really, really not news: bud light radio ads

When you resort to doing a sports post on a radio commerical about guys who are unathletic, it's time to take a nap and start the day over again, SPORTSbyBROOKS.

Doing a post on a radio ad that salutes the unathletic sports talk radio guy? A post on a radio ad? A hackneyed bit of a radio ad at that. Is Budweiser a sponsor of your site, Brooks?

Wasn't there a story about a 59-year old football player or something you could have written about? Oh, nevermind.

Say it with me ... F - I - L - L - E - R.

And not even good filler ... like those half naked women all over your site usually are.

this is just a lie

Some woman did a cartwheel on the Price Is Right. TMZ's headline: "Price" Contestant Flips Out on Drew Carey.

That's just misrepresenting a story. We were hoping to see Drew Carey violently assaulted after a game of Plinko gone awry. Don't mislead us, TMZ.

not news: britney spears buys coffee and reads a book

When you open a post on Britney Spears with the following sentence:

Britney Spears went for her usual Starbucks run (every hour on the hour) and of course was swarmed by the paparazzi.

You should immediately say to yourself, "This is not news. Why am I posting this? She does this every day. And it's boring."

And the answer to yourself would be, "You're right. I am not going to post this. Just because I have photos doesn't mean I need to use them."

Unless, of course, you are really Superficial.

tara reid owes bloggers some debt

A beacon of light that shows the power of blogs...Does this cunt Tara Reid even work any more? All we ever see of her is related to her being on some blog and doing nothing, often while wearing a bikini or showing off some new botched surgery.

Bloggers: You made them news. Perhaps it's time to let go.

~DListed~

about your new york profile

Pretty bleh.

But at least now we know Nick Denton loves black cock. Miles and miles of it.

“These were so cheap!” Denton’s boyfriend, a lovely African-American artist, begins to get ready for their next stop of the evening, a going-away party for Gawker Media managing editor Lockhart Steele, leaving to build his own
blog network with Denton joining an angel investment round.

Loves it.

Gists of the piece: Gawker's "top" writers make around 55k base, Denton's a bit arrogant and loves black cock, Emily Gould looks good in a bikini, Julia Allison somehow snaked her way into a half page of the article, and almost every writer's quotes make them seem painfully unhappy, Denton keeps Gawker as a vanity, and the main Gawker site is built around unfounded meanness (and isn't the most successful part of the company).

That Emily though. You have to admire how she got an extremely flattering picture of herself in the piece. You'd hit it.

unsexiest women

With a name like Snarky Gossip, you know that you're getting truly quality material.

The top 5 unsexiest women. Oh joy. Written by an unfunny woman whose idea of "snarky" humor is saying that Britney has "funyun pudge". A great read. In particular, a great read if you like things like slamming a door against your scrotum or trapping your labia inside your zipper.

Correction: An astute commenter has pointed out that Snarky Gossip actually just ran this post verbatim from a Maxim article on their Web site. We regret the error in not seeing that.

This isn't poor writing, this is just lazy blogging bordering on plagiarism; re-running the same piece written on another site? Verbatim? That actually sounds much worse than writing a bad piece.

journalism is hard if you can't read

A Socialite's Life reports on the CW pickup of blogger television fave Gossip Girl. Only ASL doesn't understand how the TV business works, reporting that Gossip Girl was picked up for a second season already.

The show was picked up for an extra 9 episodes THIS SEASON. Tough to be taken seriously as a journalist when you can't read an article correctly.

Then again, poor reading skills is part of the life of a socialite, so perhaps ASL is leading the life more than we realized.

stop the circle jerk

At what point in the short history of sports blogging did it become acceptable and trendy to start interviewing one another? Not that I am complaining, well actually I am, but these interviews do bring back fond memories of when the MSM did the same thing. Who can forget the time Frank DeFord interviewed Peter Gammons? Man, that was good stuff. And remember that crazy interview that Jason Whitlock did with Mike Lupica? Bet they'd like to have that one back!

