Oddly Together

Someone Should kick Michael Arrington’s Arrogant Ass

A month ago, April, 27, 2011, Michael Arrington posted “An Update To My Investment Policy”, which not surprisingly generated negative reaction from established journalists. I wanted to respond right away, but I’ve been too busy at Betanews, where new editorial responsibilities add to writing.

The issue is a long-standing one of debate regarding TechCrunch’s founder—that he invests in, or has other business dealings with, some of the companies he writes about.

Michael justifies this behavior:

Before TechCrunch I was an occasional angel investor, going back to the mid 1990s…Some people have seen this as a conflict of interest, which it of course is. To counter that I’ve always disclosed investments, and try not to cover these startups myself. Occasionally when news is breaking quickly or for other reasons, I will write about the company, but with the appropriate disclosure.

In 2009 the accusations of conflicts of interest by our competitors became somewhat distracting, and for a couple of years I discontinued investing in startups completely.

That policy has now changed. Over the last several months I have begun investing actively again.

Michael further explains that he can’t write about companies for which investments aren’t public (e.g., there’s some non-disclosure or other legally binding agreement), because he would disclose them first. Otherwise, when able to disclose and write: “I think that this will all be fine. I’ll still be very hard on companies I invest in when they deserve it”.

On the one hand, I laud Michael for disclosing these investments, but that doesn’t remove conflict of interest. What he writes can benefit these companies, even if he’s completely unbiased, or turns a critical eye. Investments’ disclosure is itself conflict of interest. Michael is known to be a successful entrepreneur—TechCrunch is proof of that—and shrewd seer of viable startups. Disclosure of these investments is tacit endorsement, and that can get the startups attention, perhaps needed funding or even eventual acquisition.

A Personal Example
I’ve written plenty of news stories over the years that moved companies’ stock, sometimes unknowingly. For small companies and their investors the results can be rewarding or devastating. One instance still bothers me. In September 1999, Dell briefed me on plans to offer WiFi cards from AiroNet. At the time, no Windows PC manufacturer shipped laptops with built-in WiFi. Dell chose an add-on to the portable’s PC Card slot as its first move into WiFi. The story posted at CNET News on Sept. 15, 1999. I didn’t realize two things, which may have been related: Dell exclusively gave the story to me (without saying so) and AiroNet had gone public a few weeks earlier.

CNET had no comments section on its site back then. Readers communicated by email. I received one from a desperate investor who had shorted AiroNet stock. He pleadingly asked if the Dell deal was true. Turns out that after my story posted, AiroNet shares started rising—up 40 percent over two days. No wonder he was panicked! Sometime later, Cisco bought the WiFi startup.

Suppose, hypothetically, I had been an investor in AiroNet, a new public company. The stock surge likely would have benefitted me, and surely I should have considered the possibility before writing one word. Similarly, any benefit Michael receives from writing about these companies is conflict of interest—plain, pure and simple. If he feels that disclosing investments is being transparent, I challenge him to go further. If there’s really no problem, then he should disclose when he financially benefits from these stories. That would be real measure of conflict of interest, as his critics insist there is.

“Screw Them All” Defense
However, Michael asserts he’s no different from other writers in followup post: “The Tech Press: Screw Them All.” He writes:

We can argue all day about whether or not my policy is a good one. You’ll have your arguments, I’ll have mine. But the really important thing to remember, as a reader, is that there is no objectivity in journalism. The guys that say they’re objective are just pretending. Everyone is conflicted in different ways, and yet the ‘rules of journalism”’don’t require any sort of transparency or disclosure unless it’s a direct financial conflict. I’m going to have to write a longer post about his yet again.

But when you read a tech blogger call a CEO ‘tough and misunderstood,’ should you know that the CEO in question is social friends with that blogger, and leaks confidential information to her? The answer is yes. But you’ll never know. Or when the same CEO is called incompetent by another blogger who was just turned down by said CEO to speak at his conference. Disclosed? No. Conflicted? Yes.

