Talk about short-sighted; it's laughable to see The WSJ, an unsustainable old-model media company, suggesting that bloggers, whom it claims are already able to turn a profit by writing, might want to consider further credentialing themselves via formal training and/or unionization. Yes, because those things have done so much for the viability of dead-tree media.

To see how that might work out, one need look no further than the farce that is our own local bloggers' guild. The bloggers most up in arms about "protecting their content" are quite often those whose content is the least worth protecting—and those most concerned with establishing themselves as authorities possessing specialized knowledge of the "rules."

The whole point of blogs is that anyone is qualified to write one. Not only members of a guild or press corps. And there are no rules, only recommended practices. The whole enterprise is meant to be democratizing. Further, those who want to raise the bar to entry have failed to notice something crucial: The psychological bar to entry for blogging is already incredibly high.

The most interesting thing about this recent TechCrunch article, for instance, was its use of the phrase "formal blog post." A blog is far too much responsibility for most people, who continually apologize to their audience for not having enough to say until, two to three months later, they finally throw in the towel. When even sending an entire email or typing up a coherent argument now strikes many as too stiff and formal, where exactly would we find warm bodies to man a credentialed "blogger corps"?

Why are those left aboard the ship seemingly incapable of thinking beyond the whole "send 'em off to school and slap a label on 'em" model? If it works, it works—no need for credentials.

"I am pressed, printed, stomped, and strategically removed—I am everybody. Insane without innocence; I am trapped, tricked, packaged, and shipped out. I am produced. (Pressed, printed, stomped, tripped, trapped, tricked, packaged, shipped...)"

The other day at lunch, a colleague asked an interesting question: "If you could be any writer, who would you want to be?" Everyone else at the table quickly rattled off a list of names of magazine columnists, essayists, and writers they admired—but I was honestly kind of stumped. Disconcerted, I've been turning the question around in my head ever since.

I mean, I'm a magazine editor. I read stacks and stacks of magazines growing up, was greatly inspired by a handful of book authors in my teens, and got into a bunch of comics writers and artists in college—but I'd be hard-pressed to list off many dead-tree magazine or newspaper writers I particularly care about. I know along the way I've liked certain writers' styles, and saved copies of certain columns for my files, and I'm sure I've picked up tricks here and there from a number of them—but for the life of me I can't remember most of their names!

But yesterday, it finally occurred to me: If you flipped the question to ask me about my favorite Internet writers and essayists, I could rattle off a full complement. Paul Graham. Jessamyn West. Matt Haughey. Alex Zola. Orson Scott Card. Andrew Baio. Bill Keaggy. King Kaufman. Nate Silver. The writers of n+1 mag. The McSweeney's crowd, for starting down that path in the first place. And a bunch of people whose real names I don't know, like dirtynumbangelboy, jonmc, grumblebee, and ikkyu2.

I'm suppose I'm not bereft of inspiration after all.

Hey min? I think "Top 5 Worst Mag Title Names Ever" might be the worst story title ever. What are "mag title names"? Have you ever heard of synecdoche? Or synonyms? What were you thinking? Better would have been "Top 5 Worst Magazine Names Ever."

Also, in this article about layoffs at TheStreet.com, you said the company estimates laying off 18 people will save the company $2.4 million. Does that mean those people were seriously earning an average of $133,000 apiece? Or is there some other explanation you neglected to print?

Finally, the title of the email I received from you today was more than a bit creepy. Seriously: "we can make your phone ring"? All lowercase? I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop: "we can make your phone ring...with our minds!" Or something. Because otherwise, your claim fails to excite; anyone who knows my phone number can make my phone ring.

Thanks for thinking of me, though.

Edit: Half an hour after I commented on that top story, the title was changed to "Top 5 Worst Mag Names Ever." Good deal.

Allan Britnell, a Canadian freelance writer and fact-checker, suggests that magazines' superior fact-checking should be advertised and used as a marketing tool. "I would argue that substantively checking all editorial content should be the benchmark," he says, intimating that some sort of "certified," logo-bearing standard for fact-checking could in some way save magazine journalism.

That's all well and good, but here's what I think: The argument fails unless you actually define what constitutes a "substantive" fact-check, as opposed to what Britnell calls "double-checking the spelling of source names and spot-checking the odd factoid." Define your terms or go home, buddy. You're talking to fact-checkers here.

For my part, I do what I consider to be a pretty rigorous fact-check on every piece that comes across my desk, and it would be awesome if that work were recognized in some sort of visible way, but calling for standards without even trying to define those standards always bothers me.

Talk about an argument lacking substance.

Yours truly,
The Fact-Checking Dept.