DXM History Repeats: Television

We're just five days away from the official fifth birthday of this little experiment of mine -- and as we look back at some of the topics you've seen me return to over and over again here at DXM throughout the last five years we're finally winding down the television portion of things. The following piece is another of my personal favorites (I realize I've said that a few times during this retrospective, but I'm entitled to a couple of columns I really love among, what, 5,500?); it details an audacious and immensely stupid return trip I made to the Time Warner Center -- home of CNN's New York City offices -- four months after being shown the door of the place by security. Some behind-the-scenes bonus commentary on this piece: It actually got me into a little bit of trouble because of the inside info I revealed regarding my friend Jacki Schechner's own departure from CNN. After this thing hit the Huffington Post, it started a wave of indignant telephone calls in several different directions, all of it winding up in my lap -- or my Blackberry's lap -- during, of all things, a Lamaze class.

The DXM Fifth Birthday Jubilee

Topic: CNN

Number of Posts: 291

"The Outsider" (Originally Published, 6.9.08)

The look on Bryan Bell's face alone would've made the whole thing worth the effort.

A current senior producer on CNN's American Morning and, ironically, the man who moved me up to New York from the network's Atlanta hub -- unwittingly setting off a chain of events that would eventually lead to me being fired -- Bell was one of the first people I ran into upon faux-casually strolling into the lobby of the Time Warner Center last Wednesday morning.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, sharply breaking his stride in my direction and contorting his face into a wide-eyed mask of appropriate surprise. He was, after all, suddenly standing face to face with a ghost -- someone who four months previously had been shown the door to the building and wasn't supposed to be allowed back in under any circumstances. Yet, there he was. There I was.

I shot Bell a smirk tinged with as much subversive attitude as I could muster -- which, given the situation and the level of insurgent impertinence required of me to bring it about, was quite a bit. "Going to the internet conference up on 10," I said as I glided past him, spinning and pushing a quick fist into his shoulder. "Good to see you, man."

He was still staring in some form of disbelief as I turned and squeezed between the closing doors of the elevator, locating the familiar button for the 10th floor almost involuntarily and punching it.

We're just about at the end of "Internet Week '08" here in New York City, the first of what organizers hope will be an annual event aimed, from what I can gather, at bringing together the powerful movers and shakers of the digital and media worlds in a concentrated effort to better understand and more fully utilize the internet to jack the American consumer. All week long, various seminars, panel discussions, cocktail parties, meet-and-greets and opportunities for hipster hook-ups have been going on throughout the city. And while Internet Week probably isn't the sort of boon to New York's prostitution industry that, say, last month's annual Fleet Week celebration was, it's admittedly allowing for an unusual confluence of ideas and cultures, as at least a few of the gaunt and scruffy Red Bull addicts of the internet underclass -- still basking in the post-orgasmic afterglow of Comic-Con -- are granted entrance to the Emerald City and afforded a rare audience with the mighty media wizards who usually prefer to remain safely behind the curtain of their office doors. For the people at the top, it means a chance to get a better handle on that whole "internet thing," while for the young upstarts on the bottom, it presents a host of opportunities to kiss a little Illuminati ass in the hope of landing the kind of job that will allow them to pay their hefty student loan tabs and fulfill their dreams of transforming themselves into that Ferrari-driving techno-smart-ass kid from the National Treasure movies.

As someone who violated the accepted protocol and did everything backwards -- slipping from the warm embrace of corporate media favor to tumble down and land in journalism's not-so-soft underbelly -- I haven't been sure of my personal place in the Internet Week festivities. Almost everyone in attendance has either already "arrived" or is looking to devour his or her way up to the top of the food chain; I've recently taken up residence near the bottom. A lot of them are nursing big aspirations of getting in; I still have a fresh shoe print on my ass from being kicked out.

In other words, I knew going into it that I'd probably spend a lot of time asking myself just what I was doing there -- regardless of where there happened to be at any given moment.

But the Time Warner Center wasn't like any other stop on my Internet Week itinerary: It's the building that houses CNN's New York studios, which means that it's where I worked for three years before being fired a few months ago for, of all things, blogging. Bryan Bell, my friend and former co-worker, was right in echoing and putting a finer point on my own sentiments: What the hell was I doing there?

I only had a few seconds to ponder whatever combination of brass balls and rank stupidity led me to venture back into the belly of the beast before the elevator doors separated, depositing me on the TWC's 10th floor for last Wednesday's "Conversations on the Circle" breakfast panel discussion, sponsored by Time Warner and moderated by CNN's porcine D.C. bureau chief, David Bohrman. As I stepped out of the recessed and muted lighting of the elevator, the first thing that struck me was the contrast. I'd never considered the Time Warner Center public office area from the perspective of a civilian and therefore hadn't noticed that everything a visitor sees -- from the moment he or she walks through the revolving door entrance and navigates security to the ride up in the high-speed elevator -- is covered in light-absorbing black slate and brushed steel. The whole place looks like the Death Star, only slightly more imposing. Walking in, you get the impression that somewhere in the building, there's a control room for a laser cannon mounted on the roof with enough firepower to destroy 30 Rock. But that sense of foreboding lifts the second you arrive on 10 -- the top visitor-accessible floor and the main conference area. It's almost as if the building's interior designers purposely aimed for a William Blake-style "heaven and hell" motif, with the dark and spare street-level lobby representing the heretical netherworld and the lofty heights of the 10th floor symbolizing the kind of elysian hereafter that awaits only the most noble servants of the mega-media ethos.

Put simply, everything on the 10th floor is so damn bright. The floors gleam with the polished reflection of overhead lighting, the halls are coated with an eggshell matte; there's even a surreal Vegas-like array of white pinpoint lights that flashes uselessly along one wall leading to the conference area, which is itself an awe-inspiring separate section of the floor complete with 20-foot high ceilings and massive picture windows providing spectacular views of the city beyond. At no point during time spent in the TWC's conference area will anyone cease to be impressed by its grandeur and reminded that he or she is being given a chance to converse with the enlightened beings atop Olympus.

I edged past the seemingly life-like welcome drones, the thin attractive women dressed in smart black Nehru suits waiting outside the elevators. Their job was to direct attendees to the Hudson conference room where the morning's seminar was being held, but I figured I knew where I was going and didn't need to ask directions -- plus, the further I kept my head down, the better. I'd already signed in downstairs, in hell, so when I arrived at my destination -- a spacious room dotted with several high, circular tables and featuring a spartan coffee and juice buffet station against one wall -- I dropped my shoulder bag and immediately made a bee-line for the food, my thinking being that if I was going to listen to Dave Bohrman for an hour-and-a-half, at least I could do it on a stomach full of high-quality freebies.

I had staked out a table and was engaged in a conversation with one of the morning's other attendees -- each of us about half-way through a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin -- when the announcement was made that it was time to begin. Slowly, everyone around me picked up their things and began filing into a separate room, some grabbing a road bagel or final bottle of water off the food table as they passed it. I didn't say anything out loud, but the revelation that we weren't going to be forced to stand throughout the seminar drew a small sigh of relief out of me; up until that point, it had been impossible not to notice the giant screen on the wall opposite the breakfast table, upon which was the projected image of four empty chairs -- one would assume, the places where our esteemed panelists would soon be sitting. At one point, I wondered if they'd just keep us happily noshing while, somewhere far removed from the riff-raff, Bohrman and company addressed us via teleconference. Either way, the sight of those four empty chairs looming over me and my fellow guests as we snacked was more than a little unnerving. I kept waiting for the faces of the Kryptonian High Council to suddenly appear, bellow that we were all "GUILTY" and banish us to the Media Phantom Zone.

Especially me.

I was the guiltiest man in the room, after all.

But as I joined the herd pushing into the next room -- as I readied myself to come face to face with one of CNN's most powerful news managers -- I wondered if I was the only one who knew it.

I followed the crowd of a couple hundred into the conference room proper, and the first thing I noticed was the view.

In what seemed to be a deliberate effort to further impress upon the attendees of the "Time Warner Conversations on the Circle: Internet and News" seminar just who the hell they were dealing with, the guest seating for the event faced toward the giant floor-to-ceiling windows which made up one entire wall. Opposite the glass was a panorama of the West Side of Manhattan that was even more breathtaking than anything we'd seen previously. I made my way over to the far side of the room and took a comfortable seat in the third row, the raised platform and four empty panelist chairs now no longer a projected image on a screen but a three-dimensional reality just a few feet in front of me. I reached into my bag, pulled out a reporter's notebook and waited for the discussion to begin -- or at least for security to realize the mistake that had been made and forcibly escort me out of the building.

Thankfully, the former happened before the latter.

David Bohrman was introduced as an award-winning producer and the "inventor" of the CNN/YouTube debates by a grinning representative from Time Warner who then flitted away to grab a seat directly in front of the dais. Even for a company flack, the rep seemed a little too eager to be there -- particularly so early in the morning; as I watched him adjust his front-row seat, I found myself waiting to see if he'd suddenly produce a clear, watermelon-proof tarp with which to cover himself. My split-second reverie was broken by the sound of Bohrman's voice in front of me and booming from the speakers overhead, drawing my attention back to the stage.

Besides maybe salesman-of-the-month at a Hummer dealership, David Bohrman looks like he could only be one of a few things: the unhealthily stressed-out head of a newsroom, a noticeably overindulgent corporate shill, or the manager of a political campaign. The fact that he is, in reality, all three should come as no surprise to anyone. Bohrman's a large man, with a hairline that's receded to just about the very top of his head and a well-groomed salt-and-pepper beard. He wears thin-framed eyeglasses that all but vanish against his prodigiously round face, as well as the kind of suspenders and J.C. Penney tie combo that make it seem as if he's purposely attempting to be a walking promotion for Larry King Live. Bohrman would be intimidating if he weren't such a damn news cliché in the Jerry Nachman vein, only infinitely more acquiescent to the hatchet men in the adminisphere. His claim to fame when it comes to supposedly bringing CNN into the 21st century is twofold: He was the chief architect of The Situation Room -- that daily sonic onslaught and tribute to the short-attention span -- and of course, he was, as was previously touted and would be throughout the length of the event, the "inventor" of the CNN/YouTube debates. (For the record, to hear CNN refer to these debates and their place in history, you'd have thought the things had cured cancer and aligned the planets.)

