even the really smart people in hollywood are scary morons ie Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron, allegedly one of the smartest women in Hollywood, takes a stab explaining the phenomenon of blogging, actually it is more like a desperate attempt to marginalize the blogosphere. Her "article' is full of insights like;

 He says that what blogs are really good at is getting to the truth. He says that if Jayson Blair's fraudulent articles had appeared on the Internet instead of in the New York Times, he would have been nailed immediately. I guess this is the case, although I can't help but think Calacanis is missing the delicious point about truth and blogs. It's not that the blogosphere doesn't care about the truth, but that truth is a very limited

say what?

it gets worse

 undefined spent some time drawing a distinction between bloggers and journalists. I think she said you could be a journalist but not write journalism, or else she said you could be in journalism but not be a journalist. She definitely said a blogger could perform an act of journalism without being a journalist exactly. It was sort of existential and reminded me of the question, "Is a play a play if it isn't being performed?" She also spoke eloquently about drinking, being drunk, being hung over, and never being anywhere without a miniature bottle of Jim Beam. She was fantastically fast and funny, and if I were a straight man or a gay woman I would have gotten a huge, pathetic crush on her. She has written a novel and showed me the manuscript, which was in her tote bag. Her tote bag was pretty messy, and so was mine, so that made things even more exciting. I don't have a clue how she has had time to write a novel, what with the blogging and the drinking, but I guess you save a lot of time not having to do any reporting.

 

And worse.
BTW no mention of LGF, Little Green Footballs, Instapundit, Roger Simon, the real players. The warriors in the media war assuming the mantle of real journalism, exposing the  grossly overrated  truth. It was such a hatchet job. The irony is the hatchet came down directly on Ephron. She is a poor writer whose thinly disguised agenda is painfully obvious, discredit the blogosphere. No matter what the left attempts to do they can not impede the steamroll of  the net and its historical implications.

 

We establish from the beginning that the best thing about being a blogger, besides not having to do reporting, is that you never actually have to get dressed -- you can work in your pajamas (Wonkette) or your bathrobe (Calacanis).

In refutation to her contention that bloggers are not journalists, I beg to differ as noted here.

I could call Ken Auletta and ask him what it was he said exactly, but that would involve reporting, and I learned this morning at the panel on blogs that when you are a blogger, you are so busy blogging that you don't have time to report. 

When the MSM describes the blogs, they paint a marginal, eccentric, obnoxious, misinformed motley crew of losers (ie KOS, DU, Wonkette) sitting home scratching their asses in their pajamas. Who could possibly take this movement seriously with MOE LARRY AND CURLY as the face of Blogdom? Never do you see the true brilliant giants of the blogosphere ie Powerline, Little Green Footballs, Russell Maddens, Instapundit ............

Jonah Goldberg put it most succinctly;

Don't let the word 'conservative' fool you. Rebels on the right were pioneers in the political exploitation of new and alternative technologies long before anyone knew what blogs were. Led by Rush Limbaugh, conservatives even revived AM radio, making it a major source of a populist backlash against liberal-controlled institutions. Cable profoundly transformed politics. C-Span alone did more to demystify government than a generation of muckrakers -- or bloggers -- ever could. CNN pioneered the steady erosion of the Big Three Networks' stranglehold on information. Later, Fox News soon destroyed CNN's stranglehold on 24-hour news. And, remember, the Internet was a big deal before the onset of the blogs as well. For good or for ill, Matt Drudge refused to treat the MSM as a sacred monastery, and in many respects he remains the uber-blogger. ... Left-wing bloggers believe they are part of the same 'revolution' as right-wing bloggers are. They're not. The conservative blogs are the shock troops of a decades-long battle to seize back the culture. Conservatives have always had to rely on 'alternative media' -- magazines, AM radio, blogs -- because the Mainstream Media barred the door to conservatives. And even when they let a few token ones in, they had to be labeled 'conservative' first and journalists a distant second. The lefty blogs are something else entirely. They represent -- much like the still lame liberal talk radio and the new liberal think tanks -- an attempt to copycat conservative successes. Their fight is not with the monolithic mainstream media (or academia) but with the usurpers. Politics is not a battle of technology. It is a battle of ideas, and therein lies all the difference."

BINGO!

I have often said this and I preach it anywhere and everywhere I go. The net, the blogosphere is the future for all media, replicating the media landscape of Lincoln. For as much harm as it can do (ie spreading the deadly poison of radical islam, disseminating critical info on bombmaking, nuclear site info etc), I believe it will serve a much greater good. The 2004 presidential election was an indication but just the tip of the iceberg.The Blogosphere changed the course of the election. The Swift boat boys, the Powerline and Charles Johnson/Little Green Footballs expose of RATHERGATE........... this in IMHO changed the course of human events.........if not for the blogboys the chances are pretty damn good that sKerry/annan/chirac would be in the Whitehouse selling this constitutional republic down the river like a $2 dollar whore.

oh and BTW, I think Ephron's movies suck.

More media masturbation:
WE MEDIA: BEHOLD THE POWER OF US
Hosted by the Associated Press, We Media will focus on such topics as citizen journalism; activism and democracy; media gawking; culture, politics and buzz; Internet advertising and marketing; and trust networks. Confirmed speakers include AP President Tom Curley; CBS News President Andrew Heyward; CBS Digital Media President Larry Kramer; BBC Global News Division Director Richard Sambrook;

sort of like Bin Laden, Zarqawi  et al hosting a seminar on how to stop jihadism.

UPDATE: More erudite, literate observations from the Left photos courtesy of Zombie