This Got By Us

In the tumult surrounding Pope John Paul II’s death, the vaunted self-promotional network of web insiders failed miserably. If it were half the megaphone it’s supposed to be, everyone would have heard ad nauseam about the April 11 issue of Newsweek, which I picked up not as a JPII collectible (despite his beatific visage on the cover), but because it includes a section on “who’s prospering on the web these days,” and I’m acquainted with some of those named.

So here’s to Stewart and Caterina, to Joi, to Mena and Ben (why is “Ben and Mena” the canonical order?) — whom Newsweek deems “leaders of the pack” of “hi-tech’s new day.” That kind of acclaim can be embarrassing, and I’m intrigued that I couldn’t find a trace of anyone trumpeting the feature online (this, even before “Newsweek” became the journalistic scapegrace of the moment). And now there will perhaps be an easier-to-Google reference to this article. . . .

2 thoughts on “This Got By Us

  1. “Print is dead.” Except as scapegoat, whipping boy, object of derision, and ungrateful recipient of beneficent, wise counsel from clued-in authorities of the “blogosphere.”

    The truly self-promoting only pay attention and direct attention to their reflections in the web (where all print goes to die), television and its poor cousin, radio.

    I would also note that the article dealt with “tech,” although, granted, it was “web” tech; and not the self-referential “blogosphere.” I didn’t note the words “blog” or “blogosphere” anywhere in the brief profiles, so it probably escaped the saved searches of the Technorati-elite. Only Joi Ito and Mena Trott are probably what we would conventionally call “bloggers.” Schwartz blogs, but he’s mostly interested in promoting his company. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Most of his dopamine comes from being COO of Sun. Similarly, Mena Trott is running a company and gets plenty of attention in that role. Joi Ito is a VC and gets plenty of dopamine from the attention he receives as a result of the authority of his capital, or that of his firm.

    So perhaps there’s less mystery here than you might suppose.

  2. It’s a matter of prosody. If we had more trochaic men’s names with and single-syllable women’s names–but we don’t.

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