I think there is an unwritten story in the present blog/MSM controversy regarding Eason Jordan. Journalists are jealous of bloggers. Some of them very jealous. And I am not saying this just because if you type “Jeff Jarvis” into Google you get 397,000 ^[1] links and if you type “Steve Lovelady” (the Dorothy Parker wannabe who recently called us “salivating morons”) you get 804 ^[2]. Many of the more prominent bloggers are people who could have been journalists but chose not to, going into professions that took more professional training and/or were more remunerative. Now they can afford to blog at their leisure and, not surprisingly, they’re pretty good writers and journalists. And, also not surprisingly, many journalists are pissed off.

I have my own story in this regard. I thought about being a journalist, even about attending Columbia “J” School, but decided to pursue playwriting, although I knew it was far more difficult (hey, get serious!). After I graduated from Yale Drama without really learning how to write plays (truly difficult indeed – and can’t really be taught anyway), I wound up writing novels and screenplays for a living (both difficult enough). When I was still starting out, I wrote a couple of journalistic pieces for West Magazine, a defunct organ of the LAT. Wow, this is easy, I thought (compared to what I was trying to do), but then I saw the check. It was miniscule next to what I was getting, admittedly intermittently, from Hollywood. Why even bother?

Please understand- I am not disdaining non-fiction writing. It is a great craft and presents its own problems. But they are on a different level. There is a reason David E. Kelley ^[3] makes a gazillion dollars and you never heard of Steve Lovelady until he attacked blogs.

UPDATE: Gerard also sees the handwriting on the wall ^[4].

MEANWHILE: Meanwhile, Jessica’s Well ^[5]is making fun of poor Mr. Lovelady. [Lovelady? Are we in a Sheridan play?-ed. No, Congreve.]