For those who have never seen it -- and my research at neighborhood taverns suggests that includes most everybody -- www.tabloid.net gets my vote as the best-written site on the web. So I touted it to my buddies and waited for their reaction. I wound up having to explain the appeal, which was bad, but I also wound up having to explain me, which was even worse.

    So what makes tabloid.net so good? Let me try it this way. A teacher who makes a subject matter interesting is celebrated; a reporter trying the same thing will wind up villified.

    Now even a cynical idealist would hope to see that situation change -- not in some lame TV newsmag way, but in a real-honest-to-God Pete Hammill way -- and if you're like me, and you know someday, someway, somehow that the news business has to get better or else -- then you hope outfits like tabloid.net help out.

    Tabloid is a perfect story. It's broke. It pisses off advertisers. It laughs at the comfortable reporters of the world who have become part of the establishment instead of being an important part of keeping the establishment on its toes.

    Cutting the life out of journalism has contributed to a situation where you can now have a president accused of rape -- not hound-dogging, but felonious rape -- and no one cares, that it becomes just another exercise from White House spin doctors in what they call "the nuts and sluts" defense.

    No, the writers at tabloid.net do indeed write with life -- I found one single paragraph that trashed every president by name since LBJ -- and they do indeed call 'em like they see 'em.

    Too bad that's not their problem.

    ***

    When Americans hear the word "tabloid," they don't think of "lively," they think of "untrue." The Weekly World News is a riot to read, but it's real beauty is it doesn't even pretend to be true ("World War II Bomber Found on Moon!").

    Now another bad word in mainstream journalism is the word "sensational." It's one thing to have a sensational crime -- broad-daylight bank robbery -- but it's another to have a sensational story -- broad daylight robbery of a sex-and-bondage store.

    Tabloid.net mixes the sensational and the sensationally silly -- a classic story on a rash of cheese heists, for instance. -- with some truly terrific writing. I can relate to Ken Layne (the best writer of which you've never heard) because he and I share a tragic afflication. We were born for the old-style clattering newsroom, and that era is gone.

    The Internet-era of journalism is still evolving, but I suspect Mr. Layne and I would agree that we don't like it. Having never met or talked to the man, I can't put words in his mouth, but he apparently understands one thing a lot of web people do not -- the idea of persona projection -- and I suspect we think alike.

    We don't want to run stories on 401K rollovers and medical advice on helping children with enormous book bags. We want to run stories about the tough guy at the bar who tricked some other guy out of a week's pay, and we'll know it's the truth because we were that some other guy. And that truthful story well told will make us laugh, and that will make us glad we read the rest of the godawful news.

    It's a big jump to conclude a lame journalism trade begats a lame society -- and a lot of the talking heads would argue just the opposite, in fact -- but I go back to that big book bag thing I brought up a minute ago. I shudder to think of all the sheeple, as opposed to people, in the generation behind me, a generation that instead of marching in the streets would shrug and say "whatever" to seemingly everything. And I wonder if there is one single better mental image than their being crushed by their book bags, shuffling along without complaint. Download the course material off the web, for Chrissake. Future workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your book bags.

    ***

    Whew. Sorry about that. Get to thinking about old-style, raise-hell kind of writing and I get carried away.

    Then again, maybe that's the point. Maybe the world needs more writing with passion. Now analysis must be, by definition, dispassionate, but maybe that's a problem with modern, corporate conservative journalism -- there's too much analysis and not enough truth.

    People can smell truth just as they can see lies, and the trick for web journalism is how to be different but still ring true. Because of the Internet conspiracy nuts (and the opinion-pulling-double-duty-as-facts crowd) anything new and web-based will have a credibility problem from the start. Just ask Matt Drudge. Then again, don't.

    Tabloid.net compounds the web credibility problem with a name that does it no favors when trying to be taken seriously. And their content isn't exactly designed for middle-America advertising. To quote the famous line delivered to the ad salesman of the now defunct Cleveland Press -- "Your readers aren't the shoppers, they're the shoplifters."

    So with those big strikes against them, tabloid.net decided to start with the basics.

    First make sure it's good.

    ***