ATL Idol: The Judges Speak (Week 3)
ATL Idol, the “reality blogging” competition in which you will select the next editor of Above the Law, is nearing its end. The original six contestants have been winnowed down to two finalists: FROLIC AND DETOUR and SOPHIST.
We’ll open the polls later today. But first, let’s hear from your celebrity judges:
See what they have to say about the last two competitors, after the jump.
As in prior weeks, the judges were asked to review only the head-to-head round, in which our two remaining contestants tackled the same assigned story. The judges were permitted, but not required, to read the contestants’ other posts during the week, as well as reader comments appended thereto.
THOMAS C. GOLDSTEIN
Akin Gump
F&D: It looks to me that you were assigned a story involving the continuation of a epic legal saga that everyone hoped and assumed the Supreme Court had resolved this Term. You wrote about a totem pole. Blogs, unlike newspapers, don’t have to follow conventional journalistic standards. But even on ATL, posts should relate to actual news - legal news, personal news, news about space aliens, whatever - but news. By your own account, the pole is nearly 18 months old and it doesn’t have anything more than a tangential relationship to the Supreme Court’s decision or what’s going on in the case.
Which leads to my second point: know your audience and pivot off of them. My sense is that most ATL readers work in BigLaw or are in the law school pipeline headed in that direction. If they don’t defend corporations themselves, they work for firms that do. So either sympathize with their struggles against the conniving plaintiff’s bar, or chide them for nickel-and-diming innocent victims. But take a stand one way or another.
Finally, thanks for giving my blog a shout out for its extensive coverage of the case. You lose a couple of points for linking past the jump instead of the top of the post and for not recognizing that it’s SCOTUSblog not Scotusblog (because there’s an acronym involved). And failing to do a simple spell-check is, in your own words, “Rididulous.”
Sophist: Since you like to make lists, try this one out:
1. The oil spill occurred more than 19 years ago, not 17 years ago.2. Exxon (not the fisherman) was the petitioner at the Supreme Court.
3. The jury’s award was first slashed by the district judge (to $4.5 billion), not by the Ninth Circuit.
4. The Supreme Court’s decision was based solely on maritime common law. (Indeed, the questions presented specifically excluded the due process claim.)
Unlike F&D, you deserve credit for discussing the actual story. But you seemed to bury (what to my eyes was) the lead: namely, that the parties must slog through years of litigation because the Supreme Court seemingly forgot to apply one of its own rules.
And rather than explain the rule yourself, you simply quoted from our account. I appreciate the ink, but because SCOTUSblog is geared somewhat to a more specialized audience, the explanation may have left even your more sophisticated readers miffed.
***
Here’s my sense in the end. The competitors have a long way to go before they meet the high standards set by David, who’s both a natural and works very hard at the blog. I can’t tell if the skill set just isn’t there, or it’s a question of developing experience. To me, the first season of West Wing stunk, but it eventually hit its stride and became great. The same could happen here, but unfortunately an advertising-supported blog doesn’t have a year to find its voice. It risks losing a generation of readership in the blink of an eye.
PROFESSOR ANN ALTHOUSE
University of Wisconsin Law School
It’s hard to show off your blogging style when you’re assigned to blog what is already a stylishly written blog post. I like this Ashby Jones character who writes for the Wall Street Journal:
Just when you thought you’d never have to hear the word “Hazelwood” again, the Exxon-Valdez case is back in the news….Call us crazy, but we’d bet we see this back at the Supreme Court in a year or two, after whichever party loses at the 9th Circuit appeals.
This is already very similar to what (I think) David Lat would write. So what do you do to add value when you link to it? It’s not easy.
Frolic and Detour titled the post “Pole Position: Is That a Silent Protest, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?” The title turned me off, but the post wasn’t terrible. Like last week, F&D went out looking for more material and this time he/she built the whole post on it. The “alternative dispute resolution called the shame pole.” I would have liked to see more mockery. For one thing, you made a sexual reference in the title and it’s a pole, so we expect a raunchy payoff. Despite its girth, that pole can’t screw you as hard as a lawsuit.
