Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Rolling Stone and other worn-out journals, snottiness is not hard-wired into the Web
By LAURA MILLER
Maybe we're spoiled. SALON has received plenty of kudos from the print media (and, for that matter, the occasional pointed criticism, which we've taken to our chastened hearts). But what to do with a story that dubs us "a haven of sophistication and wit" and "determinedly civilized," that calls us intelligent, polished and well-produced -- and then complains about it? "Nothing about SALON is awful or dumb," the writer reports, "-- and that's the problem."Jeff Goodell's article, in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, goes on to explain that our colleagues over at Netizen, on the other hand, have got it right. Maybe they publish more awful and dumb stuff? He commends them for their "crude and self-mocking" graphics; is tickled by Brock Meeks' "aplomb," apparently demonstrated by his deployment of the word "fucking" in a column on the Communications Decency Act; admires Netizen's "wacky extremes" in exploiting the Web's multimedia capacities; and congratulates the site for its "rough-edged, unserious" quality.
Clearly such a compliment has a backhand to rival Monica Seles', and we offer our sympathies to Netizen's hard-working team of professional journalists. Although Goodell's piece parrots some oft-voiced and shopworn opinions on what a Web site oughta be -- bratty, flippant and above all amateurish -- it does have an up side: if this viewpoint is being touted in Rolling Stone, it must finally be completely passé.
Making gassy, unfounded pronouncements on the nature of online culture is a plush racket worked by technophiles and Luddites alike. McLuhan-worshipping Net swamis have succeeded in convincing a lot of people that the Web's every quality is ineluctably dictated by the medium. Not true. Web journalism isn't necessarily superficial, slapdash and knee-jerk cynical. Those traits are less a result of hypertext than of the callowness of many of the people currently generating content. We'd welcome a sentient discussion of how the tech of the Web actually does determine content. Just don't try to tell us that the snottiness is hard-wired.
Meanwhile, Michael Kinsley and his so-far-vaporous, Microsoft-owned Web magazine, Slate, netted many thousands of words in the May 13 issue of the New Yorker. (Some of those words made vague and unfounded conjectures about SALON's editorial integrity, but since they appear more than halfway through a Ken Auletta story, we figure no one else will ever read them, except maybe Kinsley's mom. Journalistic rumor has long held that The New Yorker's ad sales staff charges premium placement rates for space located on the third page of an Auletta opus, when the reader inevitably grows glassy-eyed and willing to read almost anything else -- even those epic, small-print descriptions of side-effects required by law to appear in ads for cardiac drugs.)
Kinsley sneers at the "snideness" and "cheap attitude" so prevalent on the Web, and since that's just about all the content he's emitted in the past six months, it looks like he'll fit right in. Auletta's typically exhaustive account of memos and meetings (he stops just short of telling us every time Kinsley rips open a packet of Cremora) manages to strike a note both breathless and plodding, and has earned the wrath of Jon Katz, who fulminates about The New Yorker's puffery and Kinsley's elitist attitude in The Netizen's "Media Rant."
The problem is, Kinsley so often hits the target. Many of the initial Web efforts were gizmo- rather than content-driven. And it is true that "There's a reason some people get paid as writers and some don't;" talent is not democratically distributed. There's a whole lotta crap out there, and I for one don't usually feel like wading through it. Furthermore, the seamless sarcasm adopted by so many Web writers and publications reflects a fundamental cowardice, an unwillingness to stand by any values if that might mean having to take what one dishes out so freely to others, and when you get right down to it, a predictability that gets real old, real fast. (Not that Kinsley's vaunted "contrarianism" doesn't smack of the same hollowness).
Most Web journalists admit this in private conversation. "I have less of a problem with you saying that than Michael Kinsley," a colleague recently remarked to me. The idea seems to be, yes, the Web has a lot of assholes on it, but goddamn it, they're our assholes (see Jeff, we can swear too; honest!). Most Web journalists do want to see a strain of thoughtful commentary and solid reporting develop on the Net; we want a forum to present our best work. It is, tellingly, print publications like Rolling Stone who most often insist that the medium shouldn't -- or can't -- grow up, and print journalists who champion its amateurism. Threatened much?
As for that "bleeding edge" of smirking adolescence, chances are it will never go away -- and why should it? There's room for all of us out here in the ether. Even Michael Kinsley.