Bohrman quickly took a seat, leaning back to allow everyone an inescapable glimpse at the desperate effort the buttons down the belly of his shirt were undertaking to avoid popping off one-by-one into the crowd. I started to wonder if I should've brought my own tarp. He introduced the rest of the panel, the members of which were all conspicuously younger than him: There was Nadira Hira of Fortune magazine, and, as we'd find out, the group's designated "Gen-Y" expert; Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube (also, "the cute one"); and Michael Scherer, a Washington bureau correspondent for Time magazine who appeared, at least from where I was sitting, to be wearing a clip-on tie.

Bohrman started in almost immediately, posing the burning question "what is the internet?" to no one in particular. His own answer was hilariously ironic in its anachronism, given the subject matter.

"It reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit that asks, 'Is it a dessert topping or a floor wax? It's both!' Well that's kind of like the internet."

In my notes, I jotted down:

INTERNET = DESSERT TOPPING, FLOOR WAX

What I didn't bother writing down -- because I knew I'd remember it -- was that Bohrman started things off by referencing a gag that had been on TV at least three years before anyone on the panel was even born. It was readily apparent that this kind of just-not-getting-it would be standard operating procedure throughout the discussion -- at least as far as the CNN end of things was concerned.

For the next 20 minutes or so, the panel pontificated on the role of the internet not simply in politics in general, but in this particular presidential race. Hira, once again possessing a virtuosic grasp of "kids these days," brought up Obama's popularity on Facebook and compared the Obama campaign's use of the web and the McCain camp's to the Yankees taking on a little league team. Upon realizing that someone had broached the Facebook phenomenon, Bohrman interjected and reacted with surprise that people could actually forge any sort of meaningful bond with someone who's nothing more than a flat presence on a computer screen, then drew the only analogy he could, saying that a lot of people feel the same kind of connection to Wolf Blitzer.

"He's like a Facebook friend," he said.

I found myself wondering how Wolf would respond if I Superpoked him.

Bohrman then once again brought up the CNN/YouTube debates, just in case anyone had forgotten about them within the last two minutes.

What seemed to outright shock David Bohrman the most, however, was the notion that the panelists -- this new breed of journalists -- actually interacted with their audience, and did so free of many of the constraints that had previously been carefully put in place to shield both the members of the media and the organizations for which they worked. Bohrman may be a trailblazer when it comes to updating the philosophical mindset of the mainstream media, but both the technology and its true impact on what journalists do and what's expected of them is still well beyond his grasp. As I sat listening to him, I realized that likely without meaning to be, he was almost comically arrogant in his apparent belief that the multifarious corporate media giants could embrace the technology needed to thrive in the new world, yet still preserve the single most important necessity to their bottom line: control. Over and over again, the young panelists hammered home the fact that the internet has brought with it an unprecedented level of transparency in our society and culture, particularly when it comes to media organizations, and that the upcoming generation can smell marketed bullshit a thousand miles away, even through a broadband line. Bohrman, meanwhile, seemed to cling to the idea that the heavily-controlled CNN "brand" could translate perfectly to all forms of new media -- that those who are relying more than ever on the internet for their information will trust a big-profit-driven news organization without question the same way they did when they, quite frankly, had no other choice.

As the discussion went on, Bohrman seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of an outdated way of thinking. He dismissed The Daily Show and defended the top-down model of information dissemination, which basically dictates that the organizations at the supposed pinnacle of the media carry the most authority. By the same token, he belittled -- probably inadvertently -- the news gatherers and aggregators at the forefront of the new media revolution, saying that the stories they break can be judged by whether or not they "percolate up" to the major networks -- whether the king-makers on TV and in print deem them worthy of a place within their hallowed ranks.

At one point, Bohrman even mentioned his excitement at reading a column on The Huffington Post which linked back to, of course, CNN.com -- ostensibly proving his point.

It was right about then that my hand shot up.

For the next 45 minutes, I sat quietly as Bohrman looked directly at me -- meeting my gaze several times -- but never called on me. This, despite the fact that there were rarely more than a half-dozen hands raised at any given moment as the forum morphed into a question and answer session.

I continued to take notes and continued to keep my hand up, but was strangely by-passed over and over again. Whether Bohrman was aware of just who I was personally and/or my status as an ex-CNN employee and current troublemaking blogger I couldn't tell (although I'd bet that if he reads HuffPost, he's familiar with me in name if nothing else). One thing's for sure though: The conference wrapped up without me being able to ask my question.

Which is why, as the event ended and invited guests began making their way toward the doors, I stood up and headed in the direction of David Bohrman.

"Hi Dave, my name's Chez Pazienza," I said, smiling and extending my hand. "I don't know if you know who I am -- I used to be a producer here at CNN."

He returned my smile and handshake, but seemed distracted. Later, while leaving the building, I'd call my friend and fellow ex-CNNer Jacki Schechner, who used to work closely with Bohrman, and ask her if he was always so nervous and twitchy; she'd say no.

"I'm just curious," I asked, my eyes glued to the face atop his towering frame, "you mentioned reading The Huffington Post and said you were thrilled to see links there leading back to CNN's website. Do you ever read the comments from HuffPost readers whenever someone writes about CNN or, I hate to use this term, corporate media in general?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they're not usually very complimentary. A lot of people who get their news from the internet are doing it because they don't trust you guys anymore."

He shifted on his feet, his eyes darting well above my head before finding their way back to me. "I don't know -- I mean, I don't think that's true."

"My question I guess is, do you feel at all like CNN as a television organization -- your 'brand' -- is in competition with new media? How do you fight the perception that there's something very wrong with the mainstream media in this country?"

He paused for a moment, then gave me a relaxed smile. "I think organizations like CNN complement new media. There's a symbiotic relationship between the two. We don't see new media as some kind threat."

And with that final word, he took a step back, giving me the international symbol for polite dismissal.

"Alright, thanks for talking to me, Dave -- I appreciate it," I said, then, just for the hell of it, threw him a curveball: "By the way," I smiled, "Jacki Schechner says hi."

See, Bohrman was Jacki's immediate supervisor during her time as a CNN internet reporter, and despite having hired her, he was either unwilling or unable to take a stand in the face of network president Jon Klein's decision to fire her last August -- which might prove better than anything I witnessed at the "Conversations on the Circle" forum that both he and CNN have no idea what matters to those who subscribe to the internet ethos, as Jacki Schechner knows the blogosphere inside and out and was an incalculable asset to an organization attempting to assert its new media dominance.

Either way, I knew she'd be a sore subject, and watching Bohrman suddenly falter and fidget restlessly at the mention of her was even more satisfying than the look on Bryan Bell's face when I first walked in the door.

"Oh, well," he sputtered. "Yeah, I really miss her." He adjusted his shirt and ran his palms down the front of his pants.

"I'll tell her you said that," I said with a smile, turning and walking away.

Less than 60 seconds later, I was back where I'd been for the four months since being fired: outside the Time Warner Center and beyond the purview of CNN and mainstream media in general.

As I silently wandered the massive shopping area directly under the Time Warner Center's glacial blackened glass towers, I did my best to figuratively pat myself on the back for being willing to go back into the belly of the beast and face whatever I found there -- to stick to the ideals that might've gotten me fired in the first place.

I'd made it inside and back out again. I was safe.

So, to celebrate, I took the escalator up to the Bouchon Bakery and rewarded myself with a sandwich and a bowl of soup -- which I paid for with the unemployment debit card issued to me by the state of New York.

(Photo Credit: Time Warner Center, from southwestern corner of Central Park, by Braesikalla. More of his photographs can be found at Light Infusion. They're all fantastic. Please, you buy.)

Lo-Down and Out

Define irony: Ed Litvak is now making his living as a blogger.

For those with short memories, Ed was my former supervisor at CNN -- the executive producer of American Morning -- who fired me because in my spare time I wrote for this site. This blog.

Within in the past week, three people have sent me a link to Ed's own little internet venture -- it's a hyper-local Lower East Side-based news blog he started with his wife called "The Lo-Down" -- ostensibly so I might indulge in a little good-natured schadenfreude. For the record, Ed doesn't have to worry about whether or not he's violating CNN's draconian policy against writing online by doing what he's doing; if you'll remember, he was fired by his superiors 13 days after he fired me. Also for the record, and contrary to the devilish wishes of my friends, no, I'm not going to use this opportunity to knock my old boss. Yeah, it's an amusing twist of fate that Ed Litvak dropped out of network TV and resurfaced among the lowly blogging underclass -- but, hey, so did I, and I did it for a reason: After being unceremoniously canned, I turned my back on a really tough and toxic lifestyle in favor of doing something I love. Even though it's seemingly poetic that the guy who swung the ax is now doing essentially the same thing I was and still am -- especially after punishing me for it in the first place -- it's not like I can blame him for it.

I was always honest about Ed. He may have been a woefully inadequate manager of American Morning, but I didn't dislike him personally. On the contrary, I thought he was a decent enough guy.

So, if you happen to live on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, go ahead and give Ed's site a look.

See? I can be nice -- and now I've done my good deed for the day.

The Lo-Down: News from the Lower East Side

The Right To Write

Seeing as how I rerouted a few wires in my brain a while back in an effort to prevent myself from even thinking about my unceremonious exit from CNN two years ago, let alone writing anything new about it, it took Votar to bring up a really great point about CNN's hiring of Erick Erickson.

