PC Magazine runs a humorous last page (“backspace”) in every issue. It’s usually a bunch of funny misprints and typos, or photos of road signs, or other silly little chuckles. In this month’s issue (May 24, 2005), they decided to run a “Special Event: Bountiful Bonanza of Blogs.” The premise was set up this way.
Is blogging really the new journalism? Is mainstream media truly obsolete? We browsed through hundreds of blogs hosted at Blogger.com to judge for ourselves. Here are some highlights:
And then they posted the usual collection of silly blog entries–teenagers ordering new CDs, thoughts on dead skunks, “what I ate today,” and so forth. The piece was intended, apparently, to show how inane and insipid most blogs (contrary to “new journalism” claims) really are. A bit of sour grapes from a mainstream media outlet–no big deal.
But one of the entries they included was this:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Except PC Magazine did not attribute this passage (from the “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”) to Heinlein at all. They just attributed it to “About a Guy.” Now, maybe the unattributed quote (we call it “plagiarism“) orginates with “About a Guy.” But, as it turns out, there doesn’t seem to even be a blog by that name with that passage at blogger.com.
And, for pity’s sake, a very simple Google search, which one would think PC Magazine could manage, would have demonstrated right away that this passage has an author, a well-known and respected author, who has a right to be cited when he’s quoted!
UPDATE: To his credit, Don Wilmott responded very promptly when I emailed him about this:
Thanks for the heads up. Heinlein has many fans out there! We’ll be sure to give credit in an upcoming issue (the blogger obviously didn’t). I’m not too familiar with Heinlein so I didn’t catch it.
Don Willmott
PC Magazine
I guess he got more than a few of these gentle reminders! 🙂
But,notwithstanding the failure of attribution, isn’t the more (or, at least, equally) interesting point that what was insightful wisdom from a respected author is treated as pure fluff from a blogger when the serious authorship is lost ?? Was the thought less worthy if we didn’t know it came from a serious author?:?:
Yes, that’s interesting indeed. And I think the same point can be made for some (certainly not all) of the other excerpts in that “backspace” piece. Even when trying to ridicule blogging and bloggers, actively working to select examples of pure fluff, there’s content that has meaning and value, whoever the author. That’s why they’re worth reading, rather than ridiculing.
So, last night I’m reading a Bruce Sterling novel, Zenith Angle, which I had found by chance on a library shelf, published in 2004. (Somehow, Amazon neglected to notify me of this matter.) The exact Heinlein quote is quoted there, sourcing Robert Heinlein, but not the novel. Bet that is where your blogger found it…
That could well be. It’s a pretty widely-quoted passage, and quite typical of Heinlein’s “competent man” ethos. It also seems to have a pretty wide attraction, judging by how often it appears on the web.
(And I love that synchronicity of stumbling by accident on a quote that’s just come to my attention in another context!)