By Monica Cravotta | Published: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand
The article came out in the New York Times last weekend. Author, Jennifer Mendelsohn, attended and reviewed a blogging conference called Bloggy Boot Camp designed for “Mommy Bloggers,” interviewing several attendees and panelists for the article. The headline, lead copy, article placement (Style section versus Business) and accompanying artwork has offended a significant number of highly-respected parenting blog writers and lit up a very heated debate of comments on numerous blog sites.
Reading the piece and some of the many reviews (PhD in Parenting, The Huffington Post and Mom101) along with several of the comments on a few sites, I’m first struck at how incredible it is that a debate can occur the way it does today thanks to the new world called the Blogosphere that inspired the article in the first place.
Like many of you, I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. Our children will find it so archaic to hear about how we communicated through phones attached to the wall and that we were lucky if we had a long stretchy cord that allowed us to walk around the room while we gabbed. They’ll laugh that we wrote hand-written letters and passed notes on folded up pieces of paper in class. And the fact that we had to schlep to the bookstore or the library to research something will be our generation’s “When I was your age I walked 5 miles to school in the snow” story.
Now we experience instant conversations with multiple people. From around the world. Instant information. Instant debates. All kinds of voices expressing themselves on everything and anything. Offending. Being Offended. All in a few key strokes. I’m transported for a moment, hearing one of my favorite thick-Texas-accent lines from the documentary Hands on a Hard Body: “It’s a human drama.” (more…)
Posted in Article Reiviews, New York Times, Uncategorized | 5 Comments