He's the managing editor and a contributor over at Redstate.com who's made a whole shitload of rude and controversial comments in the past, right? It's ironic that they even gave him a job considering their draconian policy on employee blogging -- but the big question is this: Will they attempt to restrict what he says on his site from here on out? I'm going to assume the answer is no; it was probably agreed upon in advance that CNN will have no say in the content of his columns. Still, it'll be interesting to see whether Erickson tones down the bombastic online playground talk now that he's been pulled up to "the show."

Regardless, it's a win-win for him -- and more proof that CNN doesn't really have an issue with online writing as long as it's something (or coming from someone) they can use to their advantage.

By the way, this is a really good, well thought-out piece on the hiring of Erickson and what it might possibly mean for the political big picture:

The Economist: Erick Erickson's Insult Problem/3.18.10

Quote of the Day

"Twitter is all noise, but to be able to harness it and group it and actually intelligently cluster it and derive moods and opinions from it is very interesting."

-- David Bohrman, CNN Senior Vice President and D.C. Bureau Chief

What he's talking about is CNN's very impressive use, following the State of the Union address, of a program that gathers Twitter responses from across the country and categorizes them. John King essentially surfed through the Twitter feed on CNN's "magic wall" to determine what the reaction was to President Obama's speech, breaking it down state by state. It was cutting edge technology actually put to good use, meaning that it served a clearly defined purpose in advancing the network's coverage -- as opposed to, say, the instantly groan-inducing phony hologram that CNN trotted out with great fanfare the night of the 2008 presidential election.

What's amusing about Bohrman's quote, though, is that it's classic Bohrman: Sure, he's touting what would seem to be a leap forward in the technology of information dissemination, but the level of pompous condescension to the new media platform that allows CNN to even make this advancement speaks volumes. Twitter is "all noise" put forth by the great unwashed, that is until the pros at CNN "harness it." What you're doing by tweeting isn't really "intelligent"; it only becomes so once a mega-media cable network puts it all together and makes sense of the cacophony.

Dave Borhman's a really, really bright guy, but nobody exploits new media technology while not understanding it in the least nor showing it even the slightest bit of respect like he does.

I hate to keep recycling pieces this week, but this is actually one of my favorites from DXM, and it gives you a really good idea of just how Bohrman and those like him at the top of the Corporate Media Behemoth food chain think. It's from June of 2008.


"The Outsider" (Originally Published, 6.9.08)

The look on Bryan Bell's face alone would've made the whole thing worth the effort.

A current senior producer on CNN's American Morning and, ironically, the man who moved me up to New York from the network's Atlanta hub -- unwittingly setting off a chain of events that would eventually lead to me being fired -- Bell was one of the first people I ran into upon faux-casually strolling into the lobby of the Time Warner Center last Wednesday morning.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked, sharply breaking his stride in my direction and contorting his face into a wide-eyed mask of appropriate surprise. He was, after all, suddenly standing face to face with a ghost -- someone who four months previously had been shown the door to the building and wasn't supposed to be allowed back in under any circumstances. Yet, there he was. There I was.

I shot Bell a smirk tinged with as much subversive attitude as I could muster -- which, given the situation and the level of insurgent impertinence required of me to bring it about, was quite a bit. "Going to the internet conference up on 10," I said as I glided past him, spinning and pushing a quick fist into his shoulder. "Good to see you, man."

He was still staring in some form of disbelief as I turned and squeezed between the closing doors of the elevator, locating the familiar button for the 10th floor almost involuntarily and punching it.

We're just about at the end of "Internet Week '08" here in New York City, the first of what organizers hope will be an annual event aimed, from what I can gather, at bringing together the powerful movers and shakers of the digital and media worlds in a concentrated effort to better understand and more fully utilize the internet to jack the American consumer. All week long, various seminars, panel discussions, cocktail parties, meet-and-greets and opportunities for hipster hook-ups have been going on throughout the city. And while Internet Week probably isn't the sort of boon to New York's prostitution industry that, say, last month's annual Fleet Week celebration was, it's admittedly allowing for an unusual confluence of ideas and cultures, as at least a few of the gaunt and scruffy Red Bull addicts of the internet underclass -- still basking in the post-orgasmic afterglow of Comic-Con -- are granted entrance to the Emerald City and afforded a rare audience with the mighty media wizards who usually prefer to remain safely behind the curtain of their office doors. For the people at the top, it means a chance to get a better handle on that whole "internet thing," while for the young upstarts on the bottom, it presents a host of opportunities to kiss a little Illuminati ass in the hope of landing the kind of job that will allow them to pay their hefty student loan tabs and fulfill their dreams of transforming themselves into that Ferrari-driving techno-smart-ass kid from the National Treasure movies.

As someone who violated the accepted protocol and did everything backwards -- slipping from the warm embrace of corporate media favor to tumble down and land in journalism's not-so-soft underbelly -- I haven't been sure of my personal place in the Internet Week festivities. Almost everyone in attendance has either already "arrived" or is looking to devour his or her way up to the top of the food chain; I've recently taken up residence near the bottom. A lot of them are nursing big aspirations of getting in; I still have a fresh shoe print on my ass from being kicked out.

In other words, I knew going into it that I'd probably spend a lot of time asking myself just what I was doing there -- regardless of where there happened to be at any given moment.

But the Time Warner Center wasn't like any other stop on my Internet Week itinerary: It's the building that houses CNN's New York studios, which means that it's where I worked for three years before being fired a few months ago for, of all things, blogging. Bryan Bell, my friend and former co-worker, was right in echoing and putting a finer point on my own sentiments: What the hell was I doing there?

I only had a few seconds to ponder whatever combination of brass balls and rank stupidity led me to venture back into the belly of the beast before the elevator doors separated, depositing me on the TWC's 10th floor for last Wednesday's "Conversations on the Circle" breakfast panel discussion, sponsored by Time Warner and moderated by CNN's porcine D.C. bureau chief, David Bohrman. As I stepped out of the recessed and muted lighting of the elevator, the first thing that struck me was the contrast. I'd never considered the Time Warner Center public office area from the perspective of a civilian and therefore hadn't noticed that everything a visitor sees -- from the moment he or she walks through the revolving door entrance and navigates security to the ride up in the high-speed elevator -- is covered in light-absorbing black slate and brushed steel. The whole place looks like the Death Star, only slightly more imposing. Walking in, you get the impression that somewhere in the building, there's a control room for a laser cannon mounted on the roof with enough firepower to destroy 30 Rock. But that sense of foreboding lifts the second you arrive on 10 -- the top visitor-accessible floor and the main conference area. It's almost as if the building's interior designers purposely aimed for a William Blake-style "heaven and hell" motif, with the dark and spare street-level lobby representing the heretical netherworld and the lofty heights of the 10th floor symbolizing the kind of elysian hereafter that awaits only the most noble servants of the mega-media ethos.

Put simply, everything on the 10th floor is so damn bright. The floors gleam with the polished reflection of overhead lighting, the halls are coated with an eggshell matte; there's even a surreal Vegas-like array of white pinpoint lights that flashes uselessly along one wall leading to the conference area, which is itself an awe-inspiring separate section of the floor complete with 20-foot high ceilings and massive picture windows providing spectacular views of the city beyond. At no point during time spent in the TWC's conference area will anyone cease to be impressed by its grandeur and reminded that he or she is being given a chance to converse with the enlightened beings atop Olympus.

I edged past the seemingly life-like welcome drones, the thin attractive women dressed in smart black Nehru suits waiting outside the elevators. Their job was to direct attendees to the Hudson conference room where the morning's seminar was being held, but I figured I knew where I was going and didn't need to ask directions -- plus, the further I kept my head down, the better. I'd already signed in downstairs, in hell, so when I arrived at my destination -- a spacious room dotted with several high, circular tables and featuring a spartan coffee and juice buffet station against one wall -- I dropped my shoulder bag and immediately made a bee-line for the food, my thinking being that if I was going to listen to Dave Bohrman for an hour-and-a-half, at least I could do it on a stomach full of high-quality freebies.

I had staked out a table and was engaged in a conversation with one of the morning's other attendees -- each of us about half-way through a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin -- when the announcement was made that it was time to begin. Slowly, everyone around me picked up their things and began filing into a separate room, some grabbing a road bagel or final bottle of water off the food table as they passed it. I didn't say anything out loud, but the revelation that we weren't going to be forced to stand throughout the seminar drew a small sigh of relief out of me; up until that point, it had been impossible not to notice the giant screen on the wall opposite the breakfast table, upon which was the projected image of four empty chairs -- one would assume, the places where our esteemed panelists would soon be sitting. At one point, I wondered if they'd just keep us happily noshing while, somewhere far removed from the riff-raff, Bohrman and company addressed us via teleconference. Either way, the sight of those four empty chairs looming over me and my fellow guests as we snacked was more than a little unnerving. I kept waiting for the faces of the Kryptonian High Council to suddenly appear, bellow that we were all "GUILTY" and banish us to the Media Phantom Zone.

Especially me.

I was the guiltiest man in the room, after all.

But as I joined the herd pushing into the next room -- as I readied myself to come face to face with one of CNN's most powerful news managers -- I wondered if I was the only one who knew it.

I followed the crowd of a couple hundred into the conference room proper, and the first thing I noticed was the view.

In what seemed to be a deliberate effort to further impress upon the attendees of the "Time Warner Conversations on the Circle: Internet and News" seminar just who the hell they were dealing with, the guest seating for the event faced toward the giant floor-to-ceiling windows which made up one entire wall. Opposite the glass was a panorama of the West Side of Manhattan that was even more breathtaking than anything we'd seen previously. I made my way over to the far side of the room and took a comfortable seat in the third row, the raised platform and four empty panelist chairs now no longer a projected image on a screen but a three-dimensional reality just a few feet in front of me. I reached into my bag, pulled out a reporter's notebook and waited for the discussion to begin -- or at least for security to realize the mistake that had been made and forcibly escort me out of the building.

