Jon Friedman at MarketWatch, in a three-part profile of Kurt Andersen, founder of Spy magazine, decries the prevalence of detached sarcasm and joins with Andersen, 51, whom he dubs “the reluctant Godfather of Snark,” in lamenting the sorry condition of the younger generation for which Spy was a major influence.
Andersen, rightfully, frets that many young journalists today take the easy way out when they try to be funny and hip. He cautions writers to avoid the trap of declaring, "I'm 26, and I look at everything, good or bad, snarkily."Or as Leslie Savan, author of "Slam Dunks and No-Brainers," put it, journalism has shifted "from dogged reporting to catty retorting."
It's a valid point. Plenty of Web writers, in particular, seem to think that entertainment passes for good journalism, that meanness alone has value. When rock and roll bands run out of ideas, they raise the volume on their music for effect. When bloggers run out of ideas or are too lazy or stupid to offer analysis, they simply resort to raising the snark level.
It's second-rate writing, but what the hey - it enables bloggers to delude themselves into feeling important or at least, self-important. And that's what matters to them.
It was okay for Andersen and his pals to be witty and snarky and mean and funny when they were publishing Spy -- it was meaningful and important then, a blow for independence. Or something: “We started Spy,” Andersen says in the Friedman piece, “at a time when our generation had arrived at full adulthood and wanted to connect to its anti-establishment youth.” But snarksters today: we’re just lazy or stupid.
Look, I’m not saying that there aren’t Xer snarksters who are lazy and stupid and can’t write -- the faster Joel Stein is run off the planet, the better, and he can take his self-important smirk with him. But Andersen and Friendman are deluding themselves if they thing this:
Andersen and [Graydon Carter, his cofounder and now editor of Vanity Fair] wanted to present a magazine that re-created the atmosphere of smart, edgy people "talking over drinks" about "stuff that wasn't being reported" in the media at the time.
doesn’t apply to snarky bloggers and other commentators today.
Or maybe they just haven’t gotten with the new paradigm:
It seems like a lot of bloggers, desperate to show that they're funny, are more interested in showcasing their work as a way to get a job writing for "Weekend Update" or "The Colbert Report," not the New York Times or Newsweek.
Fuck yeah. The New York Times? Snarky bloggers are supposed to aspire to write for the Times, one of the targets of snarky-blogger ire and frustration? The Times is a model of superior journalism, with its withholding of vital stories and watercarrying for a corrupt administration? Snarky bloggers are the antidote to this kind of crap. When the fake news is more honest than most “real” journalism, then yeah, a job writing for The Colbert Report hardly sounds like something to be sneered at.
Don’t blame the lack of “dogged reporting” on snarky bloggers. Blame it on The New York Times and CNN. Snarky bloggers are not in positions of power at the major newspapers, news networks, and newsmagazines. Snarky bloggers are the smart, edgy people talking about the stuff that the corporate media ignores or screws up. Or was that only cool for the previous generation?
