M.I.P. = Men In Pajamas
The CBS embarrassment, known as RatherGate, MemoGate or whatever you want to call it, will leave things behind other than the corpses of Dan Rather and the current CBS News leadership. I think one thing that will have legs is this quote by former CBS executive Jonathan Klein:
“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances (CBS News) and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
Even at the height of my TV news career, I was smart enough to realize that what we did wasn’t rocket science. Research is research, and working in a newsroom doesn’t change that. There’s no hidden set of secret rules that transforms the “layers of checks and balances” of a newsroom into a better research tool than any other. It’s still people doing the work. The Internet (read: Google) has also leveled the playing field, and this is bad news for “professional” news and good news for the M.I.P.
We’re in the midst of a communications revolution, one where “dressed for success” has an entirely different set of rules.
Note to publisher: Make this a chapter in my book.
September 18th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
Shouldn’t that be Persons in Pajamas?
P.I.Ps
September 18th, 2004 at 11:19 pm
The movie was Men In Black. *sigh*
September 20th, 2004 at 12:52 pm
Scholars have been writing of a gender divide in the blog world, between "more legitimate and serious" political blogs, and personal (i.e. women’s) blogs.
Men in Pajamas indeed! It appears that the blogosphere unconsciously (or consciously) values the perpetuation of sexism in this supposedly "genderless" space.