NOW, HER EX-HUSBAND'S BLOG, ON THE OTHER HAND . . . I took a quick scan over Arianna Huffington's celeb-blog project upon its debut today, and I am not moved.
Because the blogosphere, like Thomas L. Friedman's universe, is truly flat, being a celebrity makes your website no more or less easy to access than anyone else's. It's just a question of typing in the right address. So while a person's being famous might help them make it onto tv or get a movie made, it has minimal impact on the ability to be heard in this space. [Insert point about push/pull technology.]
There are people writing there whose essays I am interested in reading -- writer/directors Mike Nichols and David Mamet -- but that's because through their works they have demonstrated an ability to perceive the world in intereresting and different ways. In other words, their celebrity stems from the same reasons that would make someone popular within this sphere as well.
But contributors like Brad Hall, Meg Ryan, Renee Zellweger, Paul Reiser, Ivanka Trump, or Tina Brown? There is nothing interesting about their perspectives (that i know of) unless it is animated somehow by the fact of their celebrity and their experience in the public eye. If they end up just pontificating about the same issues that everyone else does, who cares? Whatever credibility they have outside this realm, it does not automatically translate into this space: it needs to be built from scratch.
Actually, Tina Brown is instructive in one sense: with Talk Magazine, she proved that celebrity buzz alone cannot sustain a content provider in a saturated market.
Do we have time for one more website? Only if it provides something we don't get elsewhere, and Celebrities Talking About The Same Things Other People Here Are just doesn't cut it for me.
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