And you’ve got that photograph. You don’t mean for us to take that art and that solemn Native American artist at face value, do you? I need to laugh at that or I don’t want to see it. Art is almost always bad and should be ridiculed. And solemn Native American guardians of the landscape are a pedantic cliché that must be reworked (or eschewed).
You say: “No word on whether Exxon plans to erect a shame pole decorated with worried shareholders in front of Webber’s house.” That was good. But since you wrote “in front of Webber’s house,” I got distracted wondering if Native Americans — can we get a tribe name? — put their shame poles on the property of the individuals they are trying to shame. That seemed intimidating, like a burning cross on somebody’s front yard. But then I concluded that you just lost track of the parallelism. Similarly, you told us what was on Webber’s pole — “images of dead otters, out-of-business fishermen, and corporate villains” — so you should have given us a list of images Exxon’s pole. You came up with “worried shareholders.” For parallelism, you needed three things. And there’s even a Rule of Three in comedy writing. So you should have said something like: worried shareholders, a glowering Justice Scalia, and… oh, I don’t know… a dying Richard Carstone.
Enough about the pole. On to Sophist.
I couldn’t figure out what Sophist’s idea was. Litigation can take a long time, and lawyers fight hard for the interests they represent? You’re not talking to neophytes, so what are you saying (that Ashby Jones didn’t say better)? That litigation can take a really long time and lawyers fight really hard?
Frolic and Detour found an idea but it was a little off and it was not fully exploited. Sophist never really got an idea at all. I’m going to give this round to Frolic and Detour.
DAHLIA LITHWICK
Slate
Never has the question of interest been rendered less interesting. I frankly don’t think either of you explained the legal issue well enough to set the table here at all. And no fair relying on SCOTUSblog to do that for you. Explaining the legal dispute is your job, first and foremost, the readers won’t read if they don’t care. That said, there are about nine truisms about The Law that are too boring to be done boringly. That it is slow is one of them. Your raw material here was a law is slow story. You needed some fancy stunt driving to get me to care.
Sophist you are the better journalist, clearer and less loop-de-loopy. But the boringness of your efforts on this one are quite staggering. The first non-reported riff in here? That there was “much gnashing of teeth over at Faegre & Benson.” A cliche? Your kicker. Another cliche? Lesson to bloggers: Never end with the line “lesson to bloggers.”
Frolic and Detour, points to you for an original angle. I hated it. But at least you rooted around for some interesting framing device. I agree with Ann that if you were going to pull all your eggs on the shame pole you needed to make it hilarious. This entry was not. I give you the round for having the balls to float a weird idea but the first rule of floating weird ideas has to be: do it well.
I am not quite as pessimistic as Tom. Both of you are good bloggers and making the law both interesting and funny is unbelievably hard. Lat just makes it look easy. Good luck to you both.
Earlier: Prior ATL Idol coverage (scroll down)
(92) Comments
Comments
Once again Goldstein shows that he is the best judge: "The competitors have a long way to go before they meet the high standards set by David, who's both a natural and works very hard at the blog. I can't tell if the skill set just isn't there, or it's a question of developing experience."
Amen to that.
Reading reviews of boring posts is pretty much as boring as those posts were themselves.
Goldstein's comments = ouch!
11:03 - Agreed. Check out the three comments Goldstein links to when he refers to "more" "sophisticated" "readers".
"Althouse" is Althouse's eponymous blog? Really? Thanks for clearing that up finally.
Wow 5, you're clever. We should make you the new editor.
judges suck
Goldstein chides F&D over failing to use spell-check while writing this: "thatn a tangential relationship."
Tom, I just don't know if the skill set is there.
Don't break my gump, my akin' akin' gump . . .
write in goldstein for EIC
Ouchie on the "thatn," Tom.
Otherwise, your spot-on review was all thatn a bag of chips.
To Goldstein:
Failing to do a simple spell check while mocking someone for failing to do a simple spell check is "Rididulous."
Reread your first paragraph.
That's it. If Althouse likes F&D, I'm defintiely voting for Sophist.
Goldstein's the man.
Dahlia Lithwick hasn't written anything funny about the law since she started trying to play with the big boys (Walter Dellinger). Now she's unfunny and unqualifed.
Again, these judges are so much worse than the competitors. Lithwick is right, blogging is hard and once again, judges...FAIL!
