The Problem With Celebrity Reporting
Jun. 23rd, 2007 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eggwardsHere's a poorly written story about Bears. It's a story from June 19th on Canada.com called "Where the Bears Don't Fear To Tread." Probably the worst headline in years.
At first I thought about making some cheap shot about the paper that ran the story, but the more that I think about it, it’s not the paper’s fault. Any newspaper in North America could run the story, just as it was written, and as the writer, Robert Fulford, suggests, many heterosexuals don’t know what “Bear” means, how would an editor not know that the story was a pile of crap? Therefore, I must say that the fault of the reporting falls squarely on the reporter.
First, let’s look at how he starts his story. He focuses in on one person, and suddenly that one person becomes the image of the bear community. I’d have not one problem with this, if who he chose was an average bear on the street. It’s certainly not hard to find someone in Toronto who could be a fine model for the story.
Instead, he chooses Andrew Sullivan. Truthfully, I like Andrew and read his blog. I tend to agree with much of what he says, though not all. He has, through the years shined a small spotlight on the bear community, including the well known 2003 essay that the article’s author uses for his story. Unfortunately that essay is from the perspective of an outsider looking into the world of bears. While Andrew may be getting more comfortable with being bear-ish as he ages, I don’t think he’s actually decided to be Bear-Identified.
As I was telling Chris last night, there’s a trend of older gay men who think they’ll just slide into the bear community as their youth fades away. The problem is, they don’t understand bears at all. They just have trouble with the ageism of their own clique that has now turned them out. Most of the true bears and cubs that I’ve known seem to understand that they were never going to fit into the twink world and bears seemed to be the more accepting, Average Joe kind of place. More often than not, it isn’t a choice to “go bear.” One is or isn’t.
Another person the author decides to spotlight is Esera Tuaolo, the out former football player. While the bears might love to look at him, again, here’s a guy who doesn’t identify with the bears.
Part of the trouble is that the bear community (and I’m sorry, I never know whether to capitalize that or not) doesn’t have any celebrities. Sure, those of us in the communities can choose people that every bear should know, say, Jack Radcliffe, but he’s not identifiable to the outside world, and even worse, a mainstream newspaper doesn’t want to interview someone who’s known because he’s a porn star. Most of the famous people we look to, say James Gandolfini or Kevin Smith shares some bearish qualities but aren’t bears and really can’t contribute to the story.
Let’s face it; while there are many different definitions of a “bear” within our community, the main thing differentiating us from being a group of average joe type men is the fact that we love cock. Of course, you can’t exactly say that in a news story. I could go on about the fact that just using the word “gay” in a story already brings up problems, because we are defined by the sex we choose to pursue. It often makes for some difficult decisions for both writer and publisher when you have to identify a group this way, so often they look for the trivial or the scandalous ways to show differences between gays and straights rather than by their relationships. This is generally done by showing off the drag queens and leathermen, the visible side of cock-chugging, I suppose.
So what do you do with a community who doesn’t always go to those extremes? Sure, the bear community has it’s shares of the queens and the leather daddies, but the job is to highlight the guy who looks like all of those straight guys out there. As most mainstream stories of bears go, they always end up with the conclusion that bears “are just like any regular guy, but with a difference. Here’s the big irony - Hee hee - they like guys like them!”
There’s one reason, and one reason only that the writer of this piece chose to mention Andrew Sullivan and Esera Tuaolo. The author got his hands on the Spring Issue of A Bear’s Life Magazine. Suddenly he thinks he’s gotten the bible on all things bear.
I like A Bear’s Life, but there’s certainly problems with the magazine’s contents and choices. It’s fluffy and silly and it’s doing just what any other magazine is trying to do, get the most readers it can, and lure advertisers. In this, Steve and Mike have done something remarkable – sell a magazine to the community that doesn’t have porn. Seeing where the porn magazines have failed and folded (except for the more widely focused 100% Beef), it’s surprising that a Bear’s Life is working at all.
A Bear’s Life is a spin on what would have been called a women’s magazine. There’s dating columns and decorating tips and travelogues, but on the whole it isn’t a issues driven work, nor does it want to be. Heck, the magazine, except for some medical tips, seems to overlook sex altogether. While I think it’s a good way to show the growth of the bear movement, and to give some insight, it’s certainly not representative of the group as a whole.