There’s a difference between being friends with a CEO and being an investor in his or her company. I wholeheartedly agree with Michael that conflicts of interest are unavoidable among journalists. But that’s no excuse for engaging them—actively, in this case—nor does the justification address issues of degree. When there are huge amounts of money involved, the difference between investments and accepting a product and reviewing it or having personal political biases simply don’t compare. There simply is no ethical justification for writing about companies in which you invest or have other financial relationships. For the record, I own no stake or stock in any company.

Would it be so hard for Michael to establish a hands-off policy about the companies for which he has financial relationship? What? Are there no other competent writers at TechCrunch, who could report about these companies instead? That Michael has to justify his relationships as disclosure demonstrates there is significant conflict of interest—that he must be concerned that TechCrunch reporting might jeopardize them.

When the AOL Well runs Dry
Surely Michael must already be thinking about the future and his end of days at TechCrunch. In late September 2010, AOL acquired TechCrunch. His site looked like the crown jewel for AOL’s new media empire, but then, in February 2011, AOL bought Huffington Post and put the queen of aggregation in charge of the media company’s editorial content. I don’t see how there’s room for two such large personalities at AOL, and they do have conflicting agendas. While I may gripe about Michael’s personal ethics, I praise what he has created in TechCrunch. Unlike Huffington Post, which lifeblood is aggregation, TechCrunch is nearly all about original reporting—using an effective technique sometimes called “Process Journalism.”

[Edtor’s note: Due to some unfathomable glitch at Tumblr, the post from the paragraph above onward simply vanished and could not be recovered even in browser history. It’s actually the portion of this commentary written first. What follows is a poor reproduction; it’s shorter, and the original impact is gone. I was in the zone when writing and completely lost momentum afterwards.]

TechCrunch not only excels at original reporting, it produces many scoops. By comparison, Huffington Post is a mashup of aggregated, freely-written and occasional original content. Ariana Huffington puts panache, style and hype behind the presentation. Huffington Post may be the Internet’s most successful gossip rag.

One might call Huffington Post and TechCrunch as two sides of a coin. I see them as antithesis to one another. Based on position, style and knack for navigating AOL’s political hierarchy, my money is on Ariana surviving before Michael. Besides, he is known for being gruff and pushy, qualities that won’t hold up long with AOL management. In the war of strong-willed personalities, Ariana is more likely winner. It’s not a question of if Michael leaves TechCrunch but when.

Change, What Change?
So Michael’s start-up company investments and other business dealings are crucial for what comes next, and surely he knows that. From that perspective, there is huge conflict of interest, because of his incentive to protect his on-the-side business dealings. If that’s not the case, then I again challenge him to prohibit himself from writing about these companies or having editorial oversight over the content. See, his argument cuts both ways. If there’s no problem with these business dealings, no benefit from his writing about them, then there should be no problem with someone else writing about them, too.

But there’s no incentive for him to change anything. Journalists can argue all they want about ethics or conflicts of interest, but in the end one thing matters to Michael: TechCrunch is a business. It’s his baby, which he wants to continue succeeding. Post-merger, his job also is to continue making money for the new AOL taskmasters. From a business perspective, this conflict-of-interest stuff doesn’t matter. If it did, TechCrunch would have lost masses of readers or advertisers in the month since his disclosure post, and there is no indication of that. TechCrunch posts interesting and timely content—plenty of scoops and original stories—and the readers are part of the storytelling process by way of comments. It’s not surprising, from that vantage point, Michael can take a “screw them all” attitude to his critics.

Still, someone should kick Michael Arrington’s arrogant ass. His disclosure policy is justification for the most egregious conflict of interest. No journalist should directly profit from his or her reporting.

Tech startups are suddenly hot properties again, and Michael wants some of the action. LinkedIn’s IPO, Twitter’s TweetDeck acquisition and Microsoft’s pending Skype purchase are signs of a new tech bubble forming—and these are all deals that occurred after Michael’s April disclosure post. He just sold TechCrunch to AOL, he has strong ties to venture capitalists and writes about them and startups. Michael knows exactly what the venture capital investment opportunities are shaping up to be as the new bubble expands.

Way I see it, Michael wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Fine, then open and run a TechCrunch public relations agency, Mr. Arrington. But don’t pretend that eating and sleeping where you crap is healthy living.

Photo Credit: Robert Scoble

Do you have a journalism ethics story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

I’m baaack!

