Why I love David Pogue (and hate Byron Calame)

Forget it's vaunted international coverage, its history, its place as the "paper of record"--all things it's happily pissed down the toilet over the last few years--the real reason I love The New York Times is David Pogue. I've yet to pin down a definitive title for the man, but I like to think of him as mastermind tech guru over yonder. I stumbled across Mr. Pogue one day while checking out the paper's video section (read: procrastinating).

I can't remember how he came up, but David has proven to be the funniest thing to happen to the Times since David Carr. (Why are there no Matts or Matthews at the Times. I know people keep telling me I'll be the one to change that, but it still never sits very well. I've made the same observation about The New Yorker, and the only prominent journalist to come to mind is the defamed Matthew Cooper of Time. OY!)

What's so great about Pogue is his humor and receptivity. His articles are funny if a little technical and long winded, which makes his videoblogs the best. As the Times has stepped out into the world of blogging, Pogues was naturally one of the first in, and his Pogue's Posts are the height of the form: short, pithy, funny little blirbs that illuminate the rest of his work. They are never overwrought or drawn out but they present a further illumination on his work and particularly his columns and videos since he is so perceptive to his reader's comments.

The biggest problem with the blog front at the paper is the dirth of topics. Ombudsman Byron Calame wrote a preface of sorts to attend the blogging page that debuted along with the Time's Web site redesign. There he wrote that the paper was slower than others, including the Post to embrace blogging because he feared the veracity of the work. This sounds like his usual explanation for the paper falling behind--say on the wire tapping story--when this reporter simply expects they missed the boat.

Just look at the blogs the paper offers. Two come from the Dining section. One is on real estate, another IPOS, information readily available online in the way newspapers still will not relinquish, like running stock tables. The other is Pogue's and the final one is Calame's. Yes, their are a few more from Op-Ed columnists and contributors, but those cost money, so I'm still snearing. Do these blogs really need that much oversight that the paper should be so concerned? It's not like James Risen and Eric Lichtblau are scooping themselves in blogs. And I'm not saying these are bad blogs. They often enhance the work of the reporter. I'm just airing further frustration for Calame and the rest for not fessing up to the truth as has become their habit.

This bears out in Calame's blog, a useful addition to his bi-montly "Public Editor" column, but even here he practices his vile back pedalling. His most recent post explains the absence of coverage in the Times regarding Stephen Colbert's much publicized speech at the White House Correspondants Dinner. He claims that few media outlets covered it immediately--more of the above--and continued that it wasn't politically apropriate. Come one. What had a bigger fallout than that story. And we all know politics is all about fallout.

The better solution, it seems, is the one the Post has taken, where it treats blogs more like columns, even combining them into the same section on its Web site. If the Times were more in tune, it would throw caution to the wind and embrace the Internet. Then it would have seen the YouTube results and reported the Colbert story. It would monitor its blogs but not stifle them. It's not like it hasn't tossed the baby out with the bath water a couple of times now.