NYT reports own blog comments as actual newsNYT reports own blog comments as actual news

In an unfortunate attempt to get people to care about its boring The Empire Zone weblog, the paper is actually fronting a story about comments posted to that blog :

“Give us a break Mike,” a reader named Chris wrote to The New York Times’s Empire Zone blog, saying he thought the mayor was less interested in plowing the streets than he was in not interrupting the revenue flow from the pricey parking tickets.

Sure enough, there’s Chris’s comment, in all its glory. Funny the paper didn’t see fit to quote this streetsbloggery comment, by “pedestrian” :

[You] get a free parking space the rest of the time, so why are you complaining about having to pay for one when it snows and you don’t feel like doing what YOU have to do to move YOUR car out of the public’s space.

Instead, they preoccupied themselves with comments like “blogger” Angela’s:

“The result is a row of cars trapped on the sidelines by snow drifts,” said the blogger, who signed her name as Angela. “I don’t own a shovel [omfg—Doc] and I was unable to move my car today.”

Listen up, old people: the word “blogger” is not particularly hip in the first place, but using it for someone who has simply commented on a post is just going to make us NYT “readers” chuckle at your busted attempt to co-opt our lingo. Same goes for using “blog” when you mean “blog post,” or “post” when you mean “comment.” Yeah, it’s confusing, but you might want to take a minute, or two, to review the terminology before you file your next self-serving and uninteresting story about your The Empire Zone “blog.”

Extra! Extra! Or something.

Backtalk

I’m sorry, did Manhattan get transplanted to Oswego County or something? Do you know how much snow you would need to be physically unable to move your car? Here’s a note New York: the rest of the Northeast does not shut down because of a couple measly inches of snow. You want to maintain your cosmopolitan superiority? Then stop acting like such babies.

What cosmopolitan superiority? See, that’s where you Pittsburghers go wrong. We don’t think we’re better; we just think we’re here. And some of us think it makes sense to own cars but not a shovel–those are the ones we could do without. Actually, I’m going to put I don’t own a shovel in boldface right now because I can not stop thinking about it.

Add a comment