Don’t Bother the Monolithic, Antiquated Newspaper, Honey, It’s Too Busy Forsaking Journalistic Integrity In Favor of Sensationalized Perpetuation of Misinformation

Unhappy babies, ignored chores, and their lazy, attention-seeking mothers

Ok, I give in.  I’m going to blog about the horrifically asinine article in the New York Times about moms who blog.  The article is empty of any actual journalism but the vacuum is filled to the brim with stereotypes, misogyny, and prejudice.  Others have detailed the problems with the “article” very well (PhD in Parenting has a compilation of some of the best reviews). 

I have to be honest that if I were a newspaper I’d probably be a little pissy about the fact that I was part of a dying industry whose traditional role, breaking the news, had been nearly completely supplanted by this little thing called blogging.  As newspapers struggle to find relevance in an age where Twitter breaks the news I’m sure attacking bloggers makes them feel a little better.

What really kills me though (well besides the fact that the article was in the Fashion and Style section, the title is enough to give me apoplexy, and the illustration is the definition of offensive) is that mothers can’t win no matter what we do.  One day we are hyper-involved helicopter parents raising bratty narcissist with our parenting and the next we are ignoring our progeny to build our brand.  Seriously?   Mothers can’t win.

The worst part?  I’m pretty sure that the article was intentionally provocative and all the blogger response has just given the NYT exactly what they wanted.  Someone is probably patting themselves on the back for creating “buzz” and increasing “click throughs” at the NYT site.  All for an article chastising mothers for daring to optimize their sites for search engines. 

So here is what I have to say to the NYT:

Our kids are fine, thanks.  But it looks like the real story is,