Jeff Goldstein puts up a post pretending to liveblog the new Open Source Media conference (AKA the consortium formerly known as Pajamas Media), and once again, our intrepid media believes it is real. A sample of the post:
Ed, who I’d met once before at a Rocky Mountain Blogger bash, threw me a glance that said, “skip it, he’s Australian,” before sliding me a chair. “Take a seat. How was your flight?”
“Fine, nice,” I said, sitting down and looking around for the waitress. I hadn’t had anything to drink on the plane and was really craving a Guinness.
“So”—this from my left, where Roger Simon, sans his trademark fedora, sat smiling and bleary-eyed, holding aloft a half-empty Gibson glass as if to make a toast. “Protein wisdom is in the hizzouse, as they say! Welcome! Or as my friend Bill Bixby once said to a French prostitute (god rest his soul), ’bonjour, you plump little tart!’”
“Bullshit,” Blair hissed. “The Hulk never said any such thing. Any such thing. You fibbing, wizened bastard.”
“Absolutely he did,” Simon plucked a cocktail onion from his drink with his fingers. “Paris, 1979. Had her eating out of the palm of his hand, too. Literally. Cake and a little salted herring, I think. Christ, do I ever miss him.”
And the Philly Inquirer thinks it is real.
This isn’t the first time, as Salon thought his ‘fake but accurate’ posts from the RNC were legit.
At any rate, Pajamas Media is now Open Source Media, and I am a member. And nothing will change here, other than the advertising. I promise. Here is an AP story on OSM.
*** Update ***
Good on Dan Rubin. He updated his post. Emily Messner– are you reading this?
Steve
Pajamas Media has been fun to bash, and I am predisposed to dislike them, but what I saw of their launch preview actually seemed like a neat concept. It could be a very useful part of the blogosphere if they actually work on playing both sides of the street.
SomeCallMeTim
Has something been worked out with Christopher Lydon?
Jill
How can they play both sides of the street when they believe that Tammy Bruce is in the center?
Steve
All they’re really doing is aggregating blog links on a given subject. My point is that if they link mostly to conservative blogs, there are already plenty of bloggers who do that sort of thing, chiefly Instapundit. Whereas if they do a fair job of linking to opinions from both sides, it actually seems useful to me.
It’s hard to get both sides of an issue in the blogosphere because both sides are mostly guilty of not taking the other side seriously. The recent flap over white phosphorus was a great example, where 99% of blogging on the topic was completely one-sided, and you had to look really hard for the remaining 1% where someone actually engaged the other side’s arguments. I suspect one of the reasons this blog right here is popular is that you’re more likely to find a good discussion of both sides here, or at least a link to substantive discussions.
Steve S
You mean Jeff “Al Sharpton” Goldstein, don’t ya?
Laurence Simon
Ah, have we seen the start of bitememedia.com today?
Jane Finch
What Jill said. I can’t see the audience increasing beyond the already converted…one whiff of Charles Johnson or that horribly weird The Manolo (and I say that as a confirmed shoe expert who believes that it is impossible to have “too many” pairs of black pumps, let alone shoes) should be enough.
Daniel Rubin
I’m thinking Bitememedia.com would have some teeth.
carpeicthus
Check the blogroll. A thousand partisan warriors on the right, a couple weirdos with a great deal more old-style leftism than partisanship, like Corn and Sawicky, and what you get is a quarter-hearted attempt to pretend they’re rising above partisanship. Just enough to fool the tools.
carpeicthus
Oh, man, and Best of the Blogs is filled with crap like this: http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2005/11/beware_of_socia.html
Science is bad! What does an expert of stress have to say about the effects of stress!
pleonastic piranha
“open source media”? that’s a tad presumptuous, no?
Sal
“Has something been worked out with Johnny Lydon?”
Apologies to SomeCallMeTim.
Joining PJM (OSM, yeah right)lowers my respect for John. Not a lot, but some. This is an idea with “idiot wanker” written all over it. If blogs achieve a higher profile, I can see this parodied with almost actual content on SNL in a couple years.
Pb
Ha ha ha. Sorry. Just the acronym cracks me up. Inside joke.
(“OSM” = “Open Source Man” — a classic troll from /. (slashdot))