A late weigh-in on Hinsey-gate

By now, the whole free world seems to have visited Jossip and read the tale of the alleged firing of Carolyn Hinsey and the alleged reaction of her purportedly much-maligned staff. I was initially addicted to that thread until it became an ugly mess of forgers.

For me, five or six days after the initial release of the item, these are the four lessons I have learned.

First, there is enormous anger at the "managed" soap press. The remaining die hard viewers want more than advertising-tied fashion and beauty articles, spoilers packaged as "news", and not-very-probing Q&As (although I prefer the Q&As to the turgid profiles we used to get--still get in SOD. I think the "outings" in the Jossip thread are really much more reflective of a desire for honestly and candor. Sexuality is the most OBVIOUS way to expose the dishonesty of the soap press (and the most prurient), but it wouldn't happen if readers felt the soap press were being "straight" (forgive the pun) with them.

Second, there is still a ton of fan passion for the soaps. The unprecedented size of the Jossip thread (albeit, now, mostly due to multiple posts from a small group) and the widespread interest in the thread (on all blogs and soap sites) reveals that there IS a market out there.

Third, the truth is never in a single thing, but in the gestalt of things. As much as we are to believe "The Devil Wears Lane Bryant", the truth is that Hinsey was a passionate advocate for soaps, and did a great deal to promote them. That this ended up being bound up in some potentially unhealthy attachments to "pets", or to a payola scheme for her bar is unfortunate. What really comes across here, however, is that this was a dramatic, flamboyant, aggressive woman...and what better kind of advocate of soaps can there be? This does not excuse what she apparently did to both undermine her rivals and create a culture of fear at her magazine. Great personalities, however, usually inspire these kinds of extreme love-hate sentiments, rather than more moderate feelings.

Fourth, the Jossip thread has devolved into nonsense, as an erstwhile soap reporter publicly works out his issues with SOD/SOW (for the record, I always really enjoyed Alan Carter, and I also religiously followed his soapstarworld.com), and a phalanx of forgers ruins the thread with misinformation. Which goes to prove: We STILL need a legitimate soap press--one that verifies information--because the modern blog/message board cannot provide that. The democracy of the internet is always one heartbeat away from chaos...as Jossip now demonstrates. Where the soap press can still earn its money (and cannot be replaced) is by doing quality control on information. If only the soap press could figure out a way to join the modern world with more timely information, we'd have it made!