In October 2010, I put Oddly Together on ice. I’m back blogging at Tumblr, and forwarding joewilcox.com to this site (or will be doing so in a few days). This week, posts from that site will show up in my Tumblr stream with the original post dates from “5 Minutes with Joe”.

Quickly stated reasons:

• I miss the Tumblr community
• I really only have time for shorter-form blogging
• I’m ready to start seriously focusing on storytelling
• My Oddly Together posts rank higher in search results
• I want to avoid brand confusion with the tech blogging I do for Betanews

Do you have a blogging story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Oddly Together is On Hiatus

This Tumblr blog is going on vacation while I launch “5 Minutes with Joe” and consider what’s next for Oddly Together. Most of the content from Oddly Together has moved to the new blog at joewilcox.com.

As explained in the introductory post to 5 Minutes with Joe, I will continue blogging about technology at Betanews, eventually return to storytelling at Oddly Together and focus on common-sense posting and podcasts at 5 Minutes with Joe. Oddly Together is going on hiatus so that I can:

• Put attention to launching 5 Minutes with Joe (without compromising Betanews writing).
• Reconsider publishing platforms; Tumblr is a victim of its own success, particularly as big media invades and overwhelms original, creative community content.
• Refocus content solely on storytelling; Oddly Together quite possibly may become a community-contributed blog when it returns (probably on WordPress) in a few months.

Do you have a blogging story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

What the Hell is Sarah Lacy Thinking?

There’s a proposition on the California November ballot to legalize marijuana. Sarah Lacy must be smoking some already. Her TechCrunch post “Now that the Recession Officially Ended….Whatever Happened to that Other Shoe?” is so out of touch with reality—what else could it be? That:

• Sarah is so much the rich bitch living inside the Silicon Valley bubble she is clueless about the real America?
• To pay for this month’s pedicure, she needs to write something outrageous to drive up TechCrunch pageviews?
• She’s so poor a journalist—really none at all—she cobbles together unsourced data and uses it in the narrowest of contexts?
• Fox’s “Fringe” isn’t just TV it’s reality, and the Sarah writing this clueless post lives in an alternate universe where there is no economic crisis?

Or perhaps there’s another explanation—and it’s not pot smoking: Sarah isn’t clueless or out of touch at all. She’s smart, sassy, aggressive, relentless and knows her audience. Her post is all about how the economic downturn really didn’t turn down Silicon Valley investing, like it did during the dot-com crash and subsequent 2000-2001 recession. She writes:

From where I sit, it never felt much like a recession at all. Revenues tightened up and people didn’t get raises, but I don’t know any friends who lost apartments, few who lost jobs and few companies that went under, just because of the crash…This thing we just went through? From the Valley standpoint it was an excuse to trim fat and put some decisions off.

Sarah then presents—count `em—”six indicators for startup ‘health’.” She doesn’t adequately source those indicators, by the way.

TechCrunch critics argue that Michael Arrington and Co. is a house built on conflict of interest/questionable journalism ethics—that Michael sleeps with the people he reports about, so to speak; investments and other sultry relationships with venture capitalists and startups mire the reporting. I dunno. But Michael admitted to something in May 2007 post “Silicon Valley Could Use A Downturn Right About Now.” Hilarious, Michael pines for a downturn Sarah says never came. He confesses:

Entrepreneurs are no longer talking to us just to get our opinion and hope for a blog post and a little discussion. These guys need press to stand out from the scores of startups just like them. Saying no to them isn’t really an option. They show up at our front door with a bottle of wine or flowers. They instruct their PR firms to do anything necessary to get a story. More than once I’ve had a CEO break down and cry on the phone when we said we weren’t covering them. And more than once, I folded and wrote about them after those conversations.

Kara Swisher appropriately responded: “Message to Michael: Just Say, Well, No.”

Assuming Sarah isn’t dimwitted, that she actually knows what she is writing and whom it’s for, the “Other Shoe” post says much about TechCrunch’s audience, regardless whether those conflict-of-intersest accusations are true or not. That for all the blog’s larger readership, the target audience is no larger than Silicon Valley investors and the tech startups they fund. Why else should Sarah write such an alarming analysis for them—that contends they’re doing just fine?

