Instacrony

Glenn Reynolds has of late been complaining about 'cronyism' in the selection of Miers for the Supreme Court, but has no problem endlessly touting his buds for 'Pajamas Media'. Wired News has a short sketch on the PJ media site, which seems to have tapped just about every blogger to which Reynolds has been linking for the past year or two.

" 'It will be the best of mainstream media and best of blog media, side by side, sometimes fighting, sometimes agreeing,' said Roger Simon, a novelist and blogger who co-founded Pajamas Media."

No, it won't, Roger. It will be your and Reynolds' blogging buddies, similar in temperament (and profession) - some of whom aren't particularly good bloggers. Well-known and highly-trafficked, yes. Simon himself is a writer of note, but that does not necessarily make him a great blogger. "The best out there?" Far from it. (Besides, didn't Huffington already line up "the most creative minds" in the blogosphere already? Too late, guys, Arianna already ate all the brains.)

The site, when it launches, won't be called Pajamas Media. And right there you can start to taste the disaster in the air. Reynolds (and the bloggers involved) have been just flogging this beast for months, but when it launches, they're going to throw all that marketing work a curve by renaming it. Why not name it immediately? We don't know, but we have some ideas. Sloth and ineptitude come to mind, but what sticks to the wall as far as we're concerned is arrogance: Readers will just find them, because this cabal is of course at the forefront of their minds.

How "inside the beltway" is the thinking that resulted in this site? Check out Technorati's top searches, and their top 100 blogs. How many of these blogs and subjects are actually represented by PJ media? Some, for sure, but it's hardly the public pulse. It's mostly a bunch of bloggers talking to each other, often on the subject of how the media mostly talks to the media. It's not as if Prof. Reynolds doesn't get periodic clues that this is the case:

"The other interesting thing is that despite the Libbygate affair this weekend, and the Alito nomination, I've gotten more SUV-mail than I've gotten email on any other topic. I guess people care about this stuff."

We still like Instapundit a lot, or we wouldn't bother posting. But it is beginning to resemble an online Tonight Show ("James Lileks popped in! Tell us about your new book, Jim!"). And Pajamas Media is beginning to come across as the HuffPo of the center-right. Did we need this? As Micah Sifray, former editor of The Nation, said:

" 'I'm skeptical that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.' "

Indeed.

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We've encountered quite a backlash against the 'PJ Media' boondoggle.

A former 'partner' speaks out, here and here. Yes, he has an agenda, but he also has the inside scoop, and he's not making this out of whole cloth.

Another blogger recounts his 'adventure with the Pajamas Media New York Headquarters' and 'its missing business plan'.

Many thanks to UnFair Witness, which pointed us to this information.

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PJ Media's insular contentedness reminds us that Sifray recently (September 29) noted how the blogosphere is working around the TimesSelect columnist embargo. Many bloggers are taking traffic that once belonged to the Times, by posting entire columns on their blogs. The Times is in the awkard position of having its lawyers chase and berate hundreds of bloggers who, even if suitably cowed, will give way to hundereds more. Compared to this, herding cats looks like a military precision march.

Categories: Blogging, Media, Pajamas+Media