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.

This is How Misreporting Happens

Have you ever played the game where someone whispers in the ear of another person and the information goes down a line of people? What often starts out from the source is different than what comes out at the end.

This little game is good example why bloggers and journalists should do original reporting/sourcing instead of relying on someone else. The problem isn’t just the veracity of the second-hand source but the judgement applied by the blogger or journalist reporting it.

I got an unexpected example this morning. I came across a startling headline in my RSS feeds: “PSN Shut Down for Good by Sony”. Say what? I’ve been reporting on the PlayStation Network outage and don’t recall Sony ever indicating a permanent shutdown of the service. The headline is from a story by Austin Ritchie at IThinkDifferent. The post begins: “In order to better upgrade Sony’s online security, the PlayStation Network, or PSN, has been taken down for good”, linking to a Wall Street Journal story.

The Journal story states that “the Japanese electronics giant said it is keeping its PlayStation Network videogame service offline indefinitely”, linking from “indefinitely” to an April 25 blog post from Sony.

“I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time,” Patrick Seybold, Sony’s senior director of Corporate Communications & Social Media, states about PSN restoration. “As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly.” Quickly is a long way from “indefinitely” and even farther from “for good.” Troubling: The IThinkDifferent story later uses the same quote.

More troubling: In a follow-up post, yesterday, Patrick writes: “We have a clear path to have PlayStation Network and Qriocity systems back online, and expect to restore some services within a week”. Really? That’s shut down for good?

Responsible and accurate reporting isn’t a duty. It’s a privilege for being allowed the public’s trust. In this era of aggregation and free content, responsible reporting is too often a rarity. As this example shows, the chain of information can be hugely misleading when published/posted as fact. Original reporting is one way to break the chain of misinformation.

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

Freely Available doesn’t mean Free

I’m used to my stuff being stolen, not that I like it—ideas, analyses, blog posts and news stories. Probably my Flickr photos frequently get lifted, too. I’m no great shakes photographer, so it pains but a little. The writing hurts more. But for good photographers like Thomas Hawk, Flickr theft is a bigger deal. Some people see Creative Commons, even All Rights Reserved, as license to steal; if it’s on the Web and freely available, it must be free.

Thomas’ December 6, 2010, post “You Know How Sometimes Businesses Like to Go on Flickr Trying to Score Photos for Free?” features a comic and snarky exchange regarding photo Aldo’s Night Club. An unnamed iPhone applications developer asked Thomas permission to use the pic. The developer deserves some credit—asking for permission rather than just lifting the photo and for putting up with Thomas’ nasty responses. But perhaps a little snark and bite is warranted. While asking for permission, the developer’s self-described editor doesn’t get Thomas’ point: He should be paid for the photo’s use.

“Would there be compensation associated with this request?” Thomas asks. “If you give us your kind permission to use your photo we’ll provide a link back to your flickr page and credit you fully for the authorship of this photo”, the editor replies. Later, Thomas asks: “Would this permission need to be permanent, or could I just give permission for a period of time, like say 6 months or 1 year, or something?” The response: “This permission need to be permanent, but we’ll use your photo for our tour guide and iPhone application only. We use photos under Creative Commons license. You’ll remain the copyright owner.”

The exchange is much longer, and I won’t recount the fun Thomas has at the requester’s expense. Read his blog post. Thomas makes an important point through the exchange: Businesses using Flickr photos, even when asking permission, expect too much. They want to take something valuable and use it for free, forever. When businesses license photos from agencies they pay for specific usage and/or time period. There usually isn’t carte blanche to reuse the photo everywhere forever.

I’m a huge believer in content being made available for the public domain. I also oppose onerous copyrights that create mini-monopolies over intellectual property’s usage rights. Creative Commons is a great comprise, allowing creators more freedom how they license content. My stuff is freely available to use and remix for non-commercial purposes. If you want to make money off my stuff, I’d like some of that cash, too. Thomas applies similar license to his photos. Based on Thomas’ exchange with the requester, the self-described editor assumed he was dealing with someone unfamiliar with his rights.

That said, he did ask, which means something. The greater problem is people lifting stuff for free, and profiting from it. Freely available doesn’t mean free to use. Books are freely available in stores. Do most people take them without paying? But they do read freely available magazines for free, which bookstores might consider to be stealing; arguably it’s not so far removed from lifting something off a Website.

Looked at another way, my blog, Facebook or Flickr are my online domiciles—and yours. Stealing stuff from my home breaks the laws and defies American ethos about property ownership. Online should be no different. Right?

[Editor’s Note: This post was moved from joewilcox.com to Oddly Together on May 21, 2011.]

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

Banks Play the Foreclosure Blame Game

Big business plays the kind of blame game that makes four year-olds crying “He made me do it!” seemingly mature. So, I’m not surprised that yesterday before the US Senate Committee on Banking, House & Urban Affairs, Bank of America’s Barbara Desoer blamed investors for the financial institution’s inability to modify more mortgages. It’s not her fault!—she claims. She makes a strange distinction between investors and shareholders, in the process casting blame as misdirection from a much larger problem: Banks and other lenders mishandling mortgage/foreclosure paperwork.

