The Long Tail allows for an unlimited amount of content sources. That is the future. But the key to the Long Tail is that it is a tail. Most of the content based sites will not have enough traffic to warrent studio involvement (at least in terms of junkets, screenings, interviews… etc). And much of this new Long Tailed world is about the nitche. So it’s not like every blog site is interested in the whole world, but only a select part.

You are right, the studios will adapt, and grow - but I still don’t see that in Bart’s column.

Bart makes a point to say how when bloggers are wrong they just delete the post and move on: “To be sure, if a piece gets posted that proves instantly incorrect, or that places them in legal jeopardy, they can simply pull it down and pretend nothing happened.”

You have still not adressed the Chud situation. Bart is making a broad view of the bloggosphere in comparison to the print world. But it seems to me that the print world also publishes a huge amount of errors (the shrek release was just one that I saw on the date of this posting) without recall. And the Chud deal is also something Bart likes to imagine happens only in the blog world.

I thank you for responding. Unlike Bart, you are up for the challenge of a dabate, and that is to be respected.

Re: traffic, I wish any December was reflective of our traffic overall — it never is. Oscar season, big reviews, etc. make it a peak time every year, which is why I wanted to point out the year-to-year-difference. Nonetheless, do we want to see our traffic go up? Of course — who doesn’t?

As for Bart, I know he’s written about bloggers before, but his take on them has evolved (along with the rest of the world’s). And in his latest column, I don’t see the potshots. As I said before, he’s commenting on the tension that exists. The publicists don’t know what to do about bloggers — and they are scared. Terrified. (And I quote: “We are freaking out.”)

A couple of years ago, when blogging was still dismissed by the MSM as the terrain of the weird, that’s when they weren’t scared. Fine, they’ll play nice-nice with AICN, but that’s it. Now it’s their worst nightmare because the world is suddenly filled with AICNs. And sure, everyone’s a critic, but many of these critics carry real clout — some as much as the “established” outlets. And can you imagine the workload? It’s like Variety has metastasized into 100 would-be Todd McCarthys and Michael Flemings, with new ones forming every day. And these new film writers have the ability to post immediately, without the formal boundaries of paper media. If I were a studio publicist having to wrangle this brave new world for the Alan Horns and Amy Pascals, I’d never stop throwing up. (One of the many, many reasons why I’m not.)

As I said: Eventually, this will all seem quaint. The studios will figure out how to make peace with and/or exercise some control over the blogs (their goal, after all) and they’ll figure out a pecking order. (Obviously, access and graceful treatment are not a pr given for any writer. The more readers you have, the nicer they are. And if variety.com posted that Iron Man footage, you bet we’d have their lawyers on our asses. Our lawyers, too.)

As for why Bart doesn’t respond — I don’t think he’s ever responded to anyone’s comments on his columns. He figures he’s said his piece. (And as you might have noticed, he never objects to getting under someone’s skin.) I’m responding because, as someone who has lived and breathed variety.com since I took the job three months ago, I wanted to say my piece. Thanks for providing me with an outlet.

Dana Harris
Editor, Variety.com

The only third party website metrics we have is Alexa, and according to them Variety.com’s hits have gone down almost 50% since December 2006. If you look at the long view you will see a very steady decline in hits. I know, Alexa is not 100% accurate, but its a very good broad indication.

Bart’s thoughts on bloggers have been well documented, and they are far from positive. He takes potshots at us any chance he can get.

He focused his attack on the professional and accredited bloggers that have access to interviews and screenings. We blog for our livelihood, and take our jobs very seriously. I have met bloggers who have not followed the rules and posted reviews early which resulted in them being banned. We are ruled under stronger rules than print publications. We don’t even have the ability to post a review before the date of release.

Yesterday Paramount took down a big movie news website for posting set video of Iron Man. Their lawyers sent a DMCA notice to the site’s web hosting company, and the whole server was taken down. The best part: the footage did not violate any copyrights. It was perfectly legal to post, as much as the photos you find in the supermarket rags. Would the studio pull such scare tactics on a print publication? No.