All the bloggers are ttt
How do you pronounce eponymous?
judges are useless... again.
Wait wait wait -- refreshed as of 11:19 ET, and Tom's pot-meet-kettle moment has been erased. Just for the record, comment 8 (11:12 #2) accurately records the error in Mr. Golstein's first paragraph.
Could ATL clarify whether that was a transcription error or whether the error is attributable to Golstein?
UVA sucks worse than judges do. Except maybe UVA judges. Yeah. They would be worse.
I agree with Goldstein---they both suck. ATL readers unite and refuse to vote if one of the choices is not "none of the above"
Talent, journo standards, and now editorial standards are all getting flushed.
Strap on the water skis, Fonzie.
It's shark jumping time.
On what planet could the first season of west wing be deemed to have "stunk"?
How do you pronounce Golstein? INE or EEN?
22- that's dumb. Lat is clearly committed to this idea, having ignored calls to put Kash or none of the above in the poll so we might as well vote for the best writer.... Otherwise we can't complain when they are horrible...
God bless the Polish, 26, God bless.
Goldstein nailed it. Dahlia - well put as well (and your totally a MILF). Althouse is still a TTT.
Oh FOR SHAME!
Just let Bess Levin at DB try it out over here...she would do far better than these two Hack finalists.
Lat clone yourself to save ATL...
26 = Ryan Miner
27---I don't agree. It may be true that Lat is committed to the idea but how will it look if there are only a handful of votes cast? Maybe he will wake up and get some real quality here instead of giving us these choices. By the way who said we can't complain? This is Above the Law
22
I mean Ryan Mariner
Is it just me, or are FUPAs incredibly attractive?
FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who cares what the "celebrity" judges think? At the end of the day, all that really matters is whether the regular ATL audience likes the new EIC. If they don't, ATL will fade into obscurity, despite what 3 competing bloggers think about him/her.
I love that Goldstein chides Sophist for not pushing enough that litigation takes forever and Althouse criticizes Sophist for...talking about litigation taking forever.
To: #26
Get in line
35- That's just demonstrably false
22/32 - you realize that Lat could have just hired one of these 6 without letting us have a say, right? He's going to pick one of them, no matter how much we say we don't like them. If there's someone better out there, that person didn't apply. So just vote for the best writer and if you don't like the site afterward, just stop reading it.
Goldstein loses points for thinking season one of the West Wing sucked.
What is a FUPA?
Goldstein went to AU, right? Is that a good school?
FUPA = Fat Upper Pussy Area
22/32 then it just becomes a contest between Sophist and F&D to see who has the most friends and the ACTUAL readers like us get screwed. I'm going to vote for the candidate that gave us the best overall body of work...
FUPA = Halverson
AU is totally gr8t!!!!!! I LOVED IT SO MUCHHHH!!!! I would recomend it to anyone who wants the best education in DC!!! The clinics are AMAZING!!
Bess Levin is a saint!
Did you hear that Michael Phelps eats a lot and got water in his goggles and STILL won gold??????
By shart contrast, Halverson eats a lot and got salsa con queso in her FUPA and got suspended!
Halverson = Uber FUPA ... and I'm scared now. UBER FUPA is roaming around unattended, free to devour whom ever she pleases.
40 & 45---Ever hear of civil disobedience? MLK would be disappointed in you. You guys need to lighten up a bit and have some fun. ATL Readers UNITE and abstain from voting! Who's with me? Take the vow not to vote.
22/32
51 - That's a noble thought, but this is an ATL vote, not civil rights
51- Civil right/ATL editor yeah those are pretty much the same thing
#51-- I agree with 45 if we abstain then the idiots get to decide who is in charge and that's a bad sign for ATL
The smart money is on FUPA to win.
22/32/51 are you a secret Marinhead who thinks if you invalidate this round of voting Lat will have to let Marin back in the competition? Because that ain't gonna happen
Marin was for serious the best contestant. This whole process is a shame sham. I have been reading this cite for three weeks now and NOBODY has posted anything better than Marin has done. Not Kash, not Lat, not the rest of the contestants. She is funny and gets it. Write in vote for Marin!
