James Howard Gibbons has again used valuable space on the Chronicle editorial page as his own personal diary today.
Matt Bramanti takes Gibbons to task for some specific references in the Gibbons diary about his trip to the NRA gun show.
I have a more fundamental question — why should newspaper readers care about James Howard Gibbons’ trip through a gun show? And how self-important does the man have to be to think the editorial page of a major daily is the place for said ramblings (as opposed to a LiveJournal)?
We’ve taken to calling these insipid diversions “Editorial LiveJournals,” a play on the Chron‘s own name for the columns and an allusion to the diary-like nature of the LiveJournal service. It’s an ongoing source of amusement that the same person who lectured bloggers about editorial pages in an ideal state continues to grab space on his own editorial page for personal columns that are closer to LiveJournal entries than editorials in an ideal state.
Incidentally, recent Editorial LiveJournals have referred to Gibbons as the editor of the editorial page, with the previous “interim” tag removed. An email to the newspaper confirmed that Gibbons is now the editor of that page. So, it looks like we can expect even more Editorial LiveJournals — unless Mr. Gibbons takes us up on this offer.
