a flame-war against his very own fan base. In the blogosphere, the most devoted Dawkinsians—people who've spent their adult lives in adoration of his every utterance—are boycotting his books and calling him a buffoon. A classist, male chauvinistic, and potentially racist buffoon. And why?
