The David Simon Dialectic

Much snark has been spilt about Buzz Bissinger’s Three Mile Island, but his vein-popping sanctimony offers more than just a cheap laugh window. The indignation felt by Bissinger is not just limited to the Mariotti set, but to “respectable” journalism as well - old guard journalists are atwitter regarding the proletariat blogosphere versus the landed-capital print media. Bissinger studied the journalistic arts for many years, and no doubt busted his balls covering stories, but he fundamentally misses a major draw of online writing, and that is its freedom. Glenn Greenwald proves in many a blog post how corporate media has become so undermined and corroded that it no longer functions in its original adversarial capacity. Mainstream print media has become compromised in its content and ideas by external constrictive forces. As with a political blog like Greenwald’s, sports blogs like Deadspin or Freedarko function as a sort of coup on the people’s part, a toppling of the egoists who preen on our cable television channels, scuttling for fame in lieu of writing anything worth a damn.

Put it this way, where do you think Mencken would be writing today?