The Cable Gamer is always looking around at new news products, because she knows that some day soon, all media will be Converged. That is, you will be looking at a screen, and it won't really matter to you whether that screen is from a TV channel or an Internet site.
So I was eager to take a look at TheBigMoney.com, put out by the folks at Slate.com. And yup, there's a "TBM Weekly Video Report," which will be worth keeping an eye on.
But what about TBM now? TCG has always liked Slate, even though it leans way to the left. But TBM is lousy, regardless of ideology, at least on its first day.
For one thing, it's sloppily written and sloppily edited. The screen grab above is from an article by the big-name writer Michael Lewis, but he obviously wrote the piece in a hurry, and then nobody edited it: The first line reads, "As important at it seems right now on Wall Street..." Note the offending "at," italicized in the preceding, which should, of course, be an "as." That's not very good--not good writing, not good editing.
OK, OK, just a typo. But here's a bigger thing: The two top dogs at TBM, James Ledbetter and Jacob Weisberg, collaborated on an article entitled "The SAGA Manifesto," which praises the "SAGA" companies. What's that? Let Ledbetter and Weisberg explain their little acronymic conceit:
Aside from the companies where you or members of your family work, how many do you actually care about? We think that for a lot of us, there are only four: Starbucks (SBUX), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon (AMZN)—call them the SAGA companies.
Got that? Those four companies are cool, and the rest of corporate America is pretty much uncool. What snobbery! And even more, what insularity! Where's Wal-Mart, or for that matter, Target? Where are any media companies? Where are companies that people love, such as L.L. Bean, or Patagonia? Or trusted standbyes, such as McDonald's or Applebee's? It might be hard for Manhattan-based espresso drinkers to believe it, but some people really love Harley-Davidson, and Ruger, and even plain ol' Ford Motor Company.
But TBM is oblivious to all that. This new site, run by liberals, for liberals, is content to just heap praise on over-praised companies, and their culture, all the while ignoring the rest of the country.
Revealingly, TBM includes a "socially responsible investing" feature, so that trust-fund babies can feel good about themselves. (Of course, TBM offers a distinctly liberal view of "socially responsible investing," heavy no gay rights, dismissive of family rights. But again, what else is new.
TCG projects a dim fate for this site, which looks likely to Converge nothing more than New York City and San Francisco, which are already plenty Converged.
