Easy Target

The Times' Thursday Styles section never wraps itself in glory, but last week's edition, with a cover story on nine up-and-coming NYC gossip bloggers, was a particularly easy target. Among the scoops Alex Williams, the story's author, offered as proof of the bloggers' burgeoning success were "the rumored relationship between Rob Kardashian and Angela Simmons, which some gossips had speculated was a Kardashian family publicity stunt, was real," and publishing embarrassing party invitations from a hedge-fund executive.

The latter is probably the most newsworthy of any of the highlighted reports. I couldn't pick the two people mentioned in the former out of a crowd (but I suppose many people could; why would anyone write about it, if not?). But that's not really my point, which is: Not only has the Internet become the world's most fertile mine of vapidity, but the Times now accepts this as interesting and important cultural reporting. Essentially, it's reporting on non-reporting, which isn't reporting. Reporting is supposed to give insight on the world. These bloggers don't do that and Williams, at least in this instance, doesn't either. What's the point?

Clicking and clicking doesn't challenge. Reading does. That's a very important difference.

On a related note, a good high school friend legitimately appeared in the Times last week, as part of a story about a NoHo bar that's apparently become the destination for social-media and other-Internet-start-up stars. She was referenced as someone whose presence confirmed the bar's status. I always suspected that if any friend of mine appeared in the Times it would be her -- and still have money on her wedding being listed in the Vows section. Obviously, she's my friend, so there's no chance I'll chide her. But I don't even have to delicately avoid that because her company publishes true reportage on the Internet. Why isn't she even more successful and why don't more follow?