I mean who doesn't want to know the inner workings of a guy who posts on announcers and broadcasters. The announcers and broadcasters aren't the news, the guy who blogs about them is!

And we were all just chomping at the bit to get an inside look at the guy who writes a football blog for ESPN. Shit, T.O. and Randy Moss aren't stories ... The guy who writes about them is!

Even better, we were all dying to know the secrets held inside the mind of a female (a female!?) baseball blogger? Man, I am so glad we got to the bottom of all that. I am just surprised the Associated Press didn't pick that story up, it's such a scoop.

Bloggers ... get over yourselves. The next time you see Rick Telander interviewing T.J. Simers, then you can feel free to start interviewing each other. Until then, let's remember that you are not news (or interesting).

a common question

A question we've been asked multiple times in the comments and over email is as follows:

"By linking to the sites you're trashing, aren't you just bringing more attention to them and driving more traffic?"

It's a logical question. But it's one that's easily explained.

If I like to a post and say, "Hello reader, check out this great post." You would go, "Oh, I trust hearst and see him as someone whom I would listen to. I will click and enjoy this link."

If I go" Hello reader, check out this shitty post some cunt wrote." You go, "I am anticipating not enjoying this post!"

It's human nature. Specifically, we're controlling the frame. If we say something sucks and then it does, you'll see the site for what it is. Traffic's relatively irrelevant unless you're afraid of people leaving your site and not coming back. But we know you will.

don't call it a cuntback

Britney's vagina reminds celebrity blogs of better days.

Exhibits A, B, C, and D.

From our new book How to Use Britney's Cunt for Attention and Profit.

if you know it's stupid, why do you do it?

We touched on this yesterday, but The Big Lead takes things a step further with one of their weekly "features" that just hit my RSS reader.

Yesterday, we pointed out that no one cares which teams a writer for a sports blog is picking to win in the upcoming weekend's football games. The sites we complained about are sports blogs, not gambling blogs. There are hundreds of Web sites that are far more (and less) qualified to help out the degenerate gambler, so there really is no need for them to pollute their blogs with their lame picks. And really, Mr. sports blog writer, if someone is actually taking your advice, are you doing them a service or a disservice? If you are so good at picking games, why are you writing for a blog and not rolling with the sharks in Vegas? And if you are not so good, what's the point in publishing your picks? Narcissism?

Which leads me back to The Big Lead. As they usually do each week, The Big Lead posts their personal selections for various college football games for the weekend upcoming. The funny thing is that the post is always titled, "College Football Picks You Need Not Pay Attention To."

So, my question is, if we actually need not pay attention to them, why the Hell are you posting them?

we wouldn't do any blogger

One tip we've received quite a few times from readers is a piece written on sporting blog Epic Carnival that pitted two female sports bloggers against each other in a "Who Would You Do" contest. The emails we've received voiced a degree of outrage that a blog would objectify a woman, let alone a peer.

Two things we don't quite understand:

~Sports blogs (the primary tipsters we heard from were sports bloggers) complaining about objectification? When 90% of sports blogs feature pictures of scantily clad women next to posts about sledding or other things completely irrelevant to it?

~Why you would say "they're not public figures" to a site that believes that if bloggers want to be taken seriously as journalists that they should have a light of scrutiny and mockery cast upon them the same way a sporto might do to a Joe Morgan or an everyone at ESPN.

Our biggest problem with the piece was that it wasn't that interesting, felt way too long and too soft, and was no different than any other misogynistic sporto or celebrity blog post. If done well, the idea could have been a poignant cap on the self-aggrandizing sports blogtown that interviews each other and incessantly compliments each other on a job blandly done.

But as for sexualizing two women who are being sexualized for money by Fanhouse? Your outrage seems misguided.

not news: hayden panettiere went shopping

Big news again from I'm Not Obsessed! I don't know how they keep coming up with these amazing celebrity scoops. They must have like 30,000 employees and spies covering the country.

