Bloggers Guard Their Turf

By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 9:42 AM

It seems like bloggers and journalists around the world have it in for Gwyneth Paltrow.

For reasons I can't quite fathom, Paltrow is the name mentioned most in the media reports and blog postings about Arianna Huffington's recently-launched news and views Web site, huffingtonpost.com.

Maybe "symbol" is the wrong term. "Human sacrifice" might work better, as the often skewering write-ups seized on Paltrow's still-unrealized intention to post on the syndicated columnist and political gadfly's foray into bloggerdom. The blogging and media elites panned what they saw as an attempt to pass off as "very important" the deep thoughts of another class of elites -- celebrities famous enough that they can't list their number in the phone book.

Just look at Web sites with names like huffington.isfullofcrap.com. That site, with its invitation to vote for an idiot Huff blogger of the day, ought to indicate the amount of vitriol cyberspace mustered for Huffington.

Or try SwineBass's less obsessed but still sarcastic musings: "For some reason, people who are 'celebrities' think that they have a right (divine, perhaps?) to tell everyone about their views and opinions because they have a 'pedestal.' People may think that Jessica Simpson has a great voice (I'm one of them), but that doesn't mean they want to read about her opinion on the use of the filibuster (I'm not one of them)." Another Web site, huffandpuffingtonpost, put up a facsimile page with special guest Charles Manson blogging away from deep inside the lockup .

Nikki Finke's article "Why Arianna's Blog Blows" still takes top prize, even after a week, for taking no prisoners from Huffington's blog menagerie: "What her bizarre guru-cult association, 180-degree right-to-left conversion, and failed run in the California gubernatorial-recall race couldn't accomplish, her blog has now done: She is finally played out publicly."

Why would the ramblings of A- and B-list Hollywood celebrities -- with some think tank types and editors thrown in like a side-order of spinach -- work everyone up into such a lather? It seemed like poor Gwyneth was the one who was singled out the most in all the gabbing about Ariannablog: What will she write? What does she know about Equatorial Guinea's loan agreements with the World Bank? Is she even literate?

London's Guardian newspaper ran a savage, funny satire of Paltrow and others typing inane text-messages into the blog, but the piece makes one wonder what it is that frightens the media pros so. To be sure, some of the barbs are justified. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and husband Brad Hall really did make a hash of their "comedy" routine on gay marriage. M*A*S*H* producer Larry Gelbart's "Bulmedia" was bull-something all right, but media it was not.

So it goes; one of humanity's great pastimes is humiliating our idols before slaughtering them in public. Nothing quite rocks our world like taking down uppity celebrities a few pegs, and nothing has ever given us a chance to practice some good old-fashioned mob Democracy like the blog. Into the valley of death rode the 300 who dared to post at all -- the jackals down in the valley made short work of them.

You say you're tired of Rob Reiner's endless kvetching about the Bush administration being guilty of everything back to Torquemada? Get jealous when Kathryn Ireland writes public kiss-kiss notes about how hard it is to be wealthy these days? ("Arianna i'm so sorry I stood you up for our hike yesterday. I'm remodeling the kitchen in record time of 2 weeks and am the contractor. My mind was completely focusing on plumbing parts. You're all invited to come cook on my Aga next week. it's red.")

We love and hate celebrities because we want what they have and to be what they are -- especially when we tell ourselves we would never want to be like them at all. Huffblog lets us watch either way. Carl Sessions Stepp, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland, said that we might not care about what they have to say about debt relief (though they go on about such weighty topics on the blog), but "there is a mesmerizing pull to see what people have to say."

Love 'em or hate 'em, just as long as you keep reading. That's the real marketing strategy here. You're contributing two of the many millions of eyeballs watching Huffington Post when this baby really gets cooking and starts attracting advertisers. Talk about no such thing as bad publicity!

Another thing that probably gets under the skin of purist bloggers is the very idea of Gwyneth Paltrow writing "Ulysses-style" about sundry topics. It is an incursion into a lifestyle that until now seemed outside the establishment. Blogging was supposed to be a way to evade the perceived bias of the established press and its refusal to cover "the truth." Working on the old saw that information wants to be free, bloggers say what they want, when they want it, often with the watchphrase "let the consequences be damned!" After all, if the information turns out to be wrong, it's the Internet so you can just republish it.