This is the biggest problem of this article. The whole article is based on the two biggest names he saw in the magazine, likely picked up off the shelf at a Border’s Bookstore, and he went to get a quote or two from them. Well, Esra is only quoted from the article, so that’s one then. Then he goes on to speak to Steve, the editor of A Bear’s life, looking for the eternally hard to pin down question, “What is a Bear?” Start your Bears Mailing list jokes now.
The real problem of the article isn’t the definition of a bear, or, in the long run who he chooses to focus on, but the lazy journalism. The reference to the Bear Books and the “history” could have been culled from wikipedia. He does acknowledge the website we got the information from (www.bearhistory.com) and the site’s owner, but it doesn’t seem like he ever contacted Mr. Wright. Unless a lot was left on the features desk floor, he only interviewed two people for the story, and didn’t question much of what he saw in the one magazine he picked up.
Even if you only have one reference point, couldn’t you have done more legwork? The magazine has more than 15 writers in it. Could you not get other perspectives from them? Just because they are not names (sorry Larry Flick), doesn’t mean they can’t give a quote or represent our community. Too often journalists stick to reporting celebrity and not news, and this story is just the same.
Far too often journalist write stories about press conferences, about scheduled media events and – the worst kind of journalism, period - just reprint press releases as news. While this seems to appeal to my lazy side, it’s one of the things that made me shy away from news reporting. No one’s actually asking questions or trying to search beyond the surface. This story is a great example of this.
Why couldn’t the author go out to a Bear Night. Or find if the Toronto Bears had a Bear coffee? Why not make the story local instead of trying to find national figures in a group that seems to eschew them.
How can you write about a group made of everyday men and expect to find celebrity? The whole point of being average is being out of the spotlight, but still, here’s the mirror, looking for a name to represent us. He gets closer by interviewing Steve, but that was more for the author to understand what he was reading in the magazine, not to find one of those average joes.
I’d like to see this author really spend some time on this story. It would be good if he found not only the drag queens and leathermen but also the artists, the teachers, the customer service agents, the decorators, the construction workers, the diversity of the bear community. I’d like to see the history represented as something more than just finding a few references to the word “bear” used in a gay subtext from books and articles from long, long ago. What about the bear clubs, and the bars and the websites that did their job of helping like people find each other and then find a sense of community? This isn’t spoken of in this article; it’s the search for North America’s biggest name that happens to be gay and has a beard (sometimes).
If Andrew Sullivan wants to join us, then that’s fine. It is, and hopefully will be a big tent in the future. If bearish guys want to say that they aren’t a bear, or call themselves post-bear, I’m cool with that too, but what I don’t need is some guy stating that the bear community was made credible because Sullivan wrote about it. That’s the same as saying that the bear community is now credible because the Canadian National Post did a puff piece on it.
As always, the bear community is both simple and terribly difficult to define, and maybe I’m asking far too much from someone who was working on a pride Month puff piece for a features page. I’m also defensive about the image of bears, and want to see better depictions, but what really makes me hate the job Fulford does here is that I can see how little work he put into it when it’s not difficult to get bears to talk about bears. Unfortunately it’s just another sign of lazy, sloppy reporting.
In the long run, the story isn’t as important as say, reporting the Iraq war, but we’ve seen the media do a pretty lousy job on that, too. For now, let’s just say if you can’t take the time to get the real story, don’t write it. It’s not like we need the publicity. We’re just Average Joes here.
At first I thought about making some cheap shot about the paper that ran the story, but the more that I think about it, it’s not the paper’s fault. Any newspaper in North America could run the story, just as it was written, and as the writer, Robert Fulford, suggests, many heterosexuals don’t know what “Bear” means, how would an editor not know that the story was a pile of crap? Therefore, I must say that the fault of the reporting falls squarely on the reporter.
First, let’s look at how he starts his story. He focuses in on one person, and suddenly that one person becomes the image of the bear community. I’d have not one problem with this, if who he chose was an average bear on the street. It’s certainly not hard to find someone in Toronto who could be a fine model for the story.