We are still treated as second class citizens. Studio publicists tell us that we need to cover their crappy films in order to be invited to the big show. And some studios have limited us to screening films only a day before release. The picture Bart paints of the studio publicists being afraid of the bloggers can not be further from the truth.

And where is Bart? Why doesn’t he respond?

Also, You acknowledge the CHUD incident but I still don’t see a retraction on that story.

James Berardinelli posted his reviews to newsgroups but nobody calls him a “newsgrouper”, people have been using mailing lists, forums, etc. for many many years and I haven’t heard of similar terms. Writing for a newspaper doesn’t make you a good journalist as mentioned. It’s quality control that Variety essentially advertises and let them do so, I say. And let everyone else be responsible for what they write. Using a blog doesn’t make them any better or worse.

However (as other commenters have pointed out), I think it’s unfair to say that Peter “paints all movie blogs as reckless and inaccurate.” His topic sentence refects the column:The rise of blogdom is positive/its care and feeding causes static.

And it does. If you talk to studio publicists, you know. It’s (to quote Bart) “put the blogosphere in a state of permanent tension, under assault in some areas yet boasting about its clout in others.”

Having said that, I don’t think the tension is permanent. Eventually, these issues will seem quaint. But in the meantime, everyone’s trying to figure it out — bloggers included.

Case in point: For an imaginary ombudsman, Gawker’s Byron “Dan” Worthington III made some good points yesterday in his final post.

“A host of new and different companies will choose to hock their wares on Gawker, and the editors’ ability to restrain them-selves from making fun of those ads will be ever more compromised. …The transition of newspapers’ center of gravity to the Web, crucial to the future of that industry, is making notable progress. But the steady push to completely integrate print and online news operations to support the rapidly expanding Web site raises questions about what will constitute top-quality journalism in the online world of deadlines every minute. And as most of real news organizations’ content appears on the Web, the need for a Gawker, or any website that provides little in the way of original material apart from cut-and-paste IM sessions from a group of editors who obviously can’t stand each other, will lessen.”

– Dana Harris
Editor, Variety.com

decent bloggers realise they’re just another person who’s interested in films, as (in the end) there’s something potentially odd-but-useful about so much discussion with regards something that’s intended to be primarily about watching films first and foremost - some bloggers think everyone and anyone who blogs for long enough and shouts loudly, creates a fuss and dances around the issues to avoid being identified as having a solid opinion (different from discussing things from potential angles) shoud be paid to do it
professionally.

i do of course, realist there’s some pro bloggers who are simply internet-based writers who also work in-print and with any field there are people doing it for free who might make the jump to ‘pro’ and there are those already ‘pro’ who can be outclassed by those still working on an amateur basis. also, i think there’s an different kind of message within this alternative medium, so mistakes work on a different level; greater or small, i don’t know - there’s no one general answer i would guess to that as you can both have a larger and a smaller impact online.

I agree with your points however I read over 300 RSS feeds a day. You wouldn’t believe how many newspapers and print sources copy (sometimes whole sentences) from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. This problem is not limited to bloggers. For Bart to lump all bloggers as a whole into this is a huge discrimitory problem. Also, I would tend to believe that most if not all professional bloggers (blog for a living or at least pay and are accredited) do not fall into his categories. We need to follow even stricter rules than he does (in terms of posting reviews until the release date and such) or we get banned from studio screenings.

Thank you,
http://DVDRentalForums.com

I mean there’s a whole lot of people out there who write whatever they want, ripping off the trade mags, without even mentioning their source. And that’s in a good post. When faced with writing anything remotely original or informative by themselves they’ ll just put out crap. So please, don’t side with them. The net needs reputable sources and has proved as a whole that it will read and believe everything. Sure there are people intelligent and informed enough to be able to tell, over a period of time, that you fact check your stories, but these are the minority.

A good journalist is a good journalist and an amateur (or worse) an amateur (or worse). These are the sides we all have to choose from, and not from a 2-column or 4-column print format.