New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote of his humble beginnings as a blogger the other day.  Just like me? Hardly.

In my own case, I began writing online in 1996, when Michael Kinsley signed me up to write a monthly column for Slate. This was still traditional column-writing — length constraints were less rigid, editing less intrusive, and gratification less delayed than in print, but still relatively old-fashioned. But it did get me accustomed to the online format.

Krugman, then an MIT professor, created a page for himself on the MIT servers, where he lists his many Slate and other articles on economics, before moving to Princeton, then to the Times.

A proper blog came much later, when I realized that I wanted a place to put the backstory behind my Times columns; the Times added a Twitter feed (which I didn’t even know existed until Andy Rosenthal casually mentioned that I had 600,000 followers). And so here we are today.

This is the sort of humblebrag that makes one want to reach through the computer and strangle someone.  But Krugman is just a blogger, like any other blogger, who happens to also have a New York Times column.  I wonder where he buys his bathrobes?

Since starting SJ, I’ve been asked to write for other online websites, offered pocket change (at most) for the glory of doing so.  The pitch is that it will raise my profile, make me more important.  And, pathetically, there is much truth to the claim.  Write a post on Slate and it will be read by a lot of people.

They don’t really care if it’s good stuff or bad, as long as people click. Hate clicks and just as clicky as love clicks. They make money off clicks, and no one counts the number of likes.  Write something ridiculously controversial, astoundingly stupid, and you can get millions of clicks from people who can’t believe anyone would publish anything so stupid.  Slate will love you for it. It won’t pay you any more, but you may get sent flowers.

I’ve been asked to write books. Not a book, but books. The deal is that I spend a year of my life, more or less, writing a book, which someone else puts their name on as publisher, producing hard and electronic copies, which I am then expected to run around the country selling.  For this, I would get a small percentage of profits. If I sit home and wait for people to buy it, my percentage wouldn’t pay for a mocha Frappuccino.

The publisher wants you to be the salesman, because they get the big cut of revenues. But if you don’t sell, they won’t starve.  You, on the other hand, will have spent a year of your life creating a book that exists only in your own mind. You can tell the world you’re a published author, but it’s of a book no one has read and no one gives a hoot about. How important you will feel about yourself.

And I’ve been asked to bring SJ over to other blogs, websites, in a sort of joint venture way, where we can split advertising revenue. The readership here will inure to their numbers, and I will enjoy the poverty level kickback and the adoration of their readers, bringing me ever-greater internet fame and prominence. Because if their readers had much of an interest in my stuff, they couldn’t find SJ on their own.

In my dreams, the New York Times calls and asks me to do a column, maybe thrice weekly, about criminal law issues.  I’ve kept the phone line clear just in case. They haven’t called. As much as some people call me a prolific blawger, a characterization I despise, I also do quite a bit of reading. Nobody ever calls me a prolific reader.

This morning, I read a New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof entitled “When the rapist doesn’t see it as rape.”  It was about campus rape, a subject about which I occasionally write. It wasn’t particularly well-written, and it was substantively shallow and disingenuous. I mean, seriously, Kristof writes:

One careful study found that false allegations make up between 2 percent and 10 percent of rape cases.

The “careful study” is by the unmentioned Women Against Violence, which obviously has no horse in the race. Seems legit, right? Even so, ten percent of cases involving false allegations is monstrously huge, not insignificant as Kristof portrays it. But there he is, a New York Times columnist.  And here I am, a blawger at SJ.  BFD.

It’s reminiscent of the calls from journalists seeking comment, but first inquiring as to some official hook they can use to make my words sound worthwhile to people who have no clue who I am and need some important title to attach credibility to what I offer.

The content isn’t good enough. The substance isn’t good enough. The effort not to make people stupider isn’t good enough. If only I was a professor or former prosecutor, someone people would inherently believe.  Or maybe I should have created an organization of one, give it a pompous name, made myself grand poobah. Yeah, that would have made me more credible.

Then there are the emails I get from various bar associations offering CLE courses in blogging. For credit! I know, but they actually do. And I click to see who is going to teach lawyers how to blog, because the one thing I know is that it’s not me. No one asked. Most of the time, it turns out to be someone I’ve never heard of, who may or may not have a blog I’ve never heard of. But there they are, teaching lawyers how to become prestigious law bloggers. I can’t explain it.

So Krugman says that he is a blogger. Me too. But we’re hardly alike. Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to write for bigger soapboxes, rather than curse the stupidity that is spread across the internet.  Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, as people can always come to SJ and read whatever I write.

That they prefer to learn about criminal law from Slate, Vox or the New York Times, is a choice they make, and over which I have no control.  Maybe it’s as it should be, and that’s why the New York Times never called.  As Krugman is humble about his 600,000 followers on the twitters, then who am I to question?