Brewed Fresh Daily

"Matt Welch (via the Columbia Journalism Review) casts his keen eye on the recent Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) convention in SF and finds the current batch of Alternative Weeklies somewhat lacking.

All the newspapers looked the same � same format, same fonts, same columns complaining about the local daily, same sex advice, same five-thousand-word hole for the cover story. The people were largely the same, too: all but maybe 2 percent of the city-slicker journalists in attendance were white; the vast majority were either Boomer hippies or Gen X slackers. Several asked me the exact same question with the same suspicious looks on their faces: 'So . . . what's your alternative experience?'

Hello, Cleveland! If that's isn't hitting both targets (Free Times / Scene) with one missive... While all the points contained in the piece won't be news to most bloggers, it is a strong overview of who is out there and what buttons they're pushing with Journalists (with a big J). "

The incomparable Matt Welch, whose work I've linked to before, has written some splendid stuff in a long career (just under a decade) for so young a guy. But his latest piece, in the Columbia Journalism Review, puts it all to shame, and stands as maybe the best article I've ever read about what blogging is all about, and where it really stands in the enlightened journalism pecking order. It's nothing less than a blogging manifesto that will slowly be read, reread and reflected upon by anyone who cares about the format. I especially love how he places blogging in the context as the true spiritual successor to alternative weeklies, which not so long ago were the real center of the journalism world, but which have been ravaged in recent years by increasing corporatization, chaining and the inevitable loss of vigor that has come as a result of its aging core audience (and the professionalization of its own operation). He rightly blasts alt-weeklies for their "politically monochromatic" nature and the "dull pieties of official progressivism" that often rob them of their energy these days. On the other hand, he notes that the best of amateur blogging is "connecting intimately with readers in a way reminiscent of old-style metro columnists or the liveliest of New Journalists." His best line zeroes in on the horrified reaction to blogging from so much of the traditional journalism community: "For lazy columnists and defensive gatekeepers, it can seem as if the hounds from a mediocre hell have been unleashed." But the fact that this vigorous piece appears in the leading journal of the profession... speaks loudest of all.