Um, Guys? I Think We Just Got Called Uncivilized By the Greenwich Time

A Greenwich Time editor made an odd comment about bloggers- or, it may have been about you, the people who leave comments on blogs. I wasn't sure, so I thought I’d ask what you all thought.

In an op-ed, Greenwich Time managing editor Jim Zebora writes:
With all due respect to bloggers, people who write to newspapers are just the best. Our letter writers show the courage to share their views with the world - whether opining about the financial bailout, the presidential election, downtown parking or Henrietta the turkey - and they do so with their identities known to all. It's a more civilized way of making a statement than hiding behind a conjured-up screen name.
… It's especially heartening to see the informed, thoughtful give-and-take on this part of the editorial page. Reasonable people can and do disagree, and in their letters to the editor they do so in what I believe is an extraordinarily civilized way.
Unlike many blog-posters.

I’m confused about who he’s calling uncivilized. He starts out talking about bloggers (that’s me) then ends by cracking on “blog-posters.” I have no idea what “blog-posters” are. I post to my blog-- a blog is made up of posts-- but readers also post comments on blog posts. Is he busting on bloggers or commenters?

Since most local bloggers aren’t that anonymous (my photo was on the front of the Advocate this summer in an article about bloggers), and since most of the local bloggers are quite civilized, I think he’s busting on commenters.

Commenters do tend to be anonymous. However, the uncivilized, anonymous comments appear not on local blogs, but on the Greenwich Time’s own Topix discussion site. Topix is a news aggregator service that also offers a comments forum for articles. I guess the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time use the service because it's easier than running their own forum, but I think the quality of the comments suffers. The Topix website, for some reason, attracts raging xenophobes and people who you can tell are 45 but write like petulant 14 year olds. So, those must be the uncivilized blog-posters, right? Nope. Topix isn’t a web log-- aka "blog."

People, I think he’s busting on you- and me, since I comment on other blogs. I think we are the “blog-posters.”

However, in my year of reading Stamford and Greenwich blogs, none of the discussions have gone into wacko, racist, libelous territory like the ones on Topix. Therefore, I think Zebora must be confused about the word “blog,” and is really referring to the Topix commenters, not us.

Or, maybe he wanted to bust on Topix, but didn’t want to offend those people since they read the paper online, so he instead insulted bloggers. (?)

Basically, I’m telling you I have no clue who Zabora is busting on.

I do know that the “blog-poster” talk distracted from his main message, which was his admiration for the passion of local people who proudly sign their names to letters to the editor. I also know that by mentioning blogs as the opposite of civilized discussion, he misrepresented local blogs. I think he was off-topic and off-target.

I'd write a letter to the editor about this, but I'm still too confused to know what to say.

What do you raging, crazy commenters think?