Today's big scoop from INO: Hayden Panettiere went shopping.

No fuckin' way! She went shopping?! Did she take a shit yesterday too? Do you have photos of that you could share? Because frankly, that might be more interesting.

What makes this post even worse is that you admit that you've done a lame post like this before! Hayden Panettiere Shopping. Again. Damn. At least don't admit when you blow.

If she went shopping in a bikini I could understand the post, but she was dressed in something I could see my mom wearing.

Okay, new rule of thumb for non-news stories like this: If it's boring and pointless don't post it, unless there is a nip-slip, a crotch-shot, or bikini involved.

Thank you. Have a nice day.

the absurdist punchline

What's the most overdone cliche in celebrity blogtown? A picture post with nothing? Or a picture of a celebrity with a gossip item contrasted with an absurd punchline about having A) Met, B) Had sex with, or C) Seen them doing something that has nothing to do with the story, i.e. punching panda bears or putting on diapers and asking for forgiveness from Mayor McCheese.

It's a coin flip. But good thing the Absurdist Punchline never gets old.

In a story about Michelle Rodriguez's pending jail sentence for a DUI, The Superficial says:

So I met Michelle at a bar and when I failed to chug a bottle of rum in 30 seconds she threw a barstool at my nuts and questioned my sexuality. Is it wrong to be turned on by that?

Did she really do that, Superficial? Did she?

can't stop the aggregating

Maybe back in the dark ages of the Internet, like way back in 2003, there might have been a need for a site like Can't Stop the Bleeding. People didn't have access to or weren't aware of RSS readers or news aggregators back then. So CSTB served a purpose. It was a one stop shop for your sports news. Very little commentary, with a lot of cut and pasting of the latest and hottest news in sports. But today everyone knows about Google Reader and My Yahoo! and the dozens of other news aggregators and RSS readers, so my question is, "Why are people still reading this site?"

We did a little number crunching and came up with some interesting stats using CTSB's last six posts as the basis for our question:

Sullivan’s Dream Team: Bonds, Piniella, and Mark Cuban
454 words, 119 words not cut and pasted for 26% original content.

All Blacks’ Howlett Loses To France, Parked Cars
274 words, 72 words words not cut and pasted for 26% original content.

Waldman : I’m No Walter Cronkite
330 words, 67 words words not cut and pasted for 20% original content.

Have The Years Been Kind To “Joe From Saddle River”?
30 words, 30 words words not cut and pasted for 100% original content!

A Little Less Cheering For The Nassau Mausoleum’s Blog Box
434 words, 217 words words not cut and pasted for 50% original content!

Columnist 100 Miles Away Submits Bowa As Torre’s Replacement
407 words, 77 words words not cut and pasted for 19% original content.

For a grand total of 1,929 words, 583 words that were not cut and pasted for 30% original content.

And this is a guy with a reputation for thinking (and acting like) he is better than everyone else in the blogging world? For doing what, exactly? All this site really is is a news aggregator, only with less actual news than a real news aggregator. How CSTB even has a following in this day and age is a mystery to me.

blogtown reminds us of high school - pt 1

Blogtown is a lot like high school. Cliques, jealousy, and, in the end, you'll realize that it's all utterly inconsequen-
tial.

Bear with us. It makes sense. Bloggers are, for the most part, professionally and emotionally no different than an oily, attention starved teen.

The gossip kids are the theatre folks. They're all jonesing to be the star of the show and are endlessly supportive publicly. All the while, they despise and mock one another behind each others' backs. They need each other to make the show run, but they all desperately want to be the one in the lead role.

TMZ and Perez are, respectively, the king and queen of the clique of course.

The political folks are your A students. The teachers and administration love them. The best among them get on Fox News or CNN. These social climbers have the easiest jump to make. Unfortunately, all their time spent in Model UN and Junior Statesmen of America make them undesirable to even the most socially blinded woman or man. Even though Michelle Malkin's pretty fuckable, we imagine that, immediately after sleeping with her she'd rant about our premature ejaculation being the result of the shoddy liberal media.

