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fingers typing on a keyboard The blog debate: Variety may be responsible for a debate better than it entirely deserves. iStockphoto.com
 

by Linda Holmes

I see the Variety newsfeed every day, and I was surprised to see three separate pieces about how much they hate entertainment-industry bloggers.

It isn't really aimed at commentary blogs, but at "breaking news" blogs, and specifically at Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily, which was the target of most of the vitriol.

Obviously, some of the points about accuracy and speed sometimes pulling against each other are completely valid, and the distaste for blogs spending their time whining about each other instead of talking about...what they're supposed to be talking about is something most blog-followers are familiar with. At the same time, the generalizations are so broad that it's hard to know where to go next. Blogs vary in value just as much as print media does, and they're not all alike, any more than The Economist is the same as People just because they're both issued on paper.

Of many responses that have followed, I was most heartened by this excellent essay at Film School Rejects. FSR is more of a commentary blog and not really in the Variety line of fire, but the calmness and lack of defensiveness in the piece makes it much more substantive than, in fact, the pieces that started the conversation in the first place.

categories: Internet, Movies

1:55 - March 24, 2009

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