Have a NACAF Summer

The New York Times has finally got on the blog wagon. Deputy managing editor Jon Landman promised further blogs but noted that blogs “make some newspaper people nuts”:

In an memo to staff on Wednesday (first posted at LAObseved), Jon Landman, the paper’s deputy managing editor, promised a real estate blog by Damon Darlin in a few days and said more blogs were in the works. Even more “are at the idea stage,” he said. Noting that the paper has “come late to blogging” (trailing the Washington Post at a great distance, for example), he nevertheless declared, “Nothing is more important to the future of our web ambitions than to engage our sophisticated readers. Blogs are one way to do it.”

Still, he added, they “make some newspaper people nuts; they’re partisan, the thinking goes, and unfair and mean-spirited and sloppy about facts. Newspapers make some bloggers nuts; they think we’re dull and slow and pompous and jealous guardians of unearned ‘authority.’”

The new blog is Carpetbagger and it’s a temporary affair:

The Carpetbagger is a daily blog designed to run the length of the Oscar season. The gesture is one of a bulletin board about Oscar coverage and will not be in the handicapping business, in part because you would be well advised to listen closely to any of my predictions and then go the other way as fast as possible. (If no one knows anything in Hollywood, that must mean I know less.) The Academy Awards are preceded by a campaign that everyone pretends is not a campaign: screenings, mentions, and minor awards are all major elements of an ineffable process that can lead to over-the-top speeches and riches beyond imagination, or at least enough legs for robust DVD sales. The Carpetbagger is designed to examine those glitzy folkways as they unfurl, and to have some laughs along the way.

It seems pretty light and breezy but does manage a bit of investigation of its own from time to time. On Spielberg’s Munich exclusive with Time:

Pesky cynics have suggested that director Steven Spielberg granted Time the one and only interview in what has been a stealth campaign on behalf of the movie in return for cover placement and some editorial love. The Carpetbagger reached Time magazine managing editor Jim Kelly in Dubai – don’t ask; well okay, we sent him an email, but still – and he said it went like this: “I’d been hearing great buzz, but I hear great buzz about a lot of films. In this case, I had great interest in the topic, and was very curious how Spielberg would handle it,” he wrote. “We pushed to see it early, and the folks who saw it thought it was terrific, so I decided we should make it the cover.” The lavish licking of Mr. Spielberg’s legacy (alliteration is the crutch of the uninspired writer) could bring plenty of normal human beings in those middle places into the theater, but that is not what puts one’s grasping hands around the base of a golden artifact. However, many folks in the Academy in Los Angeles saw “Munich” this weekend at dedicated screenings, and there were second-hand reports of weeping, which is always a hopeful sign when it comes to statues.

Of course the problem with a mainstream newspaper blogger covering a topic like this is their willingness or ability to link to other mainstream competitors. I haven’t read it all but on a quick once over there are few links to TV show sites but I didn’t noticed any to the LA TImes or Washington Post! It’s early days.

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