Unbelievable. Pinch Me So I Can Wake Up Now, Please.
Posted by Lynnster on June 6, 2007
I’m just in shock. Shocked. Sad.
This morning, Brittney Gilbert resigned her position as blog producer at WKRN, the home of the Nashville is Talking blog and blog aggregator, and I just can’t believe it and am so saddened to see her go.
As she has said today, the timing is unfortunate because it’s occurring after what was a particular nasty day of insult-hurling and threats appearing on the blog and elsewhere – most coming from people from other parts of the United States and most who had never even been to NIT before, it appears. But as my fellow blogger and friend Slartibartfast commented over at NIT following her goodbye, those of us who know her and who visit and read the blog daily and participate probably realize, now, that she has sort of been trying to tell us she felt it might be time for her to go for a long time.
Brittney’s hiring at WKRN was a groundbreaking thing that really wasn’t being done at the time in this country. Since then, many similar communities have sprung up elsewhere, but she was the first to really be hired as a blog producer in that kind of format.
I actually discovered her personal blog a couple of years or so before she was hired to blog at Channel 2, having found her through a link on sometimes-MTV-personality Dan Renzi’s blog, even though she was local-ish to me three hours away in Nashville. Generally, only another Twin Peaks fan like me would have immediately recognized her blog’s name, Sparkwood & 21, as the sign of another – that initially intrigued me, as did whatever I read that day. And I found myself coming back to read day after day because she was just so interesting to read.
And I had been blogging/Graffiti Wall-ing for a few years – since 1997 – at that point. But at a time when I had gotten distracted and lost interest and mostly slacked, and especially later when I myself started getting involved with the Nashville blogging community, her efforts on both her personal and professional blogs were a major influence on my getting back into actively blogging, other writing, and other Web work.
I am very sad to see her go, but I understand. For one thing, you just would not believe some of the vicious and vile insults and outright threats she has had to endure since taking the reins of NIT, verbal and even threatened physical abuse hurled her way by mostly faceless and anonymous Internet trolls who apparently think that’s OK to do because she has been a quasi-TV/media personality. Reading some of the other vicious and poisonous and frightening stuff that has been thrown at her that she’s shared with us over time has just made my skin crawl. No one should have to endure that kind of abuse just because they are the producer for a media outlet blog.
And I know that’s not the only reason she has decided to resign. Granted, a position like that puts one in a magnet space for controversy and can often attract that kind of thing.
Still and all, it’s a shame she ever had to endure any of it. I’ve met her, and she’s a person just like you reading here, and just like me, and a delightful one.
And although I fully understand her decision, I have to disagree with her and beg to differ on her statement today that she just wasn’t cut out for the position or that she wasn’t the one for the job, because that’s just not true. She has done a fantastic job of building and encouraging the Nashville blogging community, and I continue to be in shock and awe of just what a cool thing it is.
Thanks to her efforts, there has been not only just an awesome blogging community built, with an incredible cohesiveness to and camaraderie among that community – I have seen time and time again within the community that that cohesiveness is SO strong that often times you see bloggers who on any given day are arguing from totally opposite sides, and even sometimes hating on each other, stand side by side in the blogosphere in solidarity to stand up against some issue that is very, very wrong. Sometimes it’s just taken my breath away to witness it.
It’s been an amazing place. And it just wouldn’t be as it has been and is without Brittney.
Also, Brittney’s efforts have brought a lot of folks together that otherwise might never have met and known each other. Many of us have become not only good friends, online and off, but NIT – as a whole – has become kind of a family of sorts. A dysfunctional one sometimes, and not every loves or even likes each other, and we fight amongst ourselves some days not unlike most families do. “Family” might be pushing it a little as a term, but at the very least, we are most certainly and definitely a community that has thrived and grown and flourished tremendously under Brittney Gilbert’s watch.
I know she will be successful at whatever she does next, and I wish she’d change her mind, but I understand, and I thank her for everything she’s done. And I just hate, hate, hate to see her go. She will be so missed by so many.
And I just hope that she’ll take with her the knowledge that there are many, many people – some who usually or at least sometimes agree with her on various things, but even plenty more who have disagreed with her often and on a regular basis – that most of us disagree with her now and feel that she was, without a doubt, absolutely the right person for that job, always.
So much shock, surprise, and sadness today. I have no more words, just many sighs.
Paul Nicholson said
sucks.
zimzo said
I guess you were afraid to give any context to what happened because you knew it would make Brittney look bad. Here is what happened: Of all the hundreds of tributes to Steve Gilliard that appeared on the Internet after he died this week, she chose a vile, hateful and racist post to quote extensively and link to. When a number of people objected to this disgusting attack on someone who had just died and whose family was grieving, Brittney did not apologize or disassociate herself in any way. Then she wrote a snarky post making herself out to be some sort of victim, again without apologizing to this man’s family and friends. If it was your son or brother or friend who had been attacked like this I am sure you would be outraged as well. A simple apology or a statement that she did not agree with the sentiments in the post she linked to would have ended the controversy immediately. Instead, she quit and tried to portray herself as a victim, a martyr. The only honest thing she says in this post is that she contributed to hatred in the blogosphere and for her to cry about a situation that she is completely responsible for creating and could have stopped at any time is ridiculous. For you to then slander Steve’s friends and admirers as a “bunch of jerks” when their outrage was completely justifiable makes you almost as bad as she is.
Here is the disgusting post she linked to. Do you agree with it, too?
http://sixmeatbuffet.com/archives/2007/06/03/death-of-a-house-negro/
Lynnster said
Oh, give it up, troll. There’s more context than most people can read in a week in ALL of those links above. Dumbass.
Lynnster said
(And if you don’t know that I obviously already know good and well who wrote the disgusting post and where it is on the Internet, then I have no idea why you’re even here. And, if you got here without knowing that, your reading comprehension skills are horrible.)
newscoma said
Wait, he did leave us the same post.
Well, hell.
magniloquence said
Does someone need the “just because your anger is justified doesn’t mean what you did as a result is also justified” speech? Because that was one of those things I thought most people learned as a kid.
“I know you’re angry because Bobby hit you. You have a right to be angry. You don’t have a right to hit Bobby back, because hitting is wrong. You especially don’t have the right to hit Jenny because Bobby was mean to you and she didn’t do anything about it.”
I mean, do I have to sit everyone down with my mother?
*sighs*
john h said
Lynnster, sister, you are eloquent. You captured the spirit of what Brittney did for us all. Thank you.
and damn, i thought Zimzo was my personal troll..hell, he/she didn’t even bother to change a word from my blog to yours to Newscomas (and probably beyond)..
WonderDawg said
Well said – thank you.
I’m stunned.
newscoma said
Nope John, he’s back over at mine.
Again.
and he’s using the hate word with me.
Going to bed.
Blech.
Nathan McIntyre said
Hey girl, no sweat. Thanks for the support =)
Nashville is Talking » Brittney Resigns I said
[...] Lynnster And although I fully understand her decision, I have to disagree with her and beg to differ on her statement today that she just wasn’t cut out for the position or that she wasn’t the one for the job, because that’s just not true. She has done a fantastic job of building and encouraging the Nashville blogging community, and I continue to be in shock and awe of just what a cool thing it is. [...]