Instead, he chooses Andrew Sullivan. Truthfully, I like Andrew and read his blog. I tend to agree with much of what he says, though not all. He has, through the years shined a small spotlight on the bear community, including the well known 2003 essay that the article’s author uses for his story. Unfortunately that essay is from the perspective of an outsider looking into the world of bears. While Andrew may be getting more comfortable with being bear-ish as he ages, I don’t think he’s actually decided to be Bear-Identified.
As I was telling Chris last night, there’s a trend of older gay men who think they’ll just slide into the bear community as their youth fades away. The problem is, they don’t understand bears at all. They just have trouble with the ageism of their own clique that has now turned them out. Most of the true bears and cubs that I’ve known seem to understand that they were never going to fit into the twink world and bears seemed to be the more accepting, Average Joe kind of place. More often than not, it isn’t a choice to “go bear.” One is or isn’t.
Another person the author decides to spotlight is Esera Tuaolo, the out former football player. While the bears might love to look at him, again, here’s a guy who doesn’t identify with the bears.
Part of the trouble is that the bear community (and I’m sorry, I never know whether to capitalize that or not) doesn’t have any celebrities. Sure, those of us in the communities can choose people that every bear should know, say, Jack Radcliffe, but he’s not identifiable to the outside world, and even worse, a mainstream newspaper doesn’t want to interview someone who’s known because he’s a porn star. Most of the famous people we look to, say James Gandolfini or Kevin Smith shares some bearish qualities but aren’t bears and really can’t contribute to the story.
Let’s face it; while there are many different definitions of a “bear” within our community, the main thing differentiating us from being a group of average joe type men is the fact that we love cock. Of course, you can’t exactly say that in a news story. I could go on about the fact that just using the word “gay” in a story already brings up problems, because we are defined by the sex we choose to pursue. It often makes for some difficult decisions for both writer and publisher when you have to identify a group this way, so often they look for the trivial or the scandalous ways to show differences between gays and straights rather than by their relationships. This is generally done by showing off the drag queens and leathermen, the visible side of cock-chugging, I suppose.
So what do you do with a community who doesn’t always go to those extremes? Sure, the bear community has it’s shares of the queens and the leather daddies, but the job is to highlight the guy who looks like all of those straight guys out there. As most mainstream stories of bears go, they always end up with the conclusion that bears “are just like any regular guy, but with a difference. Here’s the big irony - Hee hee - they like guys like them!”
There’s one reason, and one reason only that the writer of this piece chose to mention Andrew Sullivan and Esera Tuaolo. The author got his hands on the Spring Issue of A Bear’s Life Magazine. Suddenly he thinks he’s gotten the bible on all things bear.
I like A Bear’s Life, but there’s certainly problems with the magazine’s contents and choices. It’s fluffy and silly and it’s doing just what any other magazine is trying to do, get the most readers it can, and lure advertisers. In this, Steve and Mike have done something remarkable – sell a magazine to the community that doesn’t have porn. Seeing where the porn magazines have failed and folded (except for the more widely focused 100% Beef), it’s surprising that a Bear’s Life is working at all.
A Bear’s Life is a spin on what would have been called a women’s magazine. There’s dating columns and decorating tips and travelogues, but on the whole it isn’t a issues driven work, nor does it want to be. Heck, the magazine, except for some medical tips, seems to overlook sex altogether. While I think it’s a good way to show the growth of the bear movement, and to give some insight, it’s certainly not representative of the group as a whole.
This is the biggest problem of this article. The whole article is based on the two biggest names he saw in the magazine, likely picked up off the shelf at a Border’s Bookstore, and he went to get a quote or two from them. Well, Esra is only quoted from the article, so that’s one then. Then he goes on to speak to Steve, the editor of A Bear’s life, looking for the eternally hard to pin down question, “What is a Bear?” Start your Bears Mailing list jokes now.
The real problem of the article isn’t the definition of a bear, or, in the long run who he chooses to focus on, but the lazy journalism. The reference to the Bear Books and the “history” could have been culled from wikipedia. He does acknowledge the website we got the information from (www.bearhistory.com) and the site’s owner, but it doesn’t seem like he ever contacted Mr. Wright. Unless a lot was left on the features desk floor, he only interviewed two people for the story, and didn’t question much of what he saw in the one magazine he picked up.
