We Want Media

We were wondering to ourselves what we should write about for our first blog entry. “The Super Bowl just happened,” we said, “so we could do something on commercials. Or perhaps something from our love of tabloid headlines. We could even take on the RIAA and defend our beloved mashups.”

Then we realized that we were one person, and that there was one issue we had to take down.

Schizophrenia, it seems, is an epidemic in the blogosphere, spreading even faster than those Chuck Norris jokes. And I’d like nothing better than if I never saw either again.

There are two types of the disorder: the third-person and the ‘blogging we.’ The most egregious offender is Gothamist. The very fact that I’m referencing the name of the site as an entity demonstrates the success its style has had in establishing itself as almost a brand name, which may very well be the true intent.

But in a 2003 post entitled “What Not to Do When You Blog” – and reiterated numerous times in the accompanying comments – publisher Jake Dobkin expresses the belief that “if you have to use the word "I" more than once a week, you are doing something very, very wrong.” As commenters Kim Wells and themadblogger point out, the use of “Gothamist” is just a cheap, and obvious, way to circumvent this supposed rule. Its use is especially annoying now that posts on Gothamist include bylines. Oh, did Gothamist take the train today? Because that sure looks like a personal story from Jen Chung. Unless you’re Rickey Henderson, the third-person is never cool.

Worse yet, Gothamist’s use of the third-person necessitates its use of ‘we.’ I can see who posted the story. I can tell from the story you were alone, not with throngs of fellow Gothamist writers on whose behalf you’re speaking. There’s no plural involved. It’s not cute; it’s not helpful; it’s a lie. And worse than that (in this age of Blair and Frey), it’s annoying.

In some cases, the affinity for the first-person plural is at least somewhat understandable. The majority of the Gawker Media sites feature multiple editors who, though named on the sidebar-cum-masthead, are usually unattached to any single post. Yet a trip down memory lane (and over to archive.org’s Wayback Machine) finds the blogging ‘we’ employed by founding editor Elizabeth Spiers back when the site was a one-woman show. Today, Screenhead is edited by the companionless Dong Resin, yet the we remains. Then again, there may be different rules for pseudonymity.

The most interesting case of the ‘Gawker we’ arises weekly at Deadspin. Monday through Friday, editor Will Leich and associate editor Rick Chandler fade into the anonymity of ‘we.’ But on weekends, fellow sportsblogger The Mighty MJD takes control, and brings with him the fresh air of the first person. MJD is a relatively recent addition, and the maintenance of his own blog may mean he’s outside the sphere of Gawker Media guidelines. But if readability means anything, it’s the rest of the writers who need to be converted, not MJD. Singular writer, singular pronoun.

…but that’s just our opinion.