Media bloggers sit in the cafeteria in their ironic t shirts, mumbling to each other about how stupid everyone else is. Life's all a big joke to these bloggers. But there's still an intelligence that allow some to advance professionally...if they can learn to function as normal people in society.

Clearly the girls from Jezebel are the lonely ones up front, eating their angries away while saying the head cheerleader is "way too thin". Cut yourselves to ease your pain, girls.

not news: lindsay lohan ate and stopped at a kwik-mart

People ... you have got to get a handle on this Lindsay Lohan obsession of yours. The headline alone for this post is the first clue that this is not news.

"Lindsay Lohan Still In Utah"

Why not write a post with the title, "California Still Warm"? It would have the same bearing on people's lives.

The body of the post is no better.

Lindsay Lohan went out to eat Italian and then made a quick pit stop at a local gas station.

This is the news that made you stop what you were doing and sit down and hammer out a post?

I'm Not Obsessed? Oh, but I think that you are. That or your blog just blows.

more on tmz and perez

Gawker has a fine post up charting the content TMZ and Perez Hilton each produced on Friday.

See it here and make your own contentions. We personally prefer TMZ due to its professional veneer and often ridiculous news-breaking skills (OJ tapes? Mel Gibson?). If you get a story from TMZ, far more often than not, there's truth and new content within. It's trash, but there's certainly a journalistic talent to what they do.

All that Fat Faggy Fawner Perez has done is get fake stories about Fidel Castro being dead. Unless you seek out pie-eating skills as a primary reason for why you would read someone's blog, we'd opt out of Perez Hilton.

But there's a reason this trash exists and lines the Endomorphic One's pockets with money and (currently) uneaten Snoballs. Some people out there absolutely love it...and old habits are hard to break.

a loose definition of celebrity

Being the industry leader in celebrity blogging with a television show, tons of employees, and readers starving for your content isn't something that comes easily. But there's certainly a bit of everlasting pressure for TMZ to make news. When you set the bar so high, stories about pop starlets buying jelly beans don't cut it.

So what do you do? Stories about Susan Powter, fake death rumors about MC Hammer, a picture of the woman who created the Pussycat Dolls, and Christopher Reeve's death...three years ago.

Items like sugartits unfortunately don't grow on trees.

we really don't care about your fantasy football league

We thought this was a trend that died with doing the Macarena. We thought we had an understanding. We thought you knew. Don't you get it? No one cares about your fantasy football league.

We were wrong.

Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.

If we wanted to know about your fantasy football league ... wait, why the fuck would we want to know about your fantasy football league? If we were interested in reading about fantasy football, guess what we'd do? We'd visit a fucking fantasy football site, not your site. There's only about 3,002,876 fantasy football sites available to us, so we don't need your advice, but, hey, thanks for trying.

Oh yeah, we also don't care how you did gambling or who you're picking this week either.

So the next time you get the itch to post something about your league, think again, be wise, and post a YouTube video of someone getting hit in the nutsack instead. That we actually do want to see.

did you know queerty is about gay people

There are few things that disappoint us as much as the overly niched composition of blogtown. We've briefly touched on Jezebel and its status as a fairly unnecessary "women's" blog, already. But now, what about Queerty, a blog that's, fundamentally, another media blog, but it's totally gay!

Now don't misunderstand this, we enjoy the work Queerty does. But do we really need to be reminded of how gay everyone there is in every post? 7 out of the 13 posts on their home page, at last look, featured the words "Gay", "Cum", or a play on a homosexual term like "out".

Have we not advanced far enough as journalists and humans to think that you can run a gay-themed site without obnoxiously reminding the reader of it?

For as much as we may trash Gawker over the coming months, Managing Editor Choire Sicha is as gay as they're made but doesn't feel compelled to remind us all of it. Maybe that's why he was villified by a large number of Queerty's readers.

