A few weeks ago, a collective of movie bloggers banded and unofficially decided to start a boycott against trade papers Variety and Hollywood Reporter for what they saw as a lack of attribution. Variety EIC responds.
Remember the Blogs Vs. Trade War? MTV has checked into it a few weeks after the fact, but have scored some choice quotes from Peter Bart (or collected quotes we were too lazy to find elsewhere, we can’t really tell),the current editor-in-chief of the movie industry magazine Variety, a blog flip-flopper, and the guy who infamously asked screenwriter Diablo Cody when she plans to “be a normal woman and have children” (Ah, you have to love rampant sexism among journalists). Bart recently commented on Collider.com’s Editor in Chief Steven Weintraub call for popular film news blogs to boycott their practice of sending links to trade magazine’s websites until they are fairly credited for their work as Variety and HR routinely follow-up on their stories without any accreditation. “There’s inevitable resentment between the bloggers and Variety. If someone has a big story in the entertainment business, the first thing they are going to do is get it to Variety. They are not going to start saying, which Bloggers can we feed,” Bar said.
It would be a valid point, if it were true (and not totally jackass-ishly uninformed, presumptuous not to mention further alienating). Unfortunately for Bart multiple stories have been broke by film blogs, and then poached by Variety. Most famously when they stole LatinoReview.com’s story concerning Jason Reitman’s next project, without giving any mention of the website in their article.
MTV says the boycott could severely undercut the traffic Variety and the Hollywood Reporter receive each day from inbound links, but Bart doesn’t seem to care as he feels, “Print still holds it own, with all the change, the circulation of Variety is just what is was 30 years ago.”
But Bart says, the can-do spirit of you retard bloggers out there (you cute little bunch you) will eventually get you noticed so hang in their troopers, you’ll get noticed!
“You can’t link to everybody; there’s a lot of cyberspace,” Bart said tousling some bloggers hair playfully. “Absolutely, we do link to a lot of people, and on the rare cases when someone beats us, we are delighted to mention them. … People out there are working at home on their computers; [they] want the attention and deserve it.”
The Hollywood Reporter on the other hand declined to be interviewed for the story and gave a statement that basically says, “What are blogs?”
“We are committed to upholding our editorial standards amidst the challenges of the fast-paced media world. We respect the efforts of film-focused blogs, and work hard to ensure that information published in The Hollywood Reporter that is derived from other sources is routinely and properly credited.”
Will the game change? Recent reports suggests both Variety and HR are loosening their gripe and conceding to mention little ol’ blogs that get cute little scoops (you go-getters you!). New media vs. old media: Can’t we all just get along?