Even if you only have one reference point, couldn’t you have done more legwork? The magazine has more than 15 writers in it. Could you not get other perspectives from them? Just because they are not names (sorry Larry Flick), doesn’t mean they can’t give a quote or represent our community. Too often journalists stick to reporting celebrity and not news, and this story is just the same.
Far too often journalist write stories about press conferences, about scheduled media events and – the worst kind of journalism, period - just reprint press releases as news. While this seems to appeal to my lazy side, it’s one of the things that made me shy away from news reporting. No one’s actually asking questions or trying to search beyond the surface. This story is a great example of this.
Why couldn’t the author go out to a Bear Night. Or find if the Toronto Bears had a Bear coffee? Why not make the story local instead of trying to find national figures in a group that seems to eschew them.
How can you write about a group made of everyday men and expect to find celebrity? The whole point of being average is being out of the spotlight, but still, here’s the mirror, looking for a name to represent us. He gets closer by interviewing Steve, but that was more for the author to understand what he was reading in the magazine, not to find one of those average joes.
I’d like to see this author really spend some time on this story. It would be good if he found not only the drag queens and leathermen but also the artists, the teachers, the customer service agents, the decorators, the construction workers, the diversity of the bear community. I’d like to see the history represented as something more than just finding a few references to the word “bear” used in a gay subtext from books and articles from long, long ago. What about the bear clubs, and the bars and the websites that did their job of helping like people find each other and then find a sense of community? This isn’t spoken of in this article; it’s the search for North America’s biggest name that happens to be gay and has a beard (sometimes).
If Andrew Sullivan wants to join us, then that’s fine. It is, and hopefully will be a big tent in the future. If bearish guys want to say that they aren’t a bear, or call themselves post-bear, I’m cool with that too, but what I don’t need is some guy stating that the bear community was made credible because Sullivan wrote about it. That’s the same as saying that the bear community is now credible because the Canadian National Post did a puff piece on it.
As always, the bear community is both simple and terribly difficult to define, and maybe I’m asking far too much from someone who was working on a pride Month puff piece for a features page. I’m also defensive about the image of bears, and want to see better depictions, but what really makes me hate the job Fulford does here is that I can see how little work he put into it when it’s not difficult to get bears to talk about bears. Unfortunately it’s just another sign of lazy, sloppy reporting.
In the long run, the story isn’t as important as say, reporting the Iraq war, but we’ve seen the media do a pretty lousy job on that, too. For now, let’s just say if you can’t take the time to get the real story, don’t write it. It’s not like we need the publicity. We’re just Average Joes here.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 06:34 pm (UTC)Considering that he is based in Toronto, it would not surprise me if he just picked up A Bear's Life from a bookstore and not even ventured anywhere along Church Street.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:20 pm (UTC)Yeah, it seems like he didn't go very far too look for info, and if he did just use that issue of A Bear's Life, he found the editor and only two names he knew to get going. He should have asked Steve for some of the other magazine writer's info, even if they weren't household names.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:24 pm (UTC)While we should be open to those who want to join, the people who do look to the community should understand that it's pretty established now, and they aren't going to be able to change it easily. I think that's the problem. It does make them stick out while the rest of us just go with the flow, so to speak.
They just have trouble with the ageism of their own clique
Date: 2007-06-23 07:44 pm (UTC)I've said it before and I'll say it again - bears "season" as they age and generally become even more attractive...twinks (by which I mean the Peter Pan crowd trying to look 16 forever) slowly degrade like the portrait of Dorian Gray. While the frosted side of me wants to say "sure, come on in and have a hug" to guys that wanna slip into the bear thing as they go to pot, the whole wheat side says "don't bother slumming in our clubhouse, Mary - go back to your superficial circuit buddies." But then of course so many bears ARE superficial circuit buddies, but I digress.
I actually had one super woofy guy online (those who take umbrage at my using of the phrase "super woofy" in an unironic context may feel free to kiss my super woofy butt) tell me that basically he was on bear411 because he'd gotten fat and lazy and that bears had such low standards they'd take anyone.