Thankfully, the former happened before the latter.

David Bohrman was introduced as an award-winning producer and the "inventor" of the CNN/YouTube debates by a grinning representative from Time Warner who then flitted away to grab a seat directly in front of the dais. Even for a company flack, the rep seemed a little too eager to be there -- particularly so early in the morning; as I watched him adjust his front-row seat, I found myself waiting to see if he'd suddenly produce a clear, watermelon-proof tarp with which to cover himself. My split-second reverie was broken by the sound of Bohrman's voice in front of me and booming from the speakers overhead, drawing my attention back to the stage.

Besides maybe salesman-of-the-month at a Hummer dealership, David Bohrman looks like he could only be one of a few things: the unhealthily stressed-out head of a newsroom, a noticeably overindulgent corporate shill, or the manager of a political campaign. The fact that he is, in reality, all three should come as no surprise to anyone. Bohrman's a large man, with a hairline that's receded to just about the very top of his head and a well-groomed salt-and-pepper beard. He wears thin-framed eyeglasses that all but vanish against his prodigiously round face, as well as the kind of suspenders and J.C. Penney tie combo that make it seem as if he's purposely attempting to be a walking promotion for Larry King Live. Bohrman would be intimidating if he weren't such a damn news cliché in the Jerry Nachman vein, only infinitely more acquiescent to the hatchet men in the adminisphere. His claim to fame when it comes to supposedly bringing CNN into the 21st century is twofold: He was the chief architect of The Situation Room -- that daily sonic onslaught and tribute to the short-attention span -- and of course, he was, as was previously touted and would be throughout the length of the event, the "inventor" of the CNN/YouTube debates. (For the record, to hear CNN refer to these debates and their place in history, you'd have thought the things had cured cancer and aligned the planets.)

Bohrman quickly took a seat, leaning back to allow everyone an inescapable glimpse at the desperate effort the buttons down the belly of his shirt were undertaking to avoid popping off one-by-one into the crowd. I started to wonder if I should've brought my own tarp. He introduced the rest of the panel, the members of which were all conspicuously younger than him: There was Nadira Hira of Fortune magazine, and, as we'd find out, the group's designated "Gen-Y" expert; Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube (also, "the cute one"); and Michael Scherer, a Washington bureau correspondent for Time magazine who appeared, at least from where I was sitting, to be wearing a clip-on tie.

Bohrman started in almost immediately, posing the burning question "what is the internet?" to no one in particular. His own answer was hilariously ironic in its anachronism, given the subject matter.

"It reminds me of that old Saturday Night Live skit that asks, 'Is it a dessert topping or a floor wax? It's both!' Well that's kind of like the internet."

In my notes, I jotted down:

INTERNET = DESSERT TOPPING, FLOOR WAX

What I didn't bother writing down -- because I knew I'd remember it -- was that Bohrman started things off by referencing a gag that had been on TV at least three years before anyone on the panel was even born. It was readily apparent that this kind of just-not-getting-it would be standard operating procedure throughout the discussion -- at least as far as the CNN end of things was concerned.

For the next 20 minutes or so, the panel pontificated on the role of the internet not simply in politics in general, but in this particular presidential race. Hira, once again possessing a virtuosic grasp of "kids these days," brought up Obama's popularity on Facebook and compared the Obama campaign's use of the web and the McCain camp's to the Yankees taking on a little league team. Upon realizing that someone had broached the Facebook phenomenon, Bohrman interjected and reacted with surprise that people could actually forge any sort of meaningful bond with someone who's nothing more than a flat presence on a computer screen, then drew the only analogy he could, saying that a lot of people feel the same kind of connection to Wolf Blitzer.

"He's like a Facebook friend," he said.

I found myself wondering how Wolf would respond if I Superpoked him.

Bohrman then once again brought up the CNN/YouTube debates, just in case anyone had forgotten about them within the last two minutes.

What seemed to outright shock David Bohrman the most, however, was the notion that the panelists -- this new breed of journalists -- actually interacted with their audience, and did so free of many of the constraints that had previously been carefully put in place to shield both the members of the media and the organizations for which they worked. Bohrman may be a trailblazer when it comes to updating the philosophical mindset of the mainstream media, but both the technology and its true impact on what journalists do and what's expected of them is still well beyond his grasp. As I sat listening to him, I realized that likely without meaning to be, he was almost comically arrogant in his apparent belief that the multifarious corporate media giants could embrace the technology needed to thrive in the new world, yet still preserve the single most important necessity to their bottom line: control. Over and over again, the young panelists hammered home the fact that the internet has brought with it an unprecedented level of transparency in our society and culture, particularly when it comes to media organizations, and that the upcoming generation can smell marketed bullshit a thousand miles away, even through a broadband line. Bohrman, meanwhile, seemed to cling to the idea that the heavily-controlled CNN "brand" could translate perfectly to all forms of new media -- that those who are relying more than ever on the internet for their information will trust a big-profit-driven news organization without question the same way they did when they, quite frankly, had no other choice.

As the discussion went on, Bohrman seemed to sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of an outdated way of thinking. He dismissed The Daily Show and defended the top-down model of information dissemination, which basically dictates that the organizations at the supposed pinnacle of the media carry the most authority. By the same token, he belittled -- probably inadvertently -- the news gatherers and aggregators at the forefront of the new media revolution, saying that the stories they break can be judged by whether or not they "percolate up" to the major networks -- whether the king-makers on TV and in print deem them worthy of a place within their hallowed ranks.

At one point, Bohrman even mentioned his excitement at reading a column on The Huffington Post which linked back to, of course, CNN.com -- ostensibly proving his point.

It was right about then that my hand shot up.

For the next 45 minutes, I sat quietly as Bohrman looked directly at me -- meeting my gaze several times -- but never called on me. This, despite the fact that there were rarely more than a half-dozen hands raised at any given moment as the forum morphed into a question and answer session.

I continued to take notes and continued to keep my hand up, but was strangely by-passed over and over again. Whether Bohrman was aware of just who I was personally and/or my status as an ex-CNN employee and current troublemaking blogger I couldn't tell (although I'd bet that if he reads HuffPost, he's familiar with me in name if nothing else). One thing's for sure though: The conference wrapped up without me being able to ask my question.

Which is why, as the event ended and invited guests began making their way toward the doors, I stood up and headed in the direction of David Bohrman.

"Hi Dave, my name's Chez Pazienza," I said, smiling and extending my hand. "I don't know if you know who I am -- I used to be a producer here at CNN."

He returned my smile and handshake, but seemed distracted. Later, while leaving the building, I'd call my friend and fellow ex-CNNer Jacki Schechner, who used to work closely with Bohrman, and ask her if he was always so nervous and twitchy; she'd say no.

"I'm just curious," I asked, my eyes glued to the face atop his towering frame, "you mentioned reading The Huffington Post and said you were thrilled to see links there leading back to CNN's website. Do you ever read the comments from HuffPost readers whenever someone writes about CNN or, I hate to use this term, corporate media in general?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, they're not usually very complimentary. A lot of people who get their news from the internet are doing it because they don't trust you guys anymore."

He shifted on his feet, his eyes darting well above my head before finding their way back to me. "I don't know -- I mean, I don't think that's true."

"My question I guess is, do you feel at all like CNN as a television organization -- your 'brand' -- is in competition with new media? How do you fight the perception that there's something very wrong with the mainstream media in this country?"

He paused for a moment, then gave me a relaxed smile. "I think organizations like CNN complement new media. There's a symbiotic relationship between the two. We don't see new media as some kind threat."

And with that final word, he took a step back, giving me the international symbol for polite dismissal.

"Alright, thanks for talking to me, Dave -- I appreciate it," I said, then, just for the hell of it, threw him a curveball: "By the way," I smiled, "Jacki Schechner says hi."

See, Bohrman was Jacki's immediate supervisor during her time as a CNN internet reporter, and despite having hired her, he was either unwilling or unable to take a stand in the face of network president Jon Klein's decision to fire her last August -- which might prove better than anything I witnessed at the "Conversations on the Circle" forum that both he and CNN have no idea what matters to those who subscribe to the internet ethos, as Jacki Schechner knows the blogosphere inside and out and was an incalculable asset to an organization attempting to assert its new media dominance.

Either way, I knew she'd be a sore subject, and watching Bohrman suddenly falter and fidget restlessly at the mention of her was even more satisfying than the look on Bryan Bell's face when I first walked in the door.

"Oh, well," he sputtered. "Yeah, I really miss her." He adjusted his shirt and ran his palms down the front of his pants.

"I'll tell her you said that," I said with a smile, turning and walking away.

Less than 60 seconds later, I was back where I'd been for the four months since being fired: outside the Time Warner Center and beyond the purview of CNN and mainstream media in general.

As I silently wandered the massive shopping area directly under the Time Warner Center's glacial blackened glass towers, I did my best to figuratively pat myself on the back for being willing to go back into the belly of the beast and face whatever I found there -- to stick to the ideals that might've gotten me fired in the first place.

I'd made it inside and back out again. I was safe.

So, to celebrate, I took the escalator up to the Bouchon Bakery and rewarded myself with a sandwich and a bowl of soup -- which I paid for with the unemployment debit card issued to me by the state of New York.

Where Nobody Knows Your Name

So I picked up the phone and called John Sutter of CNN.com.

For those who weren't paying attention late last week, he's the guy who put together a piece for the CNN website on people who've been fired for blogging. A piece which conveniently omitted the person who'd recently been fired by CNN for blogging (that would be me). While I don't take the "oversight" all that seriously, as it doesn't surprise me in the least, I admit that I've been curious as to whether anyone on the inside considered it a dereliction of duty not to fully disclose their network's attachment to a story.