For those startups ravaged by the economic tsunami hitting everywhere else—the one Sarah doesn’t see—she writes:

Stop whining. If you couldn’t raise money your company probably wasn’t working, which doesn’t mean it was bad, it just means you were a startup trying to do something risky that didn’t work. If no startups go under—in good times and bad times—entrepreneurs and investors likely aren’t taking enough risk. If you lost your job–and you work in tech—you likely either worked for a public company that had more systemic problems (cc: Yahoo, eBay) or the recession was an excuse to get rid of you. Either way, you likely have been rehired somewhere since. The verdict is in: It wasn’t just like 1999. It wasn’t bubble 2.0 and it certainly wasn’t dot-com crash 2.0.

For the record, I know plenty of people who lost their jobs during the recession and still can’t find work. They were productive but removed because of high salaries. Companies often replaced them with someone younger, less experienced and cheaper. Or, worse, they were brought back as freelancers or contractors to do the same or similar jobs for less pay and no benefits. Sarah Lacy is relatively young (not yet 35) and reasonably attractive. It will be interesting to see how she feels about the journalism job market in 15 years.

I worry that the New York Times is right: “For the Unemployed Over 50, Fears of Never Working Again.” I’m now in that 50 bracket and trying to do my own thing after failing to find gainful reemployment elsewhere. But I’m not whining. The whiner here is Sarah Lacy, who either knows her audience well or, even after nearly 35 years of living, knows nothing at all.

Photo Credit: LunaWeb

[Editor’s Note: This post was moved from joewilcox.com to Oddly Together on May 20, 2011.]

Do you have a bad writing story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

AP Should Not Credit Bloggers

I don’t share some bloggers’ enthusiasm for Associated Press’ new policy crediting them. On September 1st, the wire service issued advisory: “AP announces guidelines for credit and attribution,” which includes bloggers. AP shouldn’t credit bloggers because it opens way for lazy reporting and undermines the news organization’s reputation and credibility (well, outside the blogging community).

I wrote in post “The difference Between Blogging and Journalism”: “For the most part, blogging is not journalism.” As I explained there—and differently in “Gossipers of the InterWeb“—too much single-sourcing and news aggregation spreads gossip rather than reports news. “A quick survey of blogs reveals that many bloggers reporting news generally offer one side of the story. This one-sided difference is partly responsible for the Web being polluted by gossip, rumor and innuendo posing as news.”

Common scenario: Blog A reports “Blah Blah Blah” and blogs B through Z, plus numerous accredited news organizations, cite the first report—or another referring to it—without doing any original reporting or sourcing. It’s lazy reporting—the worst kind of armchair journalism, and using the J word is generous description.

AP should be exceptionally cautious about crediting blogs. The news organization excels at original reporting that blog sourcing could undermine. Who doubts the veracity of AP stories today? Blogging citation hurts AP’s long-term credibility, first by association. Most bloggers are not journalists, and most do not credibly source stories. Then there is the legitimate concern that AP reporters will pick up widespread, poor sourcing habits.

AP’s citation policy also applies to competing news organization, and that’s a credible change. However, the far extension to blogs is surprising and disturbing. From AP’s guidelines:

Sometimes our reporting goes so far beyond the other organization’s report that AP’s story is substantially our work. In such a case, we should still credit the other organization…Suppose Blog Y reports that the government has compiled a secret report on something, but we’re the first to find out what it says. We should still say, lower in the story, that ‘The existence of the report was first reported by Blog Y.’

Consistency in reporting is essential to credibility. If Blog Y breaks a story, but questionably reports the 20 before, its news reporting isn’t credible. If AP editors want to credit blogs—reasonable in the WikiLeaks era—they should do so based on a blog’s consistency and reliability of reporting. Such approach better protects AP’s credibility and insulates it against problems should some reporters pick up the bad habit of single-sourcing blogs.

