Shots heard from print media and felt in the 'sphere

Internet sex is big. I'm guessing print pornography, from Playboy all the way down to, I don't know, Gigantic Asses, is hurting as sex bandwidth goes higher and higher every minute, but they're all still in business. And still have their market, which seems nearly separate from pay sites. Where they do overlap, there exists a sort of symbiosis.

And so it is with tabloids, who operate in the exact same fashion. No matter how we try, we can't make our flat-screen monitors into paper, and there's something innocently lurid about seeing pictures of Britney dropping her baby in Screw Up Your Life People magazine, while the web version feels dirty, like a security camera you're not allowed to see, a snuff film. The whole sensation is aggravated because, on the web, you were necessarily seeking it out, and deserve whatever you get.

"The blogs are whetting the appetite of the public, but they want to see the real thing," Husni said. "To this addicted public, it is not real unless it is in their hands, on their laps, in their bath tub."

Word life, as any desktop graphic designer knows. The weakness of blogs and print is that each is incapable of doing what the other can, and thus resentment foments. Even Newsweek or Der Spiegel is a few days late on every story, and while blogs can post about things five minutes after they happen (or stream them live), they don't garner a fraction of the attention that their counterparts' web presences do. Bloggers leak sensitive information without thinking -- Danish cartoons, anyone? -- while papers parade their power like Jonathan Pryce in Tomorrow Never Dies. Etc., etc., etc.

The truth is: each industry has its advantages, and we have to learn how to live with each other. Yes, bloggers will often be blathering egomaniacs who never leave their webcams, and reporters lazy boys'-clubbers who never leave their desks. But neither of us are going to stop, or go anywhere, for that matter. Make up with the hustlers, K?

"The blogosphere is so self-important, do you really think the same people who read blogs are going to be buying People magazine?" Boynton said.

* - Blog pogrom. My contribution to those annoying blog lexicons -- er, blogicons -- that print media soundly mocks us for.