For the record, Sutter seems like a good guy and I'm not going to bash him in any way. According to him, he pitched the idea for the story and (I'll let you reach your own conclusions about this) swears that he had never heard of me and had no idea that CNN had ever fired anyone for blogging. It seems like slightly lackluster research to me, given that a New York Times story with the headline "CNN Producer Says He was Fired for Blogging" is one of the first things that pops up if you Google most variations of the phrase "fired for blogging." Once again, though, I'm not slamming Sutter -- mostly because he offered me what little information he felt he could without in any way overstepping his bounds and attempting to speak for the network. (So leave the poor kid alone, CNN management.)

Anyway, there's that.

Make of it what you will.

My Wife Made Fun of Me On the Internet and All She Got was This Stupid Pink Slip

Tiffanie Wong's husband may be annoying, but hopefully he's got a good job -- because she could soon be unemployed.

This morning on CBS's ratings-anemic Early Show, the Brooklyn-based husband and wife blogging team of Mark Joyella and the aforementioned Wong did a guest segment in which they pushed Wong's novelty blog, My Husband is Annoying. If you haven't seen the site for yourself, you're not missing too much. On it, Wong chronicles every little dumb-ass thing her husband does, portraying him as a lazy but harmless doofus who wouldn't be able to find his ass with a funnel and axle grease were it not for her -- basically taking the meme popularized by TV commercials and bad sitcoms and running it into the digital age. Wong even solicits and prints testimonials from other women eager to publicly emasculate their own husbands and, one would imagine, risk being smothered with a pillow in the middle of the night. Think of it as Stuff Obnoxious White Women Don't Like.

Here's the thing, though: Tiffanie Wong is a technical director at CNN.

As in the same CNN that fired me for blogging without my having gone on national television to boast about what I was doing.

Wong and Joyella say they hope to parlay the success of the blog into a book deal or, continuing the Ouroborial cycle of pop culture mediocrity in this country, yes, a sitcom. Yeah, good luck with that. I can tell them from experience that these days bloggers, even ones with good ideas, are a dime-a-dozen -- and that 15 minutes runs out damn quick. Being on network television and drawing a lot of people to the site you put together in your spare time looks great on paper, but it sure as hell doesn't pay the bills. Trust me. I've already said that I don't regret anything I've done -- not a bit. But if all the publicity I received when I first got canned and this site really took off had correlated to actual cash flow, I wouldn't be bothering with pledge drives every few months.

What's going to happen to Tiffanie Wong? I'm betting she'll be fired in a matter of days if not hours. Rick Davis, CNN's napoleonic head of standards and practices, probably already has his hand on the lever that will drop Wong into a shark tank beneath her feet (unless he gave her prior approval to blog on her off hours, which is certainly possible but seems unlikely given CNN's draconian stance on social networking). None of this will matter as long as her writing aspirations turn a profit -- and I certainly wouldn't be hypocritical and claim that keeping a torturous gig in cable news is preferrable to following your dreams. But Newsblues.com is already calling Wong and Joyella, "The latest favorite flavor in New York's dangerous echo chamber of manufactured self-importance."

Hey, at least someone's talking about them, though -- right? That's all it takes to bring the dough pouring in -- right? Right?

By the way, for what it's worth, I've worked with Mark Joyella. He really is kind of annoying.

And Now Ladies and Gentlemen, the Homerun of Irony

CNN.com: The Coming-Out Stories of Anonymous Bloggers (and the Price They Paid at Work)/8.21.09

Adventures in Passive-Aggression

I stand corrected. As it turns out, there actually was a time before being fired that I published something on this site which directly referenced my job at CNN. Although I never specifically identified where it was that I worked, I wrote a piece back in June of last year that described, in detail, a very bad day I had at the office. It was posted, then quickly taken down after I thought twice about letting my anger and desire to vent my frustration overwhelm my better judgment. This is the first time this column has appeared here in more than a year. It's infinitely more entertaining now that you know exactly which network and show I'm talking about.

I seem to remember making a promise a while back that at no point would this little experiment of mine turn into a "blog" in the traditional sense -- that I'd do everything in my power to prevent the columns that you find here from ever becoming a somewhat dull chronicle of what I'm doing at any given moment.

In other words, this is not my fucking diary.

And yet, there's no denying that although my primary goal here is to entertain, inform, enrage, provoke, pester, what-have-you, the feel of my MacBook's warmth on my lap and the rythmic tapping of my fingers against its shallow keys does hold a certain therapeutic value for your humble narrator, and at the moment this is monumentally important. I make this declaration simply because I had the kind of day at work that, as of yet, nothing has been able to anesthetize.

Not beating the living hell out of a punching bag at the gym for an hour. Not playing a round or two of that Orbitz golf game that pops up on my computer desktop every so often like some internet Jehovah's Witness. Not lighting up a Montecristo Rothschilde. Nothing.

So, maybe all that's left is to get it off my chest. If I earned a living as, say, a drawbridge tender (my dream job -- no lie), relaying the events of my workday to a mass audience would likely be unforgivably self-indulgent. However, because I spend most of my day wearing the hat of a network news producer, I might be able to pass the whole thing off as necessary for the general public's overall edification. I can tell myself that, goddammit, it's important that you people are fully aware just what kind of utter nonsense is involved in bringing you the important events of the day.

Yeah, that's it. That'll work just fine.

Please keep in mind that although by now some of you may have definite theories regarding which television network I work for, I still have to maintain some semblance of discretion. That said, this is the first time that I've pulled back the curtain and allowed anyone an even mildly unflattering look behind the scenes at the daily news program of which I'm currently a part. So, you know, let's just keep it between you and me -- okay?

Actually, now that I think about it -- none of what you're about to read is true. I made it all up.

We'll start at the beginning of my entirely fictional story:

00:00 (Zero Hour)

The alarm on my Blackberry goes off, jolting me out of a dream involving drawbridges (see?). Unlike most mornings, the first words out of my mouth don't bear a striking resemblance to the incomprehensible cursing that Yosemite Sam used to mutter under his breath in the old Warner Brothers cartoons; that's because my wife and I had a wonderful, relaxing weekend and for the first time in a very long time I feel pretty damn good. My current job may not necessarily be the most rewarding; it certainly isn't what I expected to be doing at this point in my life. Still, I shower and dress with a Zen-like calm -- content in the knowledge that, as Talk Talk once said so beautifully, life's what you make it. This morning, I'm determined to make it something great.

A few hours from now, this sentiment will have been crushed into a thousand itty-bitty pieces.

+00:45

I arrive at the office to find that we're alarmingly short-staffed. Apparently, no one realized that one of our key line producers -- a person responsible for actually taking the show into the control room -- was still on vacation. I put my bag down at my desk and meander over to the coffee machine -- using the hot water to make myself a cup of tea. I silently repeat my pledge to make life what I, uh, make it -- over and over -- thereby stopping myself from taking a running start and jumping through the plate glass and to the street far below. I'm Zen, baby.

+01:23

After reading through the day's news, which is admittedly worthless as I really only need to know one or two stories involving fires and dead pregnant women, I begin looking over the show -- my iPod earphones plugged tightly into my head, allowing the serene sounds of Coltrane's In a Sentimental Mood to comfort me as I begin my workday proper.

The big stories of the day, as expected: California fires, a dead pregnant woman, and, supposedly, the World's Ugliest Dog.

If I had actually gone to journalism school, I'd be furious that I had gone to journalism school for this.

+02:41

The first real speed-bump of the day (or at least something with the IQ of a speed-bump): Our regular anchor being off, we've drafted one of the best-looking people in television news to replace him. Unfortunately, this person is -- in keeping with my Warner cartoon theme, and in the words of Foghorn Leghorn -- about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. Our writing staff now finds itself forced to put pronunciation guides into our scripts for any word above a fourth-grade reading level.

I wonder for a brief moment if someone should be proactive and inform him before air that Charles Taylor is the former Liberian president, and not a former librarian.

+04:00

We're trying to come up with four or five ways to say what is essentially the same thing; this dilemma is pretty much par for the course when you have a large block of news and have chosen to fill it by throwing your entire reporting team at every conceivable angle of the Boyfriend-of-Missing-White-Woman-Found-Dead-Now-Charged-with-Murder du jour. I knew this story was going to be "huge" simply because I had noticed over the weekend that despicable ambulance-chaser Nancy Grace had actually come in on her day off to do a "Very Special" edition of her show on CNN Headline News.

One of our scripts reads, "The question everyone is asking is: Who is Bobby Cutts?" -- a reference to the man now charged with killing Ohio mother Jessie Davis.

Truer words were never spoken. Who the hell is Bobby Fucking Cutts?

+05:10

After two more cups of tea, a Diet Coke and a bag of Onion & Garlic Soy Crisps (because the damn machines are out of Bugles), I'm sufficiently amped -- although still maintaining as much Zen as possible, given the circumstances. Those circumstances would be the fact that we as a news organization have already begun our slavish, Riefenstahlian proselytizing in the name of our techno-fuhrer, Steve Jobs. Apple doesn't even need a marketing campaign for the iPhone; it has us -- the mass media. In Jobs We Trust.

I glance down at my Motorola Razr on my desk. I feel so 2005.

Still, I pick it up and cradle it somewhat lovingly -- suddenly finding an odd kinship with it. I imagine it feels sad, belittled and inferior right about now.

I can relate.

+06:30

I get an e-mail from a friend of mine in Miami who's also in TV news. He's in contact with the producers at another network; apparently Ann Coulter is -- at this very moment -- stalking their halls, waiting to go live on the air.

Someone once again invited Ann Coulter to appear as a guest on a supposedly respectable news show.

I hate this business.

+6:55

The show is underway and, as expected, we're falling behind simply because we're sorely lacking people. Also as expected, the executives are acting as if we're at full-staff, which means that -- when the show inevitably collapses on-air -- it will be the little people who get taken out behind the wood-shed. Two go out. One comes back.

I'm motherfucking Zen goddammit.

