The Cable Gamer likes gossip as much as the next girl. Gossip is good--but Jossip? I'm not so sure about that site any more. Not when Jossip runs an 11-day-old left-over, using such sloppy seconds, as an excuse to bitchslap Fox Business News. For doing that, Jossip itself deserves a spanking. At least.
It's perfectly fair to criticize Fox Business News. For example, Rachel Sklar, the fun-loving brunette who posts for The Huffington Post, offered a piece on Monday headlined,“Launched! Fox Biz Network Goes Live (With Bloopers).” That's fine: If Rachel catches a blooper, she is free to run with it. If, for example, Jenna Lee (another brunette, yay!)gets something wrong, as Jenna did when she said that Starbucks gives away free WiFi--it doesn't--that's fair game for fact-checking bloggers, such as, in this case, Rachel. Indeed, such flyspecking is actually healthy, in the sense of providing a good feedback loop for on-air talent and for keeping everyone on his or her toes. (TCG appreciates such constructive criticism, too, btw-it's good for all of us!)
But here's the point: Rachel was doing her homework! She was watching FBN--that's how she caught the error about Starbucks.
But apparently, Jossip can't be bothered! Instead, Jossip just ran a nasty item, which passed off an 11-day old item from The Deal.com as if it were something fresh. Now, Cable Gamers, let us reason together: With FBN on the air, there to be watched and critiqued, why would Jossip hang its sparsely worded, unwittily bitchy hat on a peg that's nearly two weeks old? Mostly dismissing an amusing piece in Tuesday's The New York Times by Allesandra Stanley, which referred to FBN as "perky," a place where "the fun never stops." By contrast, The Deal piece was nasty, and yet it was the Deal that Jossip relied on for its own posting. And yet I am sure that even TheDeal doesn't think that an attempted preview of FBN dated October 5 has much validity after FBN has been on the air for the better part of two whole days.
Oh, of course, Jossip made another mention of FBN, citing the same Stanley piece in the NYT; this equally brief and unfunny Jossip item dwelt on the supposedly "gravity-defying bosoms" of Fox anchors. It's worth pointing out that Stanley made no reference, whatsoever to "gravity-defying bosoms," the quote is entirely the making of some Jossipist.
So what's going on here? What is it with such sloppy and lazily fact-free gossip? Why would Jossipprefer to get its tone from a stale piece in an obscure publication such as TheDeal, as opposed to a fresh piece in The New York Times? The Times, is still, after all, despite its many flaws, the numero uno media outlet in the country.
For perspective on this perverse choice by Jossip, Cable Gamers must turn their attention away, briefly, from cable news. We must look over into the realm of new media in New York City. And our guide will be Vanessa Grigoriadis. Specifically, she has written a knowingly brilliant article in the new issue of New York magazine, entitled, "Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass." The headline tells the tale, although the entire 6000-word piece deserves close consideration. Grigoriadis looks piercingly into the hyper-competitive, hyper-nasty world of blogs and bloggers, in which underpaid and overworked 20-somethings compete with each other to be nastier and edger. And so everyone is "annoying," or "slutty," or a "douchebag."
What a rotten, wicked bunch these bloggers are--at least for as long as they are doing what they are doing. Maybe they will clean up their act and shift away from the dark side, but so long as they work for the likes of Gawker's owner, Nick Denton, Grigoriadis is saying, they will be dwelling in websites of slime and sliminess.
And that's Gawker.
Jossip, of course, is a notch even below Gawker, in terms of reputation and revenue.
Which explains everything about this stupid post, whose malicious intent is exceeded only by its maladroit journalism.
Update: Jossip has a new item, on Joe Scarborough's reaction to FBN, here.