I disproved his generalization by telling him to fuck off. ;)
Re: They just have trouble with the ageism of their own clique
Date: 2007-06-25 05:28 pm (UTC)Sure, we have circuit bears, muscle bears and everything in between, but there really is an additude for the people who get it, and the people who get it know "woof" is both cutural and extremely silly all at the same time.
I've been fat and lazy most of my life, so I guess I don't know any different.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 03:15 am (UTC)I think.
Reading your assessment of the article, I have decided to adopt the MO of the author and be lazy and not read the real thing. Why get my blood pressure up? As I read your fine dissection of his column I could hear in my head the "tips" I learned during my student magazine practicum.
1) Cite you web research.
2) Have at least two "sources" who you can say you interviewed about the damn topic - not neccesarilly the same people who wrote the web crap.
3) When the editor has no idea WTF he/she is reading, you can get away with murder if they like the way it scans on a page.
4) The editor is porbably going to make you re-edit the piece anyway, and it won't make sense when it gets to the point where he/she likes it. Either cope or get a new job.
Not that that excuses a sloppy job from either department, it just shows how much they didn't really give a shit beyond being able to print a somewhat nice gay novelty piece that (technically) won't get them in trouble - real trouble - Mr. Washington style trouble - with anyone.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 06:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, it just shows that the author didn't take much time to lear, or even read Sullivan's 2003 essay which has less information, but captures the spirit and additude of the community better than Mr. Fulford did.
Whare's the "Bear like Me" where a journalist goes undercover to find out what a subculture of a subculture is all about?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 03:21 pm (UTC)It's true that if he just wandered on Church Street on a Friday or Saturday night, he'd likely find one of the couple of bear bars full of people who'd love to be interviewed, but at the same time, I don't know how successful that'd be. There's only one Toronto bear group that's still in it's infancy (1 year old, mild success at being "noticed" by the gay community).
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:52 pm (UTC)Given the reaction I get when I say I read Sullivan, I'd say there's not a lot of fans in the community. I know I didn't hear about the celebration.
The writer had more than a few places to try to get sources, heck, he mentions the Bear Book and Bear Book II, and he could have tracked down the author. I think he just didn't recognize the name and dismissed it.
Well, their seem to be plenty of bears in Toronto, and it wouldn't take too much to find them, even if there wasn't an active club. I'm not sure how much the clubs really represent the community anymore, really.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 05:44 pm (UTC)So, is a true bear the man who's able to get into a dress, wig and high heels and still keep his goatee? The guy who isn't hairy but likes the hairy boys? Is it the guy who wears his leathers on the hottest day of the year?
I don't know, but it certainly makes it a hard thing for any outsider to pin down. We can certainly agree that a large hairy guy who's gay is a bear, but so are so many other people who don't always fit the initial notion.
So, as we go round and round again, is it the physical apperance, or is it the attitude?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 06:13 pm (UTC)"True" bears? People who have always been in the bear community?
It's interesting that you, of all people, claim this because you came Out later in life, discovering the "community" later on. I went to bear bars when I was 19, 20 years old. Does that make me a "truer" bear?
Never mind the fact that I don't really identify with the bear/cub community any more. I fully understand that no matter what I may call myself, others will label me as a bear/cub; I understand why, and that's fine... but does that make me not a "true" bear?
You talk about former 'twinks' or gym bunnies who 'slide' into the bear community... but what about the reverse? If a bear loses weight, is he no longer a bear? It's hilarious when I hear so many bears talk about their weight issues... but yet that very weight seems to be an integral part of their 'bear' identity. (And yes, I'm well aware that there are many men who enjoy and even celebrate their heft.)
"Bears seemed to be more accepting." And yet, here you are, in this very post, NOT accepting those men who are accepting their inner Bear. Is it entirely for selfish or lazy motives on their part? Possibly. But Bears are all about "self-identity," part of the reason why there are so many different definitions of Bear. So why can't the aging raver self-identify as Bear? Isn't this what many men got annoyed with 411 Greg about? Tyrannically deciding who is Bear and who isn't?