Our question posed to you: Can you run a "gay" blog without reminding the world of it? Or is that a prerequisite to build Chelsea street cred? Enlighten us.

how to start a media company

Hmm. Laurel Touby throwing an event on how to start a media company?

It should be, at the very least, subtitled "How to Bilk A Company Out of Millions By Telling Them You Have a Successful Media Company".

will leitch receives sexual favors

An issue has been raised before about the incestuous sporto community that hangs out at "Pants Parties" and trades self-congratulatory emails and links day and night. Unfortunately, since the blogger doing the questioning wasn't well-liked and came off like a whiner, the claims were disputed and ultimately forgotten.

Many of New York's bloggers and well-wishers both know and enjoy Will Leitch. Leitch is, arguably, the most well-connected member of the Gawker family in his stratosphere. While Gawker's editors leave by the day, Leitch has made his house and gained recognition, bigger writing gigs, and book deals due to his fine work (which we here at YBB do respect) in blogtown.

It's no surprise that Leitch is regarded as one of the bloggers closest to "a regular journalist". But that means that, like a journalist, he's susceptible to nepotism.

Enter Lion in Oil. The blog everyone links to because they assume is good. The blog that sportos regularly mock amongst themselves because they don't respect it or understand why gets the attention it does. Bloggers regularly email Leitch every day on the off chance he'll give them a crumb of attention and a couple of thousand new eyes to their blog. Lion in Oil has no such problems.

Take a look at the numbers. In the month of October alone, a month merely 9 days old, our Lion in Oil friend has received six links on Deadspin. 103 links despite the blog existing only since January. Links that, arguably, have been the only reason bloggers tend to know the Lion in Oil site (perhaps other than being an industry leader in effective usage of a palindrome).

So Will, what does Lion in Oil have on you? Or what have you had in Lion in Oil?

not news: vanessa minnillo picks up her puppy from the vet

Today's blogging tips:

Tip #1: Just because you have photos of a semi-celebrity, doesn't mean you HAVE to use them, In Case You Didn't Know.

Tip #2: If no one gives a shit about the person or what they are doing, don't post it.

Tip #3: And you DEFINITELY don't do it when some other site (Celebrity Babylon) has already done the exact same feeble fucking thing.

something we never get tired of seeing

There is a growing trend amongst larger blogs and one that we would like to see stopped posthaste. The cheap pop, comment-inducing, page-refreshing, "Caption This..." post.

Whether it's sports blogs like The Big Lead, Awful Announcing (who actually numbers them like they need special archiving because they are so fucking great), and Sports Illustrated: Extra Mustard, to Dlisted (yes, again, a two-fer Tuesday for them) amongst the gossipers, and even WoW Insider amongst the nerd blogs, I mean tech blogs, it's lame, boring, and serves no other purpose than to generate cheap hits for the site and waste our time. Is your blog fucking "Highlights for Adults?"

If this trend continues then you might as well just go ahead and add "Word-Finds" and "Tell us what's different in these two pictures contests" to your blogs and make it complete.

Suck it up and stop pandering, people. You're better than that. Ot at least you should be. And the list above is not all-inclusive either. If you do "Caption This..." on your blog, STOP IT.

women can be lazy too

A reminder from Jezebel...no no. A message of empowerment. Women writing blogs can be just as lazy as men writing blogs. Snap Judgment? Crap writing.

Dull picture + No words = Get back in the kitchen.

But just to show that YBB is as benevolent with its praise as it is with its disgust, this post on rapist Jeffrey Marsalis is one of the better posts we've seen this week. Though we wouldn't fuck Slut Machine with your dick.

aol's fanhouse and "youtubesday"

Unadulterated hackery, thy name is the AOL beast known as Fanhouse. Fanhouse is currently a blog without a captain as the result of the loss of producer/man about town Jamie Mottram (who will be spearheading Yahoo's new "community" efforts). But thanks to new fearless leader, functionally retarded Southerner John Ness, Fanhouse is now, on Tuesdays, stooping to posting YouTube videos cribbed from around the Internet and calling it "YouTubesday". You see, it's clever because today is commonly called Tuesday.