The kind of people who are blogging for Arianna, on the other hand, are about as establishment as it gets. Imagine going to a blog to read the supposedly off-the-cuff opinions of the House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat John Conyers (D-Mich.). Are you serious, you ask. I most certainly am.

The advertising industry bets that the more than 10 million visits the Huffblog garnered in its first few days will be good for scaring up a few bucks, and as these things tend to happen, blogging is being transformed -- gradually -- from an independent force shaking up the media world to the media world's latest satellite. Some bloggers must be feeling like the desperadoes in "The Wild Bunch" when they see their first car.

Suddenly the blogging mainstream is no longer the barbarians at the gate, evading the boiling oil journalists pour on them from their ivory turret. Instead, they are the old school with set ways of doing things. They find themselves in the ironic position of defending their rebel turf against a corporate invasion, one that promises to revolutionize their way of communicating with the world just as surely as they have revolutionized the way that we journalists do.

Huffington, by the way, faces one challenge that no amount of starpower can help. There's a lot of reading material on the Internet, and without truly finding some standout characteristic -- usually serendipitously stumbled across -- even the most starpowered Web sites face plenty of competition. If Ms. H is really canny, she'll keep Paltrow offstage for a while, only debuting her on the same day that she decides to allow readers to respond to celebrity postings. That's the day I'll jump in line. After all, I'm eager to engage Paltrow in a spirited chat about debt relief.

The Green, Green Grapes of Home

The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 decision yesterday to strike down 24 state laws that ban interstate wine shipments won approval not only from states that produce wine, but from those that produce wine and strong high-tech economies.

The decision will open up wine markets on- and offline, never mind settling questions that the case raised about states' rights versus interstate commerce.

But leaving all that aside for a moment, did you know that nearly every state in the union produces wine? I'm not saying that you would want to drink it all -- I can say this as someone who has sampled the blueberry vintages of Maine and the peach wines (I'm using "wine" in a liberal sense here) of New Jersey. And thanks to the Internet, we can discover wine-making regions in Missouri, Wyoming, Arkansas and Nevada.

And just in case you were wondering, Alaska does have a wine industry. Great Land Wines of Haines offers wines made from elderflowers, dandelions, clover, a smorgasbord of berries. And if you really dare to be different, you can sample wines made from carrots, beets, rhubarb, potatoes and... onions. As the saying goes, in vino vegitalis ...

Merriam-Webster's Fictionary

Speaking of fake words, dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's editors are using the Internet to bring the rest of us in on their punchy sense of humor. The Springfield, Mass.-based company asked people to submit their favorite made-up words, the Boston Globe reported. They received more than 3,000 entries by the time the story ran.

"Some of the proposed words even gained multiple submissions so the editors came up with an admittedly unscientific Top 10 list. In first place was 'ginormous' -- bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous -- followed by 'confuzzled' for confused and puzzled simultaneously, and 'whoot,' an exclamation of joy. A 'lingweenie' -- a person incapable of making up new words -- was tenth. The survey, like a similar one the dictionary publisher ran last year asking readers their favorite word in the dictionary, 'was all in the spirit of good fun,' said John M. Morse, president and publisher."

Now I know the reason that I was randomly thinking about Sniglets last weekend -- which reminds me, where IS Rich Hall these days?

AMBER Alerts Go Mobile

The AMBER Alert public notification system for abducted children now is available to cell-phone and wireless device users, USA Today reported. "The highway text messages are similar to what cell phone users would receive. The missing child center will issue text messages when notified by law enforcement. The messages will be routed to participating carriers, such as Verizon or Sprint. The companies then send the messages to subscribers," the paper said. It also reported that the AMBER Alert system has safely returned 201 children since it went into effect in 1997.

Just as we hear about another great use for cell phones, the Independent newspaper out of Great Britain reported that people who the devices in rural areas are three times more likely to suffer from brain tumors.

"Scientists believe that rural users of mobile phones receive relatively large doses of microwave radiation from their handsets to compensate for the fact that base stations in the countryside are further apart than in the city," the Independent reported. "The findings are based on a sample of 1,400 patients with brain cancer who were compared against a further 1,400 healthy people who had also been interviewed about their use of mobile phones."

Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com.