We’ve gotten irate emails and comments because we did this sarcastic post about the (in)famous Georgia bride. Not because it was sarcastic, mind you, but because dared to post it on this site. It wasn’t a serious issue, some readers felt.
People also seem to get mad if we have some fun with a subject or find a story that we personally find fascinating (such as the one about Sinatra below). If all of this this sounds flippant, it isn’t: it’s actually a serious subject.
The bottom line is: most people who do weblogs like to write what they like to read. In my case, I do have political weblogs I go to. But I also find that I tend to skip over them if they always have the same, predictable partisan anger. It’s great when you can read something a bit different or offbeat. And if you start reading a post and don’t like it, just skip on to the next one (despite what some bloggers think, all posts wind up being filed in the archive and forgotten anyway).
When I was a working journalist I enjoyed covering stories such as Spain’s transition from dicatorship to democracy, the smallpox epidemic in India, the Mexico City earthquake…and others. But I also LOVED doing the ones on the Jello Jump in Kansas, The Three Stooges getting a star on Hollywood Boulevard, the lady whose father invented the Ceasar salad, and McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc opening the first McDonald’s on a military installation on Camp Pendleton (Ronald McDonald conducted the Marine Corps band in a chorus of “You Deserve A Break Today.”)
After the vehement objection to our covering this bride story, we thought it was just TMV…until we saw Steve Gilliard’s post about the same problem. Read the whole thing but here’s a small taste:
If CNN basically covers this story all Saturday, it’s news. It’s not a debate. It is news, and malaria isn’t. Instead of wishing it wasn’t news, we need to subvert it. We need to discuss it in wider terms, class, race, sex. We need to bring depth to the debate. I mean this story gets weirder by the day. But if you don’t engage it, bring different perspectives to it, the media gets away clean again. When people say “you don’t cover this story” people think “liberal whiner”. If they want to talk about runaway brides, let’s talk about runaway brides, but intelligently, questioning the sex roles of men and women and the economic cost and pressure in a large wedding. There is fertile ground for smart people, but they have to seize the target and change the debate.
One of the great tricks of conservative pundits was to talk about ANY topic. No matter what it was, they had an opinion, got face time and then book deals. They saw this as fertile ground to extend the debate. We have to engage these issues and bring new perspectives on them.
American news has been the same for about a century. You don’t think people were sitting around in 1957 discussing the Bandung Conference over Elvis? Hell, one of the biggest news stories of the 19th Century was the shootout at the OK Corral. The following murder trials were news and spawned a cottage industry of books and dime novels. Only with the advent of the movies were the Earps rehabilitated. And when the James gang was gunned down in Northfield, Minnesota, a lot of Union vets were happy to have them wind up that way.
We must admit something, though: here at TMV we’re not always looking to change the debate or influence thinking. Sometimes there’s a story we simply CAN’T pass up, like this. Now THAT is classy reading.
Gilliard, who has a highly popular blog on the left, notes that his criticism (as apparently ours) comes from the left and he ends this way:
There’s a sort of snobishness about news on the left. I don’t watch TV, I only read the Guardian. Give me a…break. Most people think Angel comes after Guardian and when you don’t watch TV, you might as well say pinko hippie. If you want to change minds, you have to speak their language and it’s in things people care about.
If you don’t have an opinion on the latest circus, your opinion on more serious matters will not count. You don’t have to spend every day repeating Eonline, but you have to understand the culture, even the vulgar parts, to change it. If you do not engage the debate at hand, you will become irrelevant. Even if the debate is not a big deal in the end. Walking away, as we did so many times before, is no longer an option. If you want to change minds, you have to speak their language and it’s in things people care about.
Indeed. We agree. But we also sometimes go for stories that allow us to get a cheap laugh at someone’s offense, no matter who they are — or what party they belong to.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.