+7:12

Our fill-in anchor has just mispronounced Mao, saying not "MOW" but "MAY-oh."

I immediately make sure he has a pronunciation guide for an upcoming story about Mensa (MEN-suh), as he's obviously not going to have the slightest clue how to say that particular word correctly.

+7:45

Our other anchor misreads a script -- inadvertently turning a story about San Francisco's mayor banning bottled water in all city offices to a story about San Francisco's mayor banning bottled water in the entire city.

Well, it certainly makes for a better story.

+8:20

Our main guest booker shouts across the newsroom, "I FUCKING HATE THIS PLACE!" rips off her headset and stomps away.

+8:30

Overwhelmed, understaffed and completely against the wall, we're suddenly commanded to juggle the end of the show in an effort to make room for a new guest. Possibly General David Petraeus? Terrorism expert Peter Bergen perhaps? Fareed Zakaria with analysis on the situation in Gaza?

Nope, it's the kid who put his cell phone number up on YouTube -- the one who's since met a girl online whom he's now asked to marry him after a mere month and a half.

Talk Talk was wrong. Life isn't what you make it; it's what your bosses make it.

And if they happen to be in the news business -- they make it shit.

My Zen is fucked.

+8:45

Eight hours and forty-five minutes after I woke up in a great mood, I'm trying to prevent myself from taking the entire newsroom hostage. My bosses walk out of the control room and into their respective offices one at a time -- saying nothing.

Not a word.

Not a "thank you" to the skeleton crew who pulled off a nearly impossible feat.

Nothing.

Finally, one of the show's line producers walks past my desk. I look up at him from my chair. "Say something nice to me, Alex," I say quietly. "Tell me we did good."

"You guys were great," he says. "I have no idea how we pulled it off."

Neither do I -- and I have no idea how we'll do it again tomorrow.

Or why for that matter.

Policing Themselves To Death

Last week, I published CNN's strict new internet writing policy in its entirety on this site (On Notice/8.1.08). The internal memo had been leaked to me by a source on the inside, and in my rush to make it public I didn't bother analyzing or providing any insight as to what it meant or what the possible ramifications of the policy could be; I just put the thing out there, quick and dirty. I promised in the comment section of that post that I'd have more on the subject later, and here now is the full column on the CNN blogging policy that will appear in the Huffington Post later today. You nice folks will recognize a couple of lines cribbed from my original piece last week.

Believe it or not, I'd like nothing more than to let the subject of my firing from CNN go once and for all.

It's been almost six months since I was shown the office door, supposedly for the unpardonable sin of maintaining a personal blog without allowing the network's Standards and Practices department the right to pre-approve the material posted there. During that time, I've not so much lamented losing a job I wasn't enjoying anymore anyway as I've tried to point out the ways in which the public firing of a popular blogger -- as well as the lack of an identifiable policy on employee blogging in general -- proves that CNN's thinking when it comes to the new media revolution is hopelessly ass-backward. I've always maintained that I and others like me shouldn't have been summarily fired, not because we didn't violate the network's policy against blogging and social networking, but because there was no policy in place to violate. CNN managers, however, insisted that the one-line edict in the network's employee handbook forbidding staffers to write on the outside without company approval acted as a kind of catch-all rule-of-thumb, regardless of whatever nuances or gray areas the march of technology might be bringing to the table.

Well, they insisted it up until a few days ago, anyway.

Just when I thought it was safe to finally put the saga of CNN and its passive-aggressive aversion to web-savvy staffers in the ground, someone on the inside e-mailed me the network's official "NEW POLICY REGARDING PERSONAL WRITINGS ONLINE" late last week. It's lengthy. It's thorough. It's shockingly absurd. It's, to put it mildly, Draconian. It also proves not only that CNN still doesn't get it when it comes to what new media means for the future of journalism, but that the network -- either through ignorance or outright stupidity -- is perfectly content to police itself into irrelevancy.

Behold, just a few of the near-totalitarian restrictions on personal communication that you can expect as a CNN employee, as relayed via a mock question-and-answer session with the enlightened beings of Standards and Practices:

CAN I HAVE MY OWN WEBSITE OR BLOG?

Yes. But you should notify your supervisor about it, to have it cleared as a non-conflict for your work... In addition, you should not operate under an alias on your website or blog in order to participate in biased public behavior. Despite your use of an alias to express a view that may present a conflict of interest, it is still your opinion. Your real identity and occupation could be revealed by someone else at any point.

CAN I COMMENT IN A CHAT ROOM?

It depends on what you're commenting on. A chat room is, of course, a public place. If you identify yourself, or could in any way be identified, then you should not comment on anything CNN reports on. Remember, even though you don't say who you are, someone else might reveal your identity. AND if you're discussing things that are in the news, keep in mind you could be seen as representing CNN, and therefore you should not comment on the issues CNN covers.

HOW ABOUT MYSPACE, FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES?

Again, on these sites only write about something CNN would not report on. Don't list preferences regarding political parties or newsmakers that are the subject of CNN reporting. Local issues that CNN wouldn't report on would be OK. And of course private communication with friends or family about issues that aren't in the news is fine.

WHAT IF I DON'T WORK DIRECTLY WITH NEWS GATHERING OR NEWS REPORTING BUT ELSEWHERE WITHIN THE SUPPORTING DEPARTMENTS OF CNN?

In discussions about this issue with your colleagues across CNN, it was felt by them that it was important to have this policy apply across the board. If you don't follow this policy, and you are officially a CNN employee, the loss of objectivity won't just apply to you, but could be associated with CNN. Therefore this policy applies to all CNN employees in all departments worldwide.

WHAT ABOUT FREELANCE EMPLOYEES AND INTERNS?

Supervisors should make sure freelancers and interns read this policy now -- or on their first day going forward -- and commit to following it.

So, to recap: As a CNN employee -- any CNN employee in any department, even the per diems -- you're not to offer an opinion to anyone in the general public at any time, including your own family, on any story CNN is covering or may cover at some point in the future (which, unless you're psychic, includes just about everything).

Joining a cult wouldn't force you to suppress your emotions and cut yourself off from the outside world this absolutely.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn't have to be this way. In fact, it shouldn't be this way, not if CNN hopes to survive in an era that's seeing sweeping changes in how journalism is practiced and news coverage is disseminated. A friend of mine named Terry Heaton is a vice president and the new media guru for Audience Research and Development, one of the country's largest and most powerful media consulting firms -- and he may have put it best. He recently said about the CNN edict:

"I think this document is ridiculous, because transparency -- not a muzzle -- is the new ethical standard for a reinvented journalism, and frankly, any journalist who can live with this ought to examine his or her own calling. Free speech is not a right to be given up in the name of some hodgepodge nonsense called 'objectivity.' How noble, or not."

This one quote makes two points, and makes them blisteringly clear: A) the way news is covered has changed drastically and any attempt to assert old-school "control," over either the flow of information itself or the image of the almighty mainstream news organization as the trusted arbiter of it, is a fool's errand, and B) objectivity, to put it bluntly, doesn't matter. In fact, the new CNN policy proves in no uncertain terms that objectivity is a lie; it doesn't exist. And yet news organizations have been behaving as if it does, and lauding it as the standard to which all true journalism adheres for decades. What CNN's internet policy implicitly states -- the dirty secret that it inadvertently pulls back the curtain on -- is that the network is perpetrating a fraud on its audience, attempting to convince viewers that because they can't see the bias, there is no bias. Line after line in the memo, CNN makes it clear that the important thing isn't to not have an opinion (because that, believe it or not, would be impossible), it's to not let anyone know what that opinion is. It doesn't matter what you're beaming out to millions of homes, it matters how the people in those millions of homes perceive it.

Once again though, there's no need for it to be this way. A newsroom full of Vulcan-like automatons -- or, in reality, thinking, feeling people who've simply been led to believe that they need to bury the fiercely opinionated nature that's the hallmark of every truly great journalist -- does no one any good, least of all the public that the media purport to serve. What's more, whether they realize it or not, the authors of the CNN memo are effectively carpet-bombing the network's ability to procure future journalists. Does Rick Davis, the Napoleonic head of CNN's S&P department, really believe that the political and cultural leanings of every MySpaced, Facebooked and blog-happy kid recruited by the network from here on out won't be common knowledge by the time he or she first walks through CNN's front door? Digital footprints last a long, long time, and if it really is all about the audience's perception, it'll take a viewer no more than a mouse-click or two to uncover the biases of the next Anderson Cooper.

Unless, of course, CNN has a plan to begin growing its future news staffers in a vat somewhere and sequestering them until they're old enough to be hired.

Which, if the Orwellian tone of this new policy is any indication, it very well might.

On Notice

Believe it or not, I'd really like to let the subject of my untimely dismissal from CNN go once and for all (Say What You Will/2.18.08). As I'm quickly learning now that my new baby is home from the hospital, there really is no sense crying over spilled milk (particularly not when the spill in question happened almost six months ago). Yet every time I promise myself that I'm done bringing up the whole CNN thing, somebody sends me an item like this: Behold, the official memo sent out to all network employees finally stating in no uncertain terms just what CNN's policy is on personal blogging.

You know, the policy they didn't have in place when they made the decision to fire me and a few others like me, and the one that I've openly criticized them for neglecting to enact and clarify?

This was e-mailed to me by someone at CNN yesterday. Enjoy it -- many Bothan spies died to bring us this information.*

***NEW CNN POLICY REGARDING PERSONAL WRITINGS ONLINE***

We’ve gotten a number of questions from CNN staff wanting clarification of CNN policy on communicating publicly about our work, or on news or public affairs -- on the internet. In Blogs. In Chatrooms. On video sharing sites. On social networking sites.

Below are some of the typical questions -- and our answers. We hope this is helpful to everyone,

After reading -- please don’t hesitate to call or email anyone at Standards and Practices if you have further questions. (See contact info below).