Blogs React to AP’s Policy
Not surprisingly, some parts of the blogosphere are going Lady GaGa over AP’s policy change. PureContent, which feeds news and other content to Web masters, contends that “AP Recognises Blogs as Valid New Source.” Yes, “news” is misspelled in the headline. The byline is simply “Catherine.” She contends that AP’s policy gives bloggers “higher visibility” and “will open employment and money-making doors” them. Catherine concludes:

To succeed in this new era of news reporting and reading, news associations must adapt. By acknowledging and grasping all of the differing sources of news and bringing them together, bloggers may finally begin to see credit long deserved.

I agree that news organizations should adapt. However, given that the majority of blogs sourcing news refer to other blog(s) rather than doing original reporting, credit is not “long deserved,” and AP should cautiously give it.

Citing a MediaPost story, SearchEngineWatch posted: “AP Stops Fighting Bloggers, Plans To Credit Them As News Source.” The fighting refers to AP’s content-licensing policy. Two years ago, AP started charging for news content excerpts. For example: Using 50 words from a story costs $17.50. From one perspective, I see AP’s pay-to-excerpt policy as simply ridiculous. It’s a wire service, which content runs seemingly everywhere. But from another viewpoint, I see loads of sense to the policy:

• AP affirms that its content is valuable; after all, salaried, professional journalists produce it.
• The policy can deter news content piracy, which is rampant, according to a Fair Syndication Consortium study. 
• AP’s business model is selling content to other news organizations, which could be jeopardized by stories appearing elsewhere for free.

Expanding the piracy topic: During a 30-day period in late 2009, “112k unlicensed, full copies of U.S. newspaper articles were found on sites across the Internet.” according to the Fair Syndication Consortium study. The search-keyword and advertising-driven Google economy is a major reason for full- or partial-article piracy. It’s no wonder that AP seeks to protect its valuable content for which it paid to produce and others profit from by doing little more than cutting and pasting.

Pajama Journalism
Another post about the citation policy warrants criticism: “AP: Yeah, we’d better cite pajama-wearing bloggers, too“—by Nate Anderson, writing for ArsTechnica. Nate starts his story about AP’s citation policy by making digs at a speech given in April 2009 and the 2008 content licensing policy. He refers to the last paragraph of AP Chairman Dean Singleton’s speech:

A few years ago, AP started to keep a tally of its journalists killed, harassed, beaten, detained or prevented from doing their jobs. Last year, that number totaled 62. It is not a profession for the fainthearted, or those who work in their pajamas.

Nate quotes the last sentence, then writes:

This final phrase was inaccurate—at Ars, for instance, we never break news while wearing anything less than an ascot and monocle—and surprisingly juvenile; one can feel the acid dripping from those words, even through a screen. The speech amounted to a near-total dismissal of bloggers as anything more than parasites in the news ecosystem.

I’d argue that many bloggers—and more disturbingly news aggregators—are ”parasites in the news ecosystem.” But that’s not what AP’s chairman said. Nowhere does he refer to bloggers in the speech transcript. Nate makes the inference, which in context is meant to be applied more broadly and probably more condescendingly. Dean is right. Journalism is not a profession “for the fainthearted, or those who work in their pajamas.” Lazy reporting is Googling this and Googling that, rather than getting off one’s ass, going out in the field to do hard investigative work and talking to real people. 

In that context, I wonder what the hell AP benefits from citing armchair, would-be journalists who rewrite reporting done by someone else. AP should not credit bloggers—well, the majority of them.

[Photo Credit: Mario Antonio Pena Zapatería]

Do you have a blogging or journalism story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

‘Can Ping Be Saved?’ is the Wrong Question

Apple’s social music discovery service isn’t even a week old and Fortune blogger Philip Elmer-DeWitt is asking: “Can Ping be saved?” Oh yeah? One million signups in 48 hours is such a failure. There are thousands of CEOs or product line managers who would say: “Gimme that problem. I’ll suffer through the failure of gaining 1 million customers in just two days.”

Elmer-DeWitt sees things differently. “That’s not necessarily a good thing, given how many of those people are complaining—loudly and with pretty good reason—about Ping’s shortcomings.” Blah. Blah. Blah. It’s just an excuse to write another lazy-ass Top 10 list. I’m sick of them—and, yes, I’m guilty of writing them, too. No longer. I’ve place a personal moratorium on Top 10 lists.

[Editor’s Note: This story was moved from joewilcox.com to Oddly Together on May 7, 2011.]

