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.

“At least my analysis is honest and public. Who are you but another anonymous commenter with crappy attitude? You want to be taken seriously—to engage in real discussion—start by crawling out from behind the rock of anonymity you cowardly hide behind. That goes for other comment trolls fouling Betanews and other Websites.

My response to a snarky Betanews commenter, late this afternoon.

I oppose anonymous commenting.

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

Journalist Burnout is Symptom of Sick Newsrooms

newsroom

When I started my online-only news career at CNET (1999-2003), the metrics for success largely extended from print: Scoops (and for me, provocative analysis). Now, as Jeremy Peters writes for the New York Times (“In a World of Online News, Burnout Starts Younger”), the measure is pageviews—and scoops, too, for some news organizations. Journalists are burning out fast and young, and for easily discernable reasons. Too much is demanded of them (and for too little compensation).

I’m Adding Flow to the Blogging Stock

shout for joy

Today, I start an experiment here at Oddly Together that will take the blog off track a bit, but which could better build readership. “What?” You ask. “Joe, don’t you have another experiment going with comments turned off?” Yes, and that one ends next week.

The experiment comes to answer a question: What is the best way to be the better blogger? I’ve got to make money writing at a time when writing is becoming a commodity service. Increasingly, journalists like me are becoming obsolete. The answer I seek may be to the wrong question; perhaps blogging isn’t the writing I or many people like me should pursue. But I am going to try.

Eight Reasons I Love Pop17

Pop17 If Sarah Austin is the future of journalism, I have hope that accuracy, authenticity and accountability may yet survive. Yesterday, Sarah tumbleblogged something she posted 16 days earlier that I missed: “Blogging Code of Ethics.”

Now there’s a strange concept: Blogging and ethics. It’s strange because I’ve seen too many blogs acting as marketing fronts—and too many others scraping other sites’ content and reposting it for profit. In neither case does much fact checking go along with the blogs. I identified the problem in posts “The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism” and “Gossipers of the InterWeb.”

From the Oddly Together Archive: Five Blogging and Journalism Must-Reads

By the feeds, follows and stats, I see there are plenty of new Oddly Together readers since I permanently moved to Tumblr from hosted WordPress (in May 2010). Welcome! For your reading pleasure, here are five past posts about blogging and journalism that I consider to be thoughtful, provocative and worth your time.

The Comments, No-Comments Debate gets Noisy

loud mouth People love catfights, which perhaps explains some of the interest in the comments/no-comments debate I’ve been having with Mac blogger John Gruber. It’s a pseudo-debate, really, since the only engagement is blog posting. John and I haven’t directly communicated.

I started it all, by calling out John for not having comments on his blog. I told him to “Be a man,” which I actually meant with some backslapping good nature. But some people are morally offended. Stacia Van Doll reblogged the post as: “QUIT being a douchebag Joe Wilcox.”

She writes:

Does this guy Joe Wilcox think he’s some sort of ancient barbarian man or something?Give me a break. What’s wrong with the world today is everything that stems from shallow, unintelligent macho bullshit like Wilcox’s.

Be a Man, John Gruber

If John Gruber allowed comments on his blog, I wouldn’t need to write this post, and it has been long-time coming. I considered writing it every time I read something outrageous at Daring Fireball but couldn’t directly respond because John doesn’t allow comments. Finally, this morning, I had enough.

John’s post “John Battelle on Apple’s Banning Google From iOS App Ads” is what set me off. I wanted to comment—to correct the competitive marketing lies asserted by Apple CEO Steve Jobs that John repeated as fact. Since I can’t respond at Daring Fireball, I do so here. If I’m going to respond here, I might as well express something held back for some time: My disdain for the brutal effectiveness of John’s storyline—where he hits and jabs others with sarcasm and spit but isn’t man enough to receive jabs back. The story is incomplete, because only one side is presented.

Oddly Together