Taking off the Pajamas: now, what do you see?

Kevin Alwyrd is present at the revelation of Open Source Media, the erstwhile Pajamas Media, and he's a little distracted (by one of the speakers), but he "still [doesn't] completely get it." He links to Mike Krempasky ("It’s a pretty flashy event - but I don’t think they’ve done much to explain their business to the attendees") and Jeff Jarvis ("Now I’m even more confused").

Jeff Goldstein is live- fake-blogging the event beginning with a trip to the hotel bar:

I found Tim Blair, Roger Simon, and Ed Driscoll bunched around a small table near the restrooms. Ed and Roger were nursing Gibsons, while Tim (who at 5’1" is much shorter than I thought he’d be) was drinking what looked to be IPA out of a pilsner glass inscribed with the legend, "Bloggers Do It In Their Pajamas." "Heh, cool," I said, motioning to Tim’s glass. "You have those made up for the launch?" "What do you think, genius?" Blair asked, not looking up. "I maybe had it printed up special for myself?"

Would you drink a fluid out of something that said "Bloggers Do It In Their Pajamas"? I think of bodily fluids. But no matter, now the bloggers can do it in their Open Source Media. Or as somebody already quipped: Open Sores Media. Swapping semen for pus, bodily fluids-wise.

UPDATE: Did they notice the "Open Sores" pun? I see that back in June, Roger L. Simon raised the question of what to rename Pajamas, and "Open Source" came up in the second comment, got repeated a few times, and then drew this:

Open Sores News--
"Band Aiding the World"

So they had to know the joke was there.

But what do you think of the new Open Source site? Is it fun to use and workable? I notice a lot of flabbiness in the writing. The home page currently features this block of text to draw us into the blog opinion on a top news story:

The historic Gaza border deal reached yesterday between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor), brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in marathon negotiations, has been received by the blogosphere with a far greater amount of skepticism than it has where the mainstream media are concerned. Blogger Joshuapundit seems quite unhappy: he says that Israel was pressured by Rice, the Eurooean Union's Javier Solana and Middle East special envoy John Wolfensohn to accept the agreement with little, if any, safeguards. The deal, whose full text can be found at the State Department website, would allow Palestinian authorities to take control of the border between the Gaza strip and Israel, notably in Rafah, and would open links with the West Bank. Both Time and the Washington Post have all the behind the scenes details on how the agreement was reached. War to Mobilize Democracy is "nervous" about security, but notes that the deal will ease the international pressure on Israel; Heavy-Handed Politics write that history makes them simply skeptical. On the other side, Anything They Say not only cautiously welcomes the new situation, but is pleasantly surprised by Rice's deal making skills, at least compared with her "terrible performance as National Security Advisor."

"Has been received by the blogosphere with a far greater amount of skepticism than it has where the mainstream media are concerned"? You'd think they'd write their very first sentence crisply!

And why should anyone care what these bloggers think? Who are they? Unless you're already sold on blogging, the teasers are laughable: "Blogger Joshuapundit seems quite unhappy," "War to Mobilize Democracy is 'nervous,'" Anything They Say "is pleasantly surprised."

There's nothing snappy or exciting in any of that, no sense that these bloggers are likely to come out with anything more interesting than whoever was sitting next to you in the living room where you watched the evening news.

"Eurooean," "Heavy-Handed Politics write" -- so much for professionalizing the image of blogging.

And this on the day when you are asking for attention, trying to hook new people.

ANOTHER UPDATE: If I were an insider to OSM, would I mock them like this? Isn't much of the value of bloggers that we are on the outside? Rolling up together in a group to make money -- is that worth the sacrifice of independence? Everyone who signed on is now stuck with the presentation on that website that we were not able to see when we were asked to sign on to 18-month commitments.

STILL MORE: I'm told Jeff Goldstein wasn't even at the OSM launch, which surprises me, because I began reading it on the OSM home page under their heading "live-blogging." That's an awfully strange way to introduce people to their service. Aren't ordinary people being asked to trust the OSM portal?

Also, Charles Johnson linked to this post to note my bad taste -- the "fluids" wisecrack -- and this set off his commenters who just started wildly insulting me -- hilariously assuming I'm a big lefty and using lots of bad taste insults against me. How does that make sense? If they are outraged at my bad taste, as Charles suggests they be, then why aren't the comments primly proper? They must be insulting me because they assume I'm a lefty. Ha, ha. Somebody tell Armando! Anyway, Charles's fans end up hurting him on the day when he is trying to make an impression as an elder statesman of blogging, by making his site look all trashy. And the irony is priceless: he is complaining about my bad taste. Yet "semen" and "pus" are both perfectly sound English words, not slang at all, and pointing out literary images is quite high tone.

AND NOW THIS: Wonkette links, and it's not to the semen-pus thing.

THURSDAY MORNING: One day after the launch, Jeff Goldstein's fake-live-blogging is still the only blog post quoted on the home page, under the heading "BEST OF THE BLOGS." In all this time, that's all they've found? The highlighted post ends with this line: "Or as my friend Bill Bixby once said to a French prostitute (god rest his soul), 'bonjour, you plump little tart!'" How they can think it's a good idea to open the site with such writing? Who does that appeal to? And if it didn't appeal to you yesterday morning, but you kept going back to give them another chance, what would you think? The site is stupefyingly inactive and as yet devoid of sharp commentary. There is only this obscure insider humor about the founders of the site getting drunk and talking about a prostitute.