Do you have an iTunes story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

The Case for Curating Comments

Five days ago, I quietly turned on commenting two months after turning it off. Comments are temporarily back at Oddly Together. Perhaps this second stage of experimentation will lead to my making comments a permanent fixture or instead giving John Gruber the apology I promised should the commenting feature be permanently removed. I’m still wondering if John’s approach might be right.

Before my mid-June post “Be a Man, John Gruber,” his blog had no commenting system, while Oddly Together offered Disqus. I insisted that “his no-comments approach is out of place in an era when so many Websites or services provide discussion tools and encourage readers/viewers to use them.” There was much more to the reasoning. Read the post to get it all.

John didn’t change his no-commenting ways, as expressed in his responding post “I’ll Tell You What’s Fair.” So, I flipped things around, trying it John’s way by turning off commenting. What started out as a two-week experiment has gone on for two months. Two reasons: 1) I waited for Disqus to release tools for migrating comments between blogs. 2) I observed a seemingly troubling increase in obnoxious commenting. What? Are too many people unemployed, with nothing else to do but vent their anger and frustration through comments? It’s a sad state affairs on the social Web—that so many commenting deviants pollute rather than add to the conversation.

Since mid June, I have sought to work out the real value of commenting. I even tried to set up an online debate between John and Robert Scoble. John and Robert are both high-profile bloggers, who happen to be on opposite sides of the commenting question. Robert is a big fan of comments, while John is not (at his own blog, Daring Fireball). One of the bloggers was enthusiastic to engage the discussion, but not the other. Because I consider my communications between John and Robert to be private, I won’t say which cooled the idea.

Just days after I turned off commenting, Boston Globe published “Inside the mind of the anonymous online poster.” Three days later, Brenna Erlich asked at Mashable: “Are You a Comment Troll?” One commenter aptly responded:

A troll has always been someone who just wants to cause a stir and gain responses. A troll is not about illiciting a response to spur discussion. It’s just a response to get a response and get people fired up.

You are correct that a troll can will post a rant or typo-ridden garbage, but it’s always inaccurate on purpose. It has to be, or you’re not going to get people fired up enough to respond to your troll.

I’ve long opposed anonymous commenting, because of trolling. But trolls register to comment just as easily using the most obvious of fake names (as they do at Betanews, where I have no control over commenting). I’ve decided to filter them out by proxy. For now, all comments will require my approval before appearing on an Oddly Together post. I may change the policy in the future. I won’t approve all comments, either. This blog will be a curated conversation. Comments that add to the conversation and extend the storytelling will most likely be approved. I will discard the others. Trolls be gone.

I’m trying to find middle ground between the commenting approaches advocated by John and Robert. John asserts Daring Fireball is a curated conversation, representing his voice for an audience of similar thinkers. Robert believes the conversation benefits from interaction between the author and commenters and commenters among themselves. He is Mr. Social Media. I want to have it both ways—curation and reader interaction. That may not be an achievable goal, but I want to try.

Disqus’ comment migration tools didn’t work for me. They’re more suited to moving comments between domains. I wanted to move comments to different URLs off the same domain. Given this situation and the new curation approach, I reset the clock to zero, by deleting all comments from this blog on August 21. The comments are archived and could return in the future. For now, Oddly Together starts with a clean slate of comments, as of five days ago.

There are many good places for comments, such as the reviews people leave on Amazon product pages, comments on Facebook Walls or responses people give to pics on photo-sharing sites like Flickr. Oddly Together has a managing editor—Me! I edit my own posts for clarity, readability and style. I curate the posts until they’re ready for public display. Now I will curate comments, too. From a storytelling perspective, comment curation is just editing. If you don’t like the approach, if I curate your comment into the trashbin, please email and make a case for your comment. But I suspect that the majority of worthy comments will be quickly approved. 

That said, I would prefer not to curate comments because free speech is an important part of my worldview. Curation is necessary. Oddly Together is like my home, where other people have an open invitation to come by and chat. Trolls come to dump their garbage on my lawn or—gasp—living room. They also beat up my guests. No more.

Do you have a commenting story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.