MOST IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER:

UNLESS GIVEN PERMISSION BY CNN MANAGEMENT, CNN EMPLOYEES ARE TO AVOID TAKING PUBLIC POSITIONS ON THE ISSUES AND PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS ON WHICH WE REPORT.

The best rule of thumb is, keep in mind whether what you are doing or saying is "in public." In most cases, what you write online is public or can be made public.

CAN I COMMENT IN A CHAT ROOM?

It depends on what you’re commenting on. A chat room is, of course, a public place. If you identify yourself, or could in any way be identified, then you should not comment on anything CNN reports on. Remember, even though you don’t say who you are, someone else might reveal your identity. AND if you’re discussing things that are in the news, keep in mind you could be seen as representing CNN, and therefore you should not comment on the issues CNN covers.

HOW ABOUT MYSPACE, FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES?

Again, on these sites only write about something CNN would not report on. Don't list preferences regarding political parties or newsmakers that are the subject of CNN reporting. Local issues that CNN wouldn’t report on would be OK. And of course private communication with friends or family about issues that aren’t in the news is fine. If you are not sure, ask your supervisor or S&P for parameters on posting. (S&P contact info is listed below).

Also keep in mind that you should not be commenting or writing about what goes on in the workplace at CNN without specific approval by CNN senior managers. For example, in some cases there have and will be exceptions made to have some staff get information out to an outside audience on platforms like Twitter about our upcoming coverage plans.

But without those approved exceptions, your workplace activity is proprietary and so you should not be writing on these sites about what goes on behind the scenes here at CNN.

CAN I POST MY WORK ON YOUTUBE, PODCASTS OR OTHER VIDEO SHARING SITES?

You should not post any CNN material online unless it is approved. Likewise, if you make a short video on your own time, if there’s any question about it being something that CNN might air, first ask someone before posting it. And again, if the subject touches on anything you might cover or CNN reports or may report on, you should likely stay away from it. If it is a close call, ask your supervisor or S&P.

CAN I POST TO iReport.com?

This site was developed specifically for non-CNN material, so no, you shouldn’t. However, a separate procedure has been developed for CNN’ers to send in material. It’s called weReport and you can see the details for how it works at http://sketch.turner.com/wereport. As always, if you capture pictures or video on news stories call the national desk and they’ll help you arrange to feed it in.

HOW ABOUT SECOND LIFE?

CNN’ers are encouraged to visit Second Life, just keep in mind it’s a public place and the same rules (listed above) apply as they would to “real” public life.

CAN I HAVE MY OWN WEBSITE OR BLOG?

Yes. But you should notify your supervisor about it, to have it cleared as a non-conflict for your work. Your supervisor may choose to then have it cleared at another level or by S&P. And again, you shouldn’t post commentary on anything you might cover in your work or CNN may report on, or write about the CNN workplace or post CNN material without permission by a senior CNN manager.

WHAT ABOUT POSTING LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES, ARTICLES FROM OTHER PUBLICATIONS AND VIDEO FROM OTHER SOURCES?

Again, if your web activity clearly shows that you are taking a position on an issue CNN reports on or is likely to report on, you should avoid such activity.

In addition, you should not operate under an alias on your website or blog in order to participate in biased public behavior. Despite your use of an alias to express a view that may present a conflict of interest, it is still your opinion. Your real identity and occupation could be revealed by someone else at any point.

WHY SHOULDN’T I COMMENT ON NEWS OR CURRENT AFFAIRS?

Unless given permission to comment publicly on the issues or people we report on as a CNN analyst or commentator, it is important that you and all other CNN employees be independent and objective regarding the news and people that we cover.

If you publicly declare your preference for issues or candidates or one side or the other of the public policy issues CNN reports on, then your ability to be viewed as objective is compromised.

We appreciate that everyone has a life outside work and we encourage all of our employees to get involved with the issues that are important within their communities. That said, you need to avoid any appearance of bias or partiality. It’s just one of the responsibilities associated with working for a news organization.

WHAT IF I DON’T WORK DIRECTLY WITH NEWS GATHERING OR NEWS REPORTING BUT ELSEWHERE WITHIN THE SUPPORTING DEPARTMENTS OF CNN?

In discussions about this issue with your colleagues across CNN, it was felt by them that it was important to have this policy apply across the board. If you don’t follow this policy, and you are officially a CNN employee, the loss of objectivity won’t just apply to you, but could be associated with CNN. Therefore this policy applies to all CNN employees in all departments worldwide.

WHAT ABOUT FREELANCE EMPLOYEES AND INTERNS?

Supervisors should make sure freelancers and interns read this policy now -- or on their first day going forward -- and commit to following it.

CAN I GIVE SPEECHES, OR WRITE ABOUT CNN?

CNN reserves the right to say who gives speeches or makes personal appearances on behalf of CNN. A number of your colleagues do give speeches to schools, colleges, and other organizations. Those requests must first be approved by your supervisor and then will go through CNN PR for review. PR will bring them to S&P for final review and approval taking into consideration who the invitation is from, the subject matter to be discussed -- and/or whether travel expenses/an honorarium are being paid. Our employees write books, and occasionally do other outside writing, but it all must be approved by your supervisor first, and then by PR and by S&P as appropriate. This policy is outlined in Section E of the Standards & Practices Policy Guide. Every employee should have a Guide and should read it and review it. (If you don't have a Guide, please ask your HR representative for one.)

Considering my own story, I love that last line -- just love it.

Speaking of which, let's recap: I publicly chastise the managers of CNN's American Morning on this site and on the Huffington Post and within two weeks the show's EP is fired, followed shortly by his second-in-command. I point out the incompetence of that same show's main copy editor and, likewise, not long after, he's sent packing. Now this: I spend six months claiming that whether they consider it a matter of common sense or not, CNN's upper-level managers must make their stance on the blogging and online networking of staff-members crystal clear (as news outlets like the New York Times have already done), and they finally cave in and do just that.

At this point, I think I can probably get away with charging CNN a consulting fee (although I suppose Jon Stewart could say the same thing about his role in getting Crossfire canceled a few years back).

Regardless, it's about goddamned time, guys. Welcome to the 21st century.

Oh, and I await your Cease & Desist order. Just be glad I edited out Rick Davis's personal phone number.

*The one and only Star Wars reference I'll ever make on this site.

Droll Models

True story: I had a job at Gawker.com -- for about 24 hours.

Just a couple of days after my firing from CNN became public knowledge, I was contacted by Noah Robischon, managing editor at Gawker Media and high-level minion to site founder, internet mogul, and notoriously mercurial pain-in-the-ass, Nick Denton. He sent me an e-mail asking whether I thought my foul mouth and Jedi-like mastery of the dark art of the cheap punchline might be well-suited for a home at New York City's premier online destination for astringent snark. Being suddenly out of a regular paycheck and admittedly enticed by the possible opportunity to say a figurative "fuck you" to my former employer by landing a new, high-profile job so soon after being canned, I agreed to meet with his boss and engage in a little mutual rear-sniffing. Denton and I wound up grabbing a quick lunch in SoHo on a Saturday afternoon and by the end of the meal he had offered me a provisional gig writing about television for Gawker, with instructions to report to work the following Monday morning for whatever training and orientation I might need.

Turns out I never got that far.

The next morning I received a short e-mail from Denton saying, in so many words, that after taking a closer look at the kind of material I was putting up on my own site, he'd decided that I wouldn't, in fact, be a good fit with Gawker. I admit that I was caught slightly off-guard by the quick dismissal; it seemed startlingly schizophrenic, even for someone with Denton's reputation. The impression that I got from the e-mail, though -- the rationale I could glean from the words of Gawker's publisher as to why his site and I just wouldn't be right for each other -- was that I was actually a little too caustic and vicious, ungovernably so, when it came to my opinions. For a moment, I couldn't help but think that being told you're too much of a prick to work at Gawker is like being told you're too gay to audition for the lead in Torch Song Trilogy. Almost immediately, however, I realized something: Denton was absolutely right; I'm the furthest thing from Gawker material -- and taking a somewhat righteous stand against the abuses I witnessed at CNN and in the mainstream media, only to then turn around and crank out snotty, Fountainhead-referential one-liners about celebrities, Manhattan socialites and Chuck Klosterman probably wouldn't do much for my credibility, to say nothing of my long-term career.

It's right about now that I should mention that I have nothing against Gawker.com or any of its sister sites. On the contrary, the kind of writing -- the kind of thinking -- popularized by Gawker's rotating cast of quick-witted wonder kids has been eminently entertaining over the years (although a lot of folks will tell you that the one-note joke, coupled with an overabundance of in-house drama, has worn very thin). For a long time, I was an avid reader of several of the titles under Denton's hegemonic banner and, in the interest of full disclosure, his people have linked a few of the pieces I've written for this site, bringing me exposure that I might not otherwise have had. That said, there's been an awful lot of negative press aimed at the House of Gawker over the past year or so, and even the most unctuous of Denton apologists would have to admit that quite a bit of it is well-deserved.

Gawker's biggest problem -- the most looming threat to its own success -- has always been, ironically, its own success. The namesake site and its counterparts, at least the ones based in New York, were founded as a place where elite (and elitist) members of the city's self-described "creative underclass" could come together and do what they did best -- stand at the bar or in a corner at the party making fun of everyone they considered beneath them -- on a grand scale. The trouble, of course, is that those kinds of people are generally callow, insecure, obnoxious, monumentally narcissistic and, whether they'll admit to it or not, want nothing more than to be a part of the very crowd they mock so venomously; give them a taste of the fame they purport to be so openly hostile toward and not only will they become the very thing they supposedly despise, the entire concept of the place they work for will be put at risk. Put simply, Gawker and sites like it, to be effective, need to have some sort of Menudo-like policy when it comes to the notoriety of their writers and editors: Once the kids hit that personal fame ceiling, their time's up and they're out.

