Mmmm, This Press Tastes Good to Me...

Rachel Sklar writes the "Eat the Press" blog for the liberal Huffington Post. We had questions about this whole blogging business, she had answers. (Again, refer back to our operating motto. We don't want to have to keep reminding you about who does the heavy lifting around here...)

Yesterday, I corresponded with Cathy Seipp, a Los Angeles based columnist for the conservative National Review Online.

Today, we learned from Sklar:

· No self-respecting HuffPost blogger would be ignorant of the important journalistic work carried out by Us Weekly.

· One uses only very subtle techniques in defending new CBS News anchor Katie Couric from being misquoted.

and, lastly:

· Former lawyers turned bloggers can, in fact, toss off words like "meme" and "aforementioned" without being impossibly highfalutin'.

Mixed Signals: What did you do before blogging?

Rachel Sklar: Prior to joining HuffPo and launching "Eat The Press," I cut my bloggy teeth at FishbowlNY. Before that I was a freelance writer and before that I was a corporate lawyer, which was far less fun than the aforementioned blogging, but is evident in my use of words like "aforementioned."

MS: How do you decide what to include in your blog?

Sklar: It's not scientific, but basically I try to be useful to the reader so the goal is either to inform, amuse or enlighten. I try to include all the important breaking media news and the important (and sometimes self-important!) musings on that news, plus breaking original stuff where we can. I also try to include stuff that just cracks me up, like the recent Us Weekly Mel-Morpher or some of the stuff on Best Week Ever. And then there are obviously the goofy jokes about Elvis and Shamu and making fun of your name. I use the "People Ranker" for that kind of goofy stuff all the time. It's a fun toy, I mean tool.

MS: How is it different from your writing for other outlets?

Sklar: Blog posts can be shorter and pithier and voicier - that's the easy answer. While it's true that blogging is more immediate, and thus more given to typos etc., I don't believe there is a more relaxed standard for blogging than for print. I think attribution and sourcing and, you know, fact checking is essential wherever you are and I'm fond of saying that I'd rather be right than first (though it's nice to be first). Blogs provide more flexibility for having more qualified attribution ( i.e. "We're hearing such-and-such" which has not yet been confirmed), but it's hardly the only province of blogs to publish incorrect information (cough Access Hollywood Katie Couric cough). Blogging is another medium for journalism, but it doesn't change the substance or the baseline requirements.

OK, off my blogging high horse -- it's different because you can use links, which can save you reams in exposition and provide a whole other world of potential punchlines to boot. Plus the pairing of funny images with a post is an art form in itself. I just love the flexibility and creativity of blogging. It's so fun and it's also so responsive -- all of that makes it different from traditional media and make it a lot more fun to do. Not that it isn't fun to dig into a long piece -- it is, and the payoff is obviously greater -- but there's also the instant gratification of posting a blog and seeing it picked up in real time. Oh, and the absence of sober second thoughts - well, that makes for some interesting posts, too. But that's another story.

MS: What's the most recent delight you've found online that you wouldn't have discovered through the establishment press?

Sklar: I'm a recent convert to and devotee of the Best Week Ever blog. It's so much more fun than the TV show, which is hilarious in its own way, but taking cheap potshots at easy targets gets old fast. The BWE blog has some incredibly sharp, funny writing and some truly hilarious stuff, including, but not limited to the celebrity translator, news of David Hasselhoff, and everything relating to Matthew McConaughey.

But for everyone else, it's "Eat The Press"! We're new, we're fresh, we're exciting. Discover us! Hooray!

MS: To what degree have blogs affected the mainstream media? How?

Sklar: Well, for one thing, it's given the mainstream media a fun meme to chase. "Blogs! How are they affecting the mainstream media?" which we've seen on magazine covers (Businessweek, New York) and countless newspaper stories plus, obviously, online.

Very interestingly, blogs have changed the way stories are reported because there has now been a shift in who the 'first responders' are. For example, when TMZ broke the news of Mel Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic tirade, it was broken online and picked up immediately by online outlets (blogs and online arms of traditional media).

The story developed during the day, and so the next-day reporting reflected that development and followed up on it, rather than being first in there in both the reporting and the delivery of that information to consumers. That's an interesting development (note the tack taken by the New York Times -- less that the Mel story happened, but about how quickly it had spread).

Blogs have also affected the mainstream media by being voicey and funny and forthright in a way that the MSM has not been, which has resulted in a more bloggy tone in certain instances, but also in the fact that now every MSM publication is suddenly sprouting blogs. But that's selling out, man.