Old Media Should Pay Up If It Wants to Tumblr

There goes the neighborhood. Big media is invading Tumblr.

For weeks I had been meaning to blog about how old media might ruin Tumblr. I shouldn’t have waited. Monday’s New York Times story “Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr” raises the topic without rightly razing it. How could Jenna Wortham’s story have been any different, since The Times is among the old media vanguard invading Tumblr. Jenna’s story positions the big media invasion as something good. I most certainly don’t agree, given Tumblr’s free-for-all embrace.

Who’s on the list of other-media Tumblr wannabes? Jenna writes:

Over the last few months, other media outlets have caught wind of Tumblr, which is free to use. The newest recruits include The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, BlackBook Media Corporation, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Life magazine and The New York Times.

Earlier in the story she mentioned Newsweek and The New Yorker, and it is the first of the two that had me howling a few weeks ago—when I should have blogged this media invasion topic.

 Mark Coatney—a journalist and not, thank God, a blogger—was the inspiration driving the Newsweek Tumblr. He now works for Tumblr, and here’s where I take another jab at the pathetic state of news reporting. There was a glut of stories both yesterday and Monday announcing Mark’s move from Newsweek to Tumblr, like it’s oh-so new news. Tumblr Staff blog announced Mark’s hire on July 12th. Does nobody check facts or news relevance anymore? These other reports followed the New York Times’ Tumblr profile.

There’s good sense in Tumblr hiring a seasoned journalist, but, so far as I can see, bad policy. Jenna defines Mark’s job responsibilities:

Many of those outlets have done little more than set up a placeholder page. In his new job as a ‘media evangelist,’ Mr. Coatney’s role, and in some ways his challenge, is to help them figure out what to do next.

That’s OK, if they pay. Why should big media get a free social-media platform and in doing so perhaps overwhelm and diminish many of the service’s original voices? If established media wants to play, Tumblr should make them pay. Tumblr’s creative community of bloggers is one of its two major appealing features. The other is the publishing platform. If big media gets a free ride and comes to silence many of the original voices, the community will move along. Tumblr could also diminish as a business, by giving big media a free ride. Founder David Karp and Company can’t sustain Tumblr on venture-capitalist rounds of funding forever.

David has valiantly resisted advertising, but how far will that go if old media and new media mingle together in search of audience they can sell to advertisers or to whom they can pitch advertisers’ products and services? There’s a purity about Tumblr’s technology platform and business model that big media could easily corrupt. David has the right idea about selling extras, like the Premium themes, but Tumblr isn’t doing enough fast enough. 

I’d pay, too, if Tumblr offered more extra services. I’m buying themes. What if Tumblr increased audio and video capacity for reasonable fees? I’d pay. Wouldn’t you cough up a little for a lot more?

Mark should be responsible for a big media consultancy operation working within Tumblr. If Tumblr’s doing something so right in social media, as The Times asserts, then Mark has got something valuable to sell. Big-ass media brands, or those with loads of server-sucking traffic, should pay Tumblr for hosting, design services and Mark’s consulting time. WordPress.com charges nominal yearly subscription fees for HD video and other extras. Then there is the VIP service for those old and new media blogs:

You might be a good candidate for VIP hosting if, for example, you get more than 1 million page views a month on your blog. Pricing is based on a flat rate of $500/month per blog (with a one-time setup fee of $1,500 per blog) but is flexible depending on your circumstances and number of blogs.

But WordPress.com is different, even as it increasingly imitates Tumblr. The community interaction isn’t as tight or established around Like, Reblog or other social sharing features. More importantly, Tumblr has conceptually better expertise to sell to big media. The fees can can help Tumblr generate revenue from big media blogs and act as a toll booth against a big media invasion. Free is easy. Established media outlets have to justify paying for something new and uncertain.

My worries are clear. I started blogging at Tumblr in April 2008, at first in off-and-on fashion. About six months ago, I made Tumblr my primary publishing platform. I believe in what Tumblr represents as a creative community of bloggers and as a blogging platform. But if big media gets a free ride—smashing smaller Tumblelogs into roadkill along the way—I’ll have to go somewhere else, where I will sadly watch Tumblr tumble away.

Do you have a Tumblr story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.