But Gawker and its siblings probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the voices of writers who are, in reality, interested in self-obsession above all else.

Which makes it even more of a shame that, on paper at least, Jezebel.com was supposed to be different.

Jezebel's been in the new media press quite a bit lately -- for all the wrong reasons. A couple of weeks ago, Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show and an undeniably whip-smart lady, invited two of Jezebel's most potent and popular contributors to take part in an off-the-cuff talk show called Thinking and Drinking. Moe Tkacik and Tracie Egan -- whose nom de plume is "Slut Machine" -- are fulltime staffers at Jezebel, a site which casts itself as an edgier alternative to the glossy, Oprahfied banality of most media aimed at female audiences these days. As writers, both kids fit the Gawker Media mold almost perfectly: street smart, acid-tongued City Girls with an obligatory air of ironic detachment and, in Egan's case particularly, more than a passing affection for the dramas that make up their personal lives. Winstead claims to have propositioned the Jezebelles because of a respect for their reputation as standard bearers for the new model of female empowerment; what she found out in short order, however -- at least if you believe her story about being unaware of what she was actually getting -- was that Tkacik and Egan come off a hell of a lot smarter in print.

During the course of their conversation, which can be viewed in its entirety on Winstead's website, the ladies of Jezebel managed to embarrass themselves and their employer in ways so pronounced that you were kind of left feeling sorry for them rather than pissed-off that anyone had ever made the mistake of holding them up as models of savvy womanhood. Tkacik and Egan each seemed to punctuate every sentence with "like" -- as in, "I guess I, like, regret being date raped," and "I think (not being date raped) has to do with the fact that I am, like, smart," respectively; Egan -- remember, "Slut Machine" -- was a trucker's mouth full of requisite in-your-face navel-gazing, defiantly offering up that she "once paid someone to rape me once." Both women were drunk. Neither one gave a shit about how the two of them looked to anyone sitting in the studio audience or watching at home, nor how swiftly and entirely their dumb-ass, giggling party girl act may have been undoing the very mission statement of Jezebel.com.

Insulted by the Jezebelles' behavior and offended at their glib treatment of the very serious subject of rape, Winstead wrote a scathing column in the Huffington Post late last week, basically taking Tkacik and Egan to task by publicly taking them apart. In response to the piece, which brought the entire miasma front and center for both fans and critics of Jezebel.com and its Gawker Media mothership, Sarah Hepola fired off a column of her own in Salon.com, lambasting the girls for their lack of maturity and rightly recognizing that, as with far too many of the Gawker kids lately, neither thinks beyond her own self-mythology and potential stardom. This led Jezebel.com's managing editor, Anna Holmes, to post an apology on the site in which she called the whole thing "a fucking shame" for everyone involved -- including Winstead, whom she accuses of having "unrealistic expectations" -- and explicitly stated that the actions of Tkacik and Egan are not representative of Jezebel.

Except, of course, that they are.

To react with shock that a writer who calls herself "Slut Machine" and blogs ad nauseam about -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- all the partying and hot, indiscriminate fucking she does in New York City might be apt to embarrass the hell out of a site that aims to be taken seriously on the subject of women's issues seems comically disingenuous. Likewise, to allow two girls to speak for you in an official capacity who as recently as late last year were gleefully engaging in their best Courtney Lovecraft for a drugged-up-chic promotional photo shoot smacks of trying to have it both ways. I can't imagine that Anna Holmes is a stupid woman, which means she's either really good at self-deception or really bad at deceiving everyone else. She had to know what would happen when Tracie Egan and Moe Tkacik took the stage at an event that actually had the word "drinking" right in its name (although to be fair, if she did any research at all, Lizz Winstead should have known as well); being surprised that these two made drunken asses out of themselves is like being shocked your house in bone dry, brush-laden Big Sur is burning down.

I've never met Anna Holmes personally, but interestingly, I have met Moe Tkacik -- specifically because I didn't meet Anna Holmes when I was supposed to.

Let me explain: Holmes was scheduled to take part in Gelf Magazine's "Non-Motivational Speaker Series" on New York's Lower East Side last month, an event I'd also been booked for. At the last minute she canceled, telling organizers that she'd just come home from her honeymoon to discover bedbugs in her apartment and simply couldn't make it. (If this strikes you as the kind of hilariously horseshit excuse that only a borderline sociopath would expect anybody to actually buy, you once again don't understand the earth-shattering importance of each of the millions of mini-dramas that make up the daily life of the average New Yorker.) In her place Holmes dispatched Tkacik, who was introduced to the small crowd only as "Moe." Although it's unfair to be too harsh on someone who was forced into a tough spot at the last second -- improvisationally tap-dancing on behalf of her boss -- the issues I had with Tkacik at the time had less to do with her obvious level of discomfort at having been put in such a difficult position than it did with her way of thinking in general. To be blunt, she was just so damn Gawker. She made cracks about needing Adderall -- the official drug of children and 20-somethings who have the maturity level of children. As with Winstead, she carpet-bombed every sentence with enough "like"s to make a college English professor give up and go sell Amway. She struck an almost admirable pose of aloof non-chalance, seeming at every turn to be playing the part of the cool kid who just doesn't give a shit but whose insecurities can practically be seen swimming around just beneath her thin skin. I had no doubt at the time that Moe was a nice enough girl -- just young and completely wrapped up in her own self-perpetuating bullshit. She was, quite frankly, the one thing I doubt she ever wanted to be (though if you asked her, she'd probably pretend to insouciantly embrace the label in the same way that a hipster might wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the Ghostbusters logo as a badge of ironic honor): She was a cliché. I found myself wanting to give her a fucking hug or something and tell her it's not her fault.


It's Emily Gould's.

If you have no idea who Emily Gould is, you A) don't live in New York City, and B) are very, very lucky. The Gould fiasco from a couple of months back was so outrageously stupid that even though it dealt directly with the subject of new media-versus-old, I didn't dare touch it, lest I in some small way perpetuate both the nonsensical "controversy" that so many seemed to be talking about and the career of Gould herself. To recap quickly for the blissfully uninitiated: Emily Gould rose to fame blogging for Gawker and at her own personal site, both of which, to some extent, became a daily treasure trove of Gould's personal exploits (relationship and otherwise), neuroses, dropped names, schoolgirl giddiness and general self-absorption. The wholly unimaginative within the media, clamoring to find a reference point that the unwashed masses would understand, tried to dub her at one point "The Real Carrie Bradshaw." Still, there were plenty of people out there who had no idea who Emily Gould was -- much to her own dismay, I'd imagine. That changed this past May, when The New York Times Magazine published a cover story on Gould that not only featured some of the most hysterically awful writing and unabashed narcissism ever to grace The Times -- and this is a paper that employs Thomas Friedman -- but also a suggestive cover photo of Gould lying on a bed giving the camera her best "morning afterglow" look (in case you needed reinforcement for the idea that Blogging = Inviting You Into the Bedroom). The backlash from Times readers wanting to know why the fuck the paper had stooped to legitimizing someone like Gould in such grand fashion was so furious that editors actually shut down the online comment section to spare their cover girl, and themselves, any more invective.

Emily Gould's neck-breaking, yet strangely dull, confessional introspection -- her lamentation of "I've Never Been to Me" -- seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears about young bloggers: they're shallow; they think the world revolves around them and their problems; they grow addicted to the rush of instant feedback or instant fame; they become nothing more than caricatures of real people after a while. For someone who now writes fulltime, mostly via the internet, I couldn't help but see Emily Gould as a kind of new media literary Stepin Fetchit, setting the whole damn movement back a decade or so by smiling broadly and doing the happy little shuffle that would guarantee her minor fame -- at least that of her idol, media gadfly and real-world nobody Julia Allison, whom Gould name-drops with Tourette's-like consistency -- but would also ensure that any larger responsibility toward women in new media (and women in general for that matter) went unattended. By greedily grabbing the lowest-hanging fruit on the massive tree available to women bloggers -- writing mostly about her love life, which seems to always assure an audience of one kind or another -- Gould helped to lower the bar and set a new standard for the women who would follow in her wake.

Women like Tracie Egan, who's seen her dreams of New York-centric notoriety come true by writing about, what else, how much she loves to fuck and get drunk.

Women like Moe Tkacik, who is, I have no doubt, far too smart to be acting so goddamned dumb.

The point that Lizz Winstead was trying to make by raking these kids over the coals was that, as women with a forum and an audience, they have a responsibility not necessarily to represent or speak for all women, but at the very least to understand that what they say matters -- that people are listening and give a crap. There are often larger consequences to what those with a forum say and do. Winstead believes that acting stupid isn't feminist, or even neo-feminist -- it's just stupid. I on the other hand look at the behavior of Egan and Tkacik from the perspective of a writer and a journalist, but the conclusion is the same: What we say, what we write -- whether in long form pieces or in quick deadline-driven bits on sites like Gawker; whether in print or on the internet -- all of it matters. It's easy as hell to be clever and glib, and God knows I'm guilty of both quite often, but provocative doesn't always equal insightful, and it damn sure doesn't always equal smart. It's an old cliché that sarcasm is lazy humor, but that's only true if there's nothing to back it up -- if there's no substance under all that incisive wit and no real point or passion to bolster all that flowery sound and fury. Detached irony simply for detached irony's sake will only take you so far.

I can't help but feel, unfortunately, like Gawker has already found this out.

It'd be a shame if Jezebel followed the same path.

(Related: If you haven't already seen it, take a look at Emily Gould's now-legendary appearance on CNN. Jimmy Kimmel absolutely eviscerates her on live television, although I get the feeling that she'd look like just as much of a 12-year-old special needs child had Kimmel not been playing inquisitor. This was my first introduction to Gould, by the way. I remember standing in the middle of the newsroom, watching this interaction unfold live and asking out loud, "Who the hell is this idiot?" You can view the clip here. Photo Courtesy: The New York Times)