"So what do you do with a community who doesn’t always go to those extremes?" Try that again? Bears like to remind themselves and everyone around them of just who they are. They fill their houses with teddy bears, put bear pride stickers on their cars, wear Bear t-shirts, Bear bracelets, Bear jewelry,... and overalls. They only go to Bear cruises, Bear runs, Bear nights at the bar. And screennames! Oy. The fact is, Bears can be just as 'extreme' as leathermen and drag queens. Do straight "average joes" remind themselves of their straightness with accessories?
Finally, NO minority is ever appropriately represented in the media. Gays, Trans folk, Blacks, Asians, senior citizens... all of them have issues with how they are represented in the media. Do I think this columnist do a half-assed job? Definitely. But, to play devil's advocate, he could have done weeks of legwork and still not have got it quite right. Because the Bears themselves don't even know how to identify themselves.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-26 05:29 pm (UTC)First, I think I've been a bear for a lot longer than I've been out. I first heard of the bear thing by picking up Bear Magazine around 1993. At that time I was already overweight, hairy and bearded. I'd already lusted after my friend Mike, who we called Ogre, who was also hairy and bearded. Thank god for hot outdoor band practices where his shirt would come off. By that time I had already been "serviced" by a frat brother who went on to become a cover guy for American Bear Magazine.
I don't think I so much found the bear community, I think it was waiting for me to get over myself and admit it.
That's why I have a feeling that bears just kind of are bears, no matter the size or shape, etc. I feel that the Nard (of the Bear Podcast) is a part of the community, sure, some may label him a chaser since he's Asian and on the small side, but he just gets it. He didn't come into the community feeling all put out because he's not in shape enough to be with the twinks and he thought he could slum here. The Nard likes being around the bears, and although I wouldn't say he's classically "bearish" he's here because he feels at home.
Anyone who decided, I'm going to stop shaving, eat some ho-hos and become a bear because I'm tired of trying to be accepted at Rage, probably doesn't know much of what he's getting into. If they come over with the right attitude, sure that's all cool, but there's some who come in and feel that their god's gift to beardom because they fell from the sky. If they do truly find their inner bear, good, but sometimes you have to get over yourself to do it.
Yeah, many of us, myself included, have self-image problems. We're timid, shy and even self-loathing. We go to extremes when we find something we can grab hold on to. Yes, bring out the bear T-shirts and key chains and flags. It's sort of our way of validating who we are in a safe place. Heck, I have a bear sticker on my car. It's isn't all about me, though, but a way to try to find like minded individuals. And yes, I'm going on an all gay cruise this fall, and you know what, I'm glad there will be a large bear contingent because otherwise I'd feel very, very odd and left out on that ship otherwise.
I can't speak for everyone in the community, but for those of us in the fatboy contingent, finding somewhere that at least let's you live with your girth, is something to be a little bit happy about. Still, from watching the community for several years, I think it's getting less tolerant of the big boys. That being said, being at an event with a bunch of twinks or drag queens or non-bear leatherfolk just seems to reiterate the fact that I don't fit into those groups.
Straight people never have to express their straightness. I guess it's the advantage to be considered normal, or being in the majority. They don't have to. People expect other people to be straight. A lot of what gay men do, whether it's becoming a gym bunny or a drag queen or a bear, is to try to be identified to others like them. Perhaps it’s more work than necessary.
Here is one thing, bears do pick up a lot of junk that's bear related. You are right that if we were just the average guy on the street, this should fade away, and we would blend in better, but so far, we've been finding new and better ways of trying to claim we're special and different. It is a societal thing, with everyone trying to live up to the "special" tag and building self-esteem? Is it that we're insecure? Both? Perhaps. I guess we're a community built on being outsiders, so we may not know how to be insiders.
Yeah, as an insider I guess I see that there's a lot of trouble an outsider would have in being able to identify us. As a journalism student, I also know the guy could have done a much better job in drawing a larger canvas.
You are right, we can't identify ourselves because - supposedly we have an open door. We know it's not true, both you and I, and all of us have their prejudices and foibles. I guess I can say what's a bear to me, and I could probably come up with a better view than our dear article writer, but yeah, it may not live up to the view of others. I guess I should just give up. I'm talking in circles.