A Heart-Felt Call For Peace Between Print and Blog Media

I seriously never thought I'd say this, but in my non-typing hand I now hold an olive branch out to the world of 'Burque print media, in particular the Albuquerque Journal.

Please receive this branch, o hardcopy media sources, as a token of at least one blogger's meager attempt to bridge the chasm that spans between us smug, snobbish, sanctimonious blogger types and you ever-sober, awkwardly humorless purveyors of print journalism.

No, this branch isn't one of those insincere, fake-smiling kind of peace offerings where I disingenuously fawn over you as a means to get you to like me, just so I can stab you in the back at close range, over and over again.

No, it's a real, warts-and-all acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, although slightly obscured by the sizable warts, you, the ABQ print world, have some redeeming qualities that we in the bloggin' world can recognize and emulate.

Yes, the last sentence had seven commas in it, and that gets me to the subject which finally led me to break the philosophical chains of blog/print jihad and break out the olive branch metaphor/figurative thing.

Namely, my Herculean efforts at making peace in this media Middle East (that is if Hercules had been a peacemaker, which he really wasn't, that is if in fact he actually existed, which, from my hazy remembrance of things Greek and mythological, he didn't) result from reading another blogger's "gotcha" that the Journal ran a story full of grammatical mistakes. As in multiple gaffes. In all honesty...an embarrassing number of flubs.

And anyone who has spent any length of time at Burque Babble knows that its humble blogster has spent entirely more time than is necessary excoriating the Journal for countless offenses, lapses, and flat-out fall-down unintentionally funny "stories" on mind-numblingly non-newsy subjects.

And no, I won't stop doing that. It would be fake and disingenous of me to say that. What I will do is admit some statements that I think are true for the great majority of bloggers, even if they/I won't usually admit it.

Print media folks might want to kill some more trees printing out the short list below and post it below their computer monitors. Feel free to do so, no registration or subscription fee required. Also feel free to refer to the list as you would a mantra or Psalm, guiding you to serenity at times when bloggers are being nothing but smug, snobbish, sanctimonious pains in the ass.

Secret Confessions From an ABQ Blogger to ABQ Print Media:

1. We are in total awe of the power you wield and would sell significant portions of our sexual organs to have your power for one day.
   
2. We resent your power and criticize your misuse of it the same way we would bitch about Superman or Spiderman choosing to save one thing (like Lois Lane falling into a earthquake-related crevice) instead of another (such as whole neighborhoods of Fontana and Pasadena being killed, off-camera, in gruesome deaths).
   
3. If your editors/publishers suddenly called and offered us a job turning our blog musings into a bonafide print media "column" we would drive over our Grandmothers and Playstations to get to Journal Center and accept.
4. No, you wouldn't have to pay us.
5. What. Are you kidding? Do you know how much we're making now?
6. Some bloggers write nit-picky entries on the foibles of the Journal just to piss you off.
7. One reason they (and please note the use of the pronoun "they", instead of "we") do this is because they realize the only people reading their blog (outside of coerced friends and Googling pissed-off ex-girlfriends) are journalists.
   
8. Hi, journalists.
9. Sorry, dear Googling pissed-off ex-girlfriend.
10. If you print folks got together with us bloggin' folks over a variety of cordials, I think we would discover that are much more alike than we currently feel is the case. For instance, we probably have a very strong fondness for cordials. Perhaps more importantly, we have other things in common. You know, like a guiding desire to find truth and relate it to others. Like an overarching interest in the world outside ourselves and how fascinating the study of that world and the humans who inhabit it are. And probably more important than anything, how ludricrously little money we each make.
    

Okay, I feel better. I've offered that non-fake olive branch and made some admissions on behalf of my fellow bloggers. I think I even used "I statements" and I know for a fact that I didn't say things like "You Suck" and "You are a bunch of total losers". I think I can be acknowledged, if not out and out admired, for that. Okay, a little admiration wouldn't hurt.

Now it's your turn 'Burque Print Media. How will you respond to this olive branch? What admissions in proper "I statement" form will you make? And are you looking for any columnists right now?