Why did the judges only evaluate the totem pole story? Yesterday's posts were much better for both contestants (though F&D's won my vote in the final).
I think we should try and game the vote to be an exact tie, in order to demonstrate to Lat how pointless this whole thing is.
Yeah, it's harder than getting rid of Marin, but we could conceivably pull it off...
59- no we couldn't. I'm sure F&D has outside friends voting just the same as Marin did... that is just dumb
57: Holy fuck, I thought the Marinheads would leave once we actually evicted her from the contest. Get the fuck out. If there's anything the regular readership and commentariat of ATL agreed on, it's that Marin was awful.
57-- I think you forgot to indicate that you had the sarcasm button on...
Look, this is stupid. No strategic voting. No listening to stupid judges. Let's just read their posts, make up our minds and vote. There was a contest, it's done, let's just get it over with and let the new editor get to work.
59 - what would that accomplish? reading more posts by these people? one of them will be editor. don't fool yourself.
61-- I think all this vote-rigging shenanigans is sour grapes from Marinheads
59-- come on I am still surprised we managed to get Marin out of here last week, but engineering a tie would be impossible AND would give a strategic advantage to people voting at the last minute. Dumb, dumb, dumb
57 drank the Kool-Aid
I'm a huge fan of 57, and all Marinheads. I think Marin and her fan club are shamazing people.
57 < FUPA < Marin
http://www.abovethelat.com
Isn’t this the part of an Idol contest where the judges heap praise on their favorite candidates for making it this far?
I think the judges were far too harsh, particularly on Frolic, but how about that Ann Althouse letting her hair down with the line: “Despite its girth, that pole can't screw you as hard as a lawsuit.” Who knew that she can work blue?
I have been following this site carefully since its inception, have submitted a lot of quirky links for publication, and I have seen what works as a post and what does not for a hear and a half. For what it is worth here is my take.
Both candidates are incredibly well qualified to edit a blawg that is primarily about BigLaw and the associates who populate it. And, dispite the partisan grumbling about “whining”, it is pretty amazing that the two final candidates for EIC both hold HLS degrees. That is going to help this blawg maintain its credibility with readers, tipsters, and the other publications that ALT relies on as a definitive source about large law firm life and compensation—no matter who the winner is.
Sophist is literal and straight ahead. He will make a very good, if slightly more boring EIC.
Frolic & Detour also has the writing skills to be EIC, but she has that off-the-wall quality and unique perspective that I believe gives her the potential to be more entertaining and funny than sophist—without being annoying like Marin. In other words, if you enjoy ALT primarily for its snarky take on the odd law story of the day, she is your man. (So to speak.)
So there you have it.
Both candidates will do a fine job, but I am voting to for Frolic & Detour.
--SRG/SF-CA
Can Lat please not leave?
57. Use site as in webSite, not cite as in citation. TTT
71-- really? I mean I guess we all have our opinions but Sohpist is the funny candidate.
Fictional lawyers was fun and tons of people voted but worst legal bosses was a snooze-fest (in fact i had to go back and search to see what F&D's first feature was, I just didn't remember) and most of the comments in Sophist's pieces have been about the subject of the post while F&D's have been about how bad she is (or an anti-semite).
I think given yesterday's post from F&D even she realizes that she hasn't reached any of the readers that's why we go a page from her diary instead of a legal post.
Frankly, I didn't even realize I had a favorite till I started writing, but at least Sophist is funny and memorable...
71-- you're being sarcastic, right? Because when was F&D funny? During that earnst shame poll piece? Umm no. At least I have chuckled a few times over Sophist.
Isn’t this the part of an Idol contest where the judges heap praise on their favorite candidates for making it this far?
I think the judges were far too harsh, particularly on Frolic, but how about that Ann Althouse letting her hair down with the line: “Despite its girth, that pole can't screw you as hard as a lawsuit.” Who knew that she can work blue?
I have been following this site carefully since its inception, have submitted a lot of quirky links for publication, and I have seen what works as a post and what does not for a year and a half. For what it is worth here is my take.
Both candidates are incredibly well qualified to edit a blawg that is primarily about BigLaw and the associates who populate it. And, dispite the partisan grumbling about “whining”, it is pretty amazing that the two final candidates for EIC both hold HLS degrees.
