Just to set the record straight, I am not, nor have I ever been a "disgruntled blogger." This is a cliché of bloggers much loved by the press—Dostoevsky's Underground Man with a laptop and wifi. But I don't blog out of frustration so much as simple everyday garden-variety chronic logorrhea. And I don't do it from my basement in my hoodie and unibomber sunglasses. On the contrary I have a room in the attic, am wearing my 3-D glasses, and usually am naked except for my feather boa.

Nor did I leave BostonNow's "Blogger Summit" disgruntled. I have no intentions of firebombing their offices. Nor have I made any definite plans to deface their boxes or harass their hawkers. Disgruntled, no. I left the "summit" slightly disoriented at worst: "scratching my head," as I wrote in my post, still unclear as to what exactly BostonNow had in mind.

And as one of the other bloggers in attendance later observed, Mr. Wilpers responded to my post largely because I was one of only a handful of bloggers there, and the only one to go home and blog about it. But that still doesn't make me "disgruntled."

After seeing the mock-up for the paper, listening to an interview with Wilpers on BUR, and reading an informative but surprisingly uncritical piece on BostonNow in the generally if somewhat sophomorically acerbic Weekly Dig, I get what BostonNow is going for—it may or may not be more than just a gimmick to garnish press for the paper's launch.

I suspect it's somewhat sincere, though all this talk of revolutionizing the daily newspaper by enlisting bloggers is a bit OTT, and, trust me, the idea of broadcasting editorial meetings on the web sounds more exciting than it will be in reality, and frankly it doesn't sound exciting at all to begin with.

I'm inclined to agree with Fred Bayles, a journalism professor at BU quoted in the Dig piece, when he says: "I don’t think it’ll overwhelm or change journalism. The interactive part of it is fine if people want to find a virtual bonfire to gather around. But I don’t give a rat’s ass what other people say about anything. I hardly care about my own opinion now." Marry me, Fred. I think I love you.

Although Wilpers claimed in the BUR interview that he has been trolling the web and is satisfied there's enough quality local content to fill out the paper on a daily basis, this is what I am particularly skeptical about, and have been since the summit. It's not my problem, of course, and I'm not at all disgruntled about it.
I think Wilpers & Co. are a crackerjack team. I like Mr. Wilpers, and I think his enthusiasm for this concept is as sincere, as I have said, as one can reasonably expect in the business he's in. He's competing with Metro, a paper he helped make what it is (whatever that is) and the inclusion of bloggers at this stage in the game is at least partly a bid to distinguish BostonNow from what will be its chief competitor. You don't enter a market that's already saturated without something new and different to offer. He has generated a lot of buzz for BostonNow, which is his job.

So just to be perfectly clear: I don't have a single gripe with BostonNow, and I'm looking forward to their launch. I express my opinion as a truly disinterested observer (Russell Pergament has yet to offer me a seat on the board—and yes, Russell, I am still waiting next to the bat phone for your call).

Am I convinced Boston's blogosphere will not end up like Biosphere 2, where bananas were about the only thing that grew and the crew was hungry all the time? No, frankly, I am not.

My prediction is that within a year of launch (I'm being generous), BostonNow will have trimmed back the blogger bits—which will still be there, but not to the dizzying heights they've been hyped up to for the launch—and will have some regular featured columnists in their place, hopefully some sharp ones—maybe some of those future superstars Wilpers was banging on about at the summit.

Because, I'll tell you something. A good editor is like an orchard-keeper. You could go around picking wormy apples up off the ground under the tree and calling them Grade A Extra Fancy, or you could nurture the fruit on the branch and have some actual Grade A Extra Fancy at the end of the day.

There's no reason a city like Boston and a paper like BostonNow shouldn't aim a little higher. Because frankly Good writing is what distinguishes one paper from another in this age of the AP. And wouldn't it be nice if BostonNow managed to kill off Metro with quality?

We can dream.