Unfortunately for Fanhouse, every day is YouTubesday. Such is the plight of a Web site that strips its writers of all creativity and punishes us all with mediocre content, including rehashed YouTube videos, diluted writings, and the insight of a wet paper bag.

No wonder everyone commenting on their site appears to be illiterate. Moving pictures will bring us to a new age of Enlightenment.

just jared, just bland

Has any blog gotten futher with less talent than Just Jared?

A blog built off of running publicists' emails verbatim cannot stand, can it? Is blogtown so desperate for content that a site without a stitch of new or interesting material can draw hundreds of thousands of users a month?

Actually, no. We're hearing from Someone Who Knows that the move to Buzznet has been less than fruitful, with views plunging to half of what they were one year ago. The site has also left several publicists pissed off in its wake, often for not crediting or mislabeling a source. They'll play the game, but you better get the plug right.

Mediocrity is not rewarded. Unless you have a need for Zac Efron's hairy feet.

not news: britney buys jelly beans

While we know that some days it's hard to find interesting and worthwhile news to write about, wouldn't it be better to simply say nothing than to publish something that is mundane and pointless? Perhaps on days when the news is slow, it would be a better course of action to just wait out the cycle a little bit longer, hmm? Otherwise we end up with 256 words of fluff for a post that could have been summed up like this:

...here's Brit yesterday buying jelly beans at a mobile phone store and then later spilling her Frappuccino all over herself.

A post about Britney Spears buying jelly beans? Really? How would we have ever lived without this riveting piece of information?

Shame on you Dlisted. Your readers deserve better.

blind item bingo - b7

B - Which rambling media commenter is getting a shitstorm thrown her way due to a newly public affinity for smoking creative plants? The corporate world isn't pleased.

I - Which gossiper whose online persona is obsessed with vanity is "secretly" needy, trolling on MySpace for young honeys who read his site?

N - Which political maven desperately wants to leave her site, but can't afford to lose out on the attention whoring she does on it?

G - Which techie isn't wielding the power he thought he would and is only just a figurehead to the less attractive face and name running the show?

O - Which sporto spent a late night attempting to gain the favor of a female peer on AIM? Why can't we just stay friends?

Your guess is as good as ours.

and so we entered blogtown

The world of bloggers has become just as bad as the things they mock. You've noticed it.

Gossip blogs all repeat the same item, same joke. "Jessica Simpson is attractive," they say. "Now here's an absurd metaphor about how good-looking I am and how she wants to sleep with me." It's funny because it's so original. And if they're not doing that, it's twenty posts about how Britney Spears might not fit society's standards of sanity. Groundbreaking.

Sports blogs aren't any better. Here's a post about a stat that I read on ESPN.com. Ho ho a silly YouTube video. Point being, Grady Sizemore is the greatest player in the history of baseball. Here's a picture of an attractive girl that has nothing to do with the post. Link me please! Let's interview each other even though no one cares. You're really doing a lot to dispel the negative perceptions that the mainstream media has of the field.

Political blogs? Who gives a shit. I can't even read one of them without falling asleep. I'd rather have Bill O'Reilly offer to loofah me than have to read your insane-but-somehow-banal ramblings.

Media blogs don't do much right now. The world that they aim to mock endlessly is the same world they so desperately wanted to be a part of. But they failed as an Intern. Or an assistant editor. Or a copy editor. Maybe the EIC of their high school paper didn't pat them on the head enough. Who knows.

So that's why we're here, watching your blogs, and getting ready to call you out. Bloggers seek attention so desperately. But when you cast a light on them, they descend even further into the same cliche and same old punchline.

Most of you blow in some way. You just haven't seen it in writing yet.