So, John, does this mean our bet's off, or did you pass on our little wager to the "two-headed managing-editor monster" who, according to The Dig, has sadly replaced you? And if so, does that mean I get four pints instead of two?

Media Farm seemed disappointed by Wilpers' departure. In fact, The Dig's been sweet on John from the beginning. As NOW limped and lurched to its whimpering debut, the Dig was uncharacteristically, unwarrantedly, and unwisely optimistic about the free daily's prospects not just of beating Metro at its own game, but of revolutionizing the whole newspaper business. Forever.

They especially liked the bloggy bits, and apparently still do:

The shit of it is, Media Farm agrees, more or less, with Wilpers's critique of the industry we both work in. Saying newspapers today are stodgy, boring and depressingly irrelevant is generally being kind. We agree that newspapers have to embrace - rather than run in urine-soaked terror from - the internet, as well as citizen journalism and user-generated content.

Oh, Dig. Under that rough, cynical, snarcastic high school sophomore exterior of yours, there's a touchingly, tremblingly earnest high school freshman, waiting shyly in the boys room for someone, anyone, to come along and give him a swirly.

Well, it's your lucky day.

Snap out of it, bitches. Don't tell me you don't know that "citizen journalism" is editor-speak for "free content." And, like my mother always said, you get what you pay for. Even the phrase "user-generated content" is as bland as a bleached rabbit turd.

And NOW might as well be the lining in a rabbit cage. And if it weren't for their glossy cover, The Dig would be heading for the habitrail, itself. (You knew that's why they switched to glossy, didn't you?)

In the four or five issues of NOW I've picked up I've never once been stimulated—not even a ghost of a tingle—by any blogger content. And I consider myself a highly empathic reader. But frankly, I'm too old and have too little time to waste feeding my brain meme-infested mental roughage. I want mental meat, and I want it bloody, fresh from the kill. And I want to wash it down with a bottle of Egri Bikavér and a quart of wasabi aisu.

The content of NOW blogs is as bland as their blog template. All the NOW blogging I've surveyed (out of sacred duty to the cause of mental hygiene) is really just garden-variety meming at best, Asperger's, Non-Verbal Learning Disorder and Sleep Apnea at worst. Which is to say, no nutritional value whatever. After a while, staring at the floor seems a better use of commute time.

I was never wholly sold on NOW, as many of you know. In fact, I remember saying: "It's clear that Now will have to overcome the 'Naff Factor' if it wants contributions that count for anything but foolishness, fodder, and an excuse to hand out full-page advertisements disguised as a newspaper."

Needless to say, it has yet to clear the first hurdle.

To its credit, Media Farm recognizes that "when you've got no real way of cultivating and rewarding talented writers while suppressing dreck, dreck is what you get." But they're being generous when they say NOW feels like "a goddamned college newspaper."

High school is more like it.

And speaking of high school newspapers, Dig, I got two words for you: Baratunde Thurston. (I'm not going to even bring up Melissa Saunders, who is actually in high school, right where she belongs.  Please don't rush her.  Properly seasoned and stewed she could someday be the nation's next Maya Angelou.)

As for the ubiquitous Baratunde—who I'm sure is a perfectly delightful fellow, by the way—I'm assuming now that he has relocated out of state, he will no longer be contributing to The Dig.  But let his past contributions be a lesson to you all.  Because Baratunde's work is the BostonNOW philosophy in action and writ large.

Take last week's vanity piece.

First Baratunde asks Baratunde: "So, Baratunde, what did you do last weekend?" Then, Baratunde, who's always interested in what Baratunde is up to, answers, "Oh, you know, the usual: got quoted in the New York Times, challenged Barack Obama..., booed Hillary Clinton."

He goes on dropping names and recounting his brushes with fame at the Yearly Kos Conference, until finally he comes to his big moment—where he "challenges" Barack Obama, to whose celebrity he is clearly, utterly, blindly devoted:

I stood and introduced myself, receiving a big round of applause... I was brief.... For about a minute, he locked eyes with me.... I had gotten his attention. During the handshaking period at the end, Obama said to me, "Apparently, you're somebody I need to know." True. Now clean up your energy plan.

Whoa. Baratunde really made an impact on Baratunde there. (And, oh—on Obama too, no doubt, because politicians never tell their starry-eyed admirers what they're obviously fishing for, do they?) I'm sure we can expect to see a revamped energy plan any day now. I wouldn't be surprised if Baratunde ended up as Obama's Energy Secretary, maybe even his VP. I'd venture a Barack-Baratunde ticket would be the most alliterative in U.S. history.

The story here is clearly not the candidate's energy plan, to which Baratunde devotes exactly half a sentence (seven words, by my reckoning, out of approximately 500). It is not the substance of any of the candidates' plans, in fact, or even observations, sharp or otherwise, of their appearances at Kos, which is what you might expect from a self-proclaimed "vigilante pundit."

No, the story here is Baratunde.

Which is not a problem if you're into Baratunde, and Baratunde's journey to Baratundehood, as Baratunde is (and very rightly so). Just like our own beloved Jenny Wolfson, he seems a perfectly lovely person. But you have to be awfully into Baratunde before anything Baratunde has to say about Baratunde even makes sense, much less resonates outside the echo chamber of baratunde.com. His thoughts on other subjects are a footnote.

Don't get me wrong.  This is great stuff for a blog.  Because all blogs are echo chambers.  The internet itself is one big echo chamber. Which is something the print media need to be aware of and not become merely a part of if they want to remain relevant in the internet age. 

Editorial content in print should never be reduced to pure self-promotion.  Blogs are by their nature somewhat self-indulgent.  Blog entries sometimes end up as ads for the blogger, sure, but blogs are great sprawling things—there are no space constraints or editorial limits—there are no editors!  I can publish as many shots of my abs as I want on my blog, but I would not expect you to run them on the cover of your magazine (although if you're into that I'm willing to negotiate).

An editor worthy of the title owes it to his readership not only to recruit talented writers, but to wring worthwhile work and words from them.  We have "content" out the wazoo.  There's no shortage of content on the internet.  Problem is, we don't need more of that kind of content in print.

I mean, wouldn't it be a perfectly fascinating world if all it took to be fascinating were an overweening belief... that you're fascinating? Luckily, we have a whole generation ready to try out the hypothesis on us.

What is bogging down BostonNOW is precisely this belief as it plays out in blogs. Blogs—generally speaking—embody the belief that meming generates meaning. That repetition begets revelation. They tend to equate iteration with insight.

And they play into the social-networking sites' assumption that demographics are identity. That the self is a set of cut-and-paste clichés, that you are what you ipod, and that self-stereotyping is somehow not only different from but superior to being stereotyped by others.

That people's thoughts are effortlessly their own and inherently interesting in themselves without elaboration (because people themselves are inherently interesting).

That the stream of consciousness that characterizes new media is anything but ephemeral. That skittering on the surface is precisely the point, because it gets you to the future faster.

And finally, that typing a lot and very quickly is the same as writing.

In my conversations with John Wilpers I could never get him to acknowledge any difference between quality and quantity when it came to blogs. Any talk of quality seemed to diminish the demotic nature of new media. But it is precisely the quality of content that justifies newsprint, if anything does in this day and age.

And that goes for newsprint between glossy covers, too.