The article: Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Too Busy Building My Brand. (I really, REALLY wish I was kidding)
The topic: Women attending the SiTS “Bloggy Boot Camp” in Baltimore, a day-long workshop on SEO, Social Media, working with PR, etc.
The section: FASHION & STYLE
Number of times FASHION and/or STYLE were mentioned in the article: ZERO
Number of times my daughter “bothered” me while I was reading the article: 3
Number of times my daughter has “bothered” me while I’m writing this: 2
Number of times I told her to “stop bothering me because I’m too busy building my brand”: ZERO
The opening paragraphs of the article:
ON a brisk Saturday morning this month, a dedicated crew of about 90 women, most in their 30s or thereabouts, arrived at a waterfront hotel here, prepared for a daylong conference that offered to school them in the latest must-have skill set for the minivan crowd.
Teaching your baby to read? Please. How to hide vegetables in your children’s food? Oh, that’s so 2008.
The topics on that day’s agenda included search-engine optimization, building a “comment tribe” and how to create an effective media kit. There would be much talk of defining your “brand” and driving up page views.
You know. For your blog.
Wow. Snarky much? I bet you didn’t know that if you drive a minivan, having a blog is a “must-have skill set”.
On her blog, Ms. Mendelsohn says that her intent was to inform NY Times readers about “an interesting world that many Times readers had no idea existed: a world where hundreds of women are so serious about blogging that they would take a day out of their lives (and even plane fare and the cost of a hotel room for some) to actually take a seminar on how be better at it.”
Fair enough. But then why didn’t she do what she says in her own blog post, which is simply write an article about the connections between mom bloggers and corporations, about how mom bloggers are realizing the power they have to influence other people’s purchasing decisions, about how we are a “cultural force to be reckoned with”? Now THAT would have been a good article. For the BUSINESS SECTION.
She also says she didn’t write the headline, the Times did. There is no way I can read that headline and have it come across as anything but condescending and belittling. Those of us who are working from home with small children in the house spend all day trying to balance work with parenting. And yes, there are times when I have a post due and put on a Spongebob DVD for Kaitlyn so I can write without her climbing all over me. Does it mean I’m “too busy” for her? NO. Does it mean she is “bothering” me? Well, okay, sometimes 
There is not just one kind of mom blogger. There are mom bloggers who make no money from their blogs, who blog purely for the creative outlet, to have a place to document their lives, share stories, give and receive parenting advice. There are mom bloggers who have said yes to placing ads on their blogs, and those who have said no thank you. There are mom bloggers who review products and host giveaways, and mom bloggers who don’t. There are as many types of mom blogs as there are moms.
Which is why I also have a problem with this paragraph:
“Whereas so-called mommy blogs were once little more than glorified electronic scrapbooks, a place to share the latest pictures of little Aidan and Ava with Great-Aunt Sylvia in Omaha, they have more recently evolved into a cultural force to be reckoned with. Embellished with professional graphics, pithy tag lines and labels like “PR Friendly,” these blogs have become a burgeoning industry generating incomes ranging from $25 a month in what one blogger called “latte money” to, for a very elite few, six figures.”
Ms. Mendelsohn, there are blogs, written by moms, that ARE “electronic scrapbooks”. They are called scrapblogs. And since the definition of “glorified” is “To cause to be or seem more glorious or excellent than is actually the case” (source: thefreedictionary.com), what you are saying is that they SEEM like good blogs, but actually are not. That’s pretty harsh.
You did get one thing right though – bloggers are a force to be reckoned with. We are intelligent, educated, passionate, proud, caring, and forgiving, but you need to understand that we are also defensive about what we do. I spent years as a stay at home Mom with no creative outlet. I had few friends in my neighborhood and my Mom had passed away before my oldest son’s first birthday, so I had no one to turn to for parenting advice. Then I discovered blogging.
I am PROUD of what I do. I am proud to tell people that I have three blogs, and I sell advertising space on them and also receive products from companies who want MY opinion on them. Going to a day-long or weekend-long conference in order to improve at what I do does not mean I neglect my children. I don’t earn six figures a year, I don’t even earn five figures a year. What I do earn is a little extra money that helps us afford “luxuries” like new jeans for my constantly-growing boys, or our family vacation to Great Wolf Lodge last summer.
For your next article, Ms. Mendelsohn, may I suggest other interesting worlds that NY Times readers might not know exist? Like the “so-called Daddy blogs”, or the food blogs, or the photography blogs, or political blogs, or eco-friendly blogs, or the frugal/coupon/freebie blogs? They get together at conferences too. Some of them are probably Moms, and they might even drive minivans! I’d like to read an in-depth article about their “must-have skill set”.
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