That is going to help this blawg maintain its credibility with readers, tipsters, and the other publications that rely on ATL as a definitive source about large law firm life and compensation—no matter who the winner is.
Sophist is literal and straight ahead. He will make a very good, if slightly more boring EIC.
Frolic & Detour also has the writing skills to be EIC, but she has that off-the-wall quality and unique perspective that I believe gives her the potential to be more entertaining and funny than sophist—without being annoying like Marin. In other words, if you enjoy ATL primarily for its snarky take on the odd law story of the day, she is your man. (So to speak.)
So there you have it.
Both candidates will do a fine job, but I am voting to for Frolic & Detour.
--SRG/SF-CA
(Sorry, inadvertently hit the submit button first time arround while still proofing.)
I sense a carefully crafted PR campaign typified by the amazingly prescient comment, "In this biz you're only as good as your last post," which was conveniently followed up with a revelation that F&D also went to Harvard.
So I guess that was supposed to blow us away and make us forget that that particular post was supposed to have been the crowning conclusion of the "multi-day" post in which the contestants were supposed to pick a topic that could engage reader feedback and have more than one article squeezed out of it.
F&D barely squeezed one article out of her topic, and it was a bit of a snooze; very little structure, just sort of "tell us what you think!"
But dropping the topic and turning the last post into an opportunity to update her bio and address the readers directly was quite a cop out in my opinion. More than anything, it just helps to mask the overall lack of interesting material F&D has brought us.
This contest is depressing. The judges' criticism is subjective nit picking and not entertaining. Yet, they make some points.
The way to win this one would have been to ignore the topic and just write about fat judges kissing each other on a summer associate boat cruise while getting disciplined by a state bar for sending steamy text messages about a love child who was making 190K as a first year in a TTT firm. IMO.
This blog is embarrassing to the legal profession. As we speak, everyday Americans are losing their homes, the courts are a mess, and sophisticated default swap chicanery has led to an economic meltdown. How these "esteemed" judges have found the time to engage in a juvenile American Idol contest is beyond me.
The author has still left this error uncorrected:
"Ann Althouse, Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and author of her eponymous blog, Althouse"
*** Eponymous refers to the person for which something is named and not the named item. ***
The way you have it written contends that she is named for her blog.
Please correct it to say:
"Ann Althouse, Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and eponymous author of the blog Althouse"
Thank you.
The author has still left this error uncorrected:
"Ann Althouse, Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and author of her eponymous blog, Althouse"
*** Eponymous refers to the person for which something is named and not the named item. ***
The way you have it written contends that she is named for her blog.
Please correct it to say:
"Ann Althouse, Robert W. & Irma M. Arthur-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and eponymous author of the blog Althouse"
Thank you.
80-81. Nobody cares. You may return to your embroidery.
Wow. Althouse doesn't even know how to properly use the word eponymous! If her credibility could've dropped any more in my book, it would have when I read 80's comment.
I give the judges credit for improving. This was at least ten times better than their first attempt at giving feedback.
82, actually I think I will return to my legal studies. No time for embroidery during the game of law school.
81/85: just return to something else. Thanks.
Althouse = pwnd for misusing eponymous.
79: Please explain what an "everyday American" is, and how it differs from other varieties of Americans.
God, you'd think Dahlia would be hot, given all the drivel she writes.
If you're going to bash someone for not using spell-check, Tommy boy, you should try spelling "lede" correctly in your own post.
Dear 77:
Only because I have nothing better to do before leaving for my dinner engagement tonight in West Sonoma County, whom do you suppose constructed this so called "carefully crafted PR campaign" [to vote in Frolic] to which you refer?
Does this have anything to do with JFK's assassination by any chance?
Please lay out your best conspiracy theory, including the players and their motivation, in 300 words.
Thank you,
SRG/SF-CA
PS: Congratulations (probably) to Sophist (if the 60/40 split holds over the week-end).
Gee, nothing but negatives. Big f'ing surprise. Tell me why we have to read this crap, again?
10:50 - You don't. Whether you read this or any other website is up to you (which is why all the bitching about ATL gets so tiresome; if you don't like it, don't read it).