I’m a longstanding critic of public companies, because of conflicting ethical objectives. It’s the great American contradiction: U.S. law treats businesses like people, but the organizations don’t share the same moral objectives as the human beings they represent. The “good of all” is the shareholder, not humankind. This moral difference is one of the major reasons some businesses egregiously act against the common good of all people—some of whom are their customers.

There is in business no moral high ground. The high ground is quagmire, because all public companies share a single, moral objective—to make profits for stockholders. By that measure, any action that undermines making money for shareholders is immoral. Similarly, investment banks and other Wall Street entities represent investors with the same moral objective and another: For those individuals servicing investments to make as much money as possible. Their self-serving objective often puts individual gain ahead of the good of investor customers.

I’m making a distinction between company shareholders and investors with broader portfolios, because Desoer does. From her prepared testimony:

Many investors limit Bank of America’s discretion to take certain actions. When working with delinquent customers, we aim to achieve an outcome that meets customer and investor interests, consistent with whatever contractual obligations we have to the investor. Duties to investors add complexities to the execution of modification programs and can result in confusion for customers.

Desoer isn’t talking about casual investors but the U.S. government. She explains that BoA only owns 23 percent of the loans it services. Of the remaining 77 percent, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the investors on 60 percent of these loans,” she blithely asserts, adding:

Treasury, investors and other constituencies often change the requirements of their modification programs. HAMP [Home Affordable Modification Program] alone has had nearly 100 major program changes in the past 20 months. Fannie and Freddie, as investors, have layered on additional requirements, conditions and restrictions for HAMP processing. When these changes occur, we and other servicers have to change our process, train our staff and update technology. These changes can also affect what is required of the customer, for example the need for new or different documentation.

Talk about playing the blame game. Desoer basically blames the government, creator of the HAMP program, for BoA’s inability to modify more mortgages. In making such audacious claim she shifts the focus away from the reason for the Congressional hearings—industrywide, pervasive mishandling of mortgage and foreclosure paperwork. Asserting that “changes” necessitate customers providing “new or different documentation” distracts from Bank of America’s mishandling of foreclosure paperwork, which by far is the greater problem.

Mortgage holders and servicers are sitting on a powder keg of toxic mortgages, potentially much greater than already revealed. Some of the mangled paperwork reveals that somebody awarded mortgages that home owners weren’t qualified to receive, such as “liar’s loans”. These risky mortgages were later bundled together as investment packages given AAA-ratings. That’s fraud, by several legal measures, securities and/or tax fraud depending on how the mortgages were packaged as investments.

In making such accusation and misdirection, Desoer is acting on behalf of BoA shareholders and their short-term interests. There’s the distinction between investors and shareholders—the latter being in Bank of America. Her first moral objective is to her shareholders, by using tactics to minimize risks that BoA’s mortgage portfolio will explode into financial hardship if not disaster. She has no incentive to be truthful or forthcoming.

That’s the problem unraveling foreclosure fallout resulting from the housing bubble collapse. Government agencies, Congress, aggrieved mortgage holders and many other outsiders expect one kind of behavior when they’re confronted by another. The highest moral objective of these investment banks and other mortgage holders or servicers is money—if not making it then not losing it. Journalist Matt Taibbi has recognized much of the behavior for what it is: Scamming. I highly recommend his book  Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America and regular writings for Rolling Stone.

By the way, Desoer’s investor accusation/misdirection is itself a scam. A lie. A cheat. From a story yesterday by Karen Weise in ProPublica:

Desoer’s testimony echoes what homeowners have long heard, that investors are frequently denying them help from federal program created to foster loan modifications. But as ProPublica has reported, that’s simply not the case. Investors rarely have a say in loan modifications or block such modifications.

Something else revealing in Desoer’s testimony: “Of the nearly 14 million loans in our servicing portfolio, 23 percent of the portfolio is owned by Bank of America.” That’s a stunning figure. More than three quarters of the loans being serviced by BoA belong to some other organization. That’s another context from which to look at her investors accusation/misdirection, as it’s essentially the 77 percent she uses to protect 23 percent obligation to her shareholders.

The investor blame game is but one tactic. Another is to blame homeowners for not paying their bills. Blame, blame, blame is meant to distract from the real problem. The mangled paperwork. In the latest Rolling Stone, issue 1118, Matt Taibbi writes in “Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners”:

Why don’t the banks want us to see the paperwork on all these mortgages? Because the documents represent a death sentence for them. According to the rules of the mortgage trusts, a lender like Bank of America, which controls all the Countrywide loans, is required by law to buy back from investors every faulty loan the crooks at Countrywide ever issued. Think about what that would do to Bank of America’s bottom line the next time you wonder why they’re trying so hard to rush these loans into someone else’s hands…

That’s why one banker CEO after another keeps going on TV to explain that despite their own deceptive loans and fraudulent paperwork, the real problem is these deadbeat homeowners who won’t pay their fucking bills. And that’s why most people in this country are so ready to buy that explanation. Because in America, it’s far more shameful to owe money than it is to steal it.

Photo Credit: Jeff Turner

[Editor’s Note: This post was moved from joewilcox.com to Oddly Together on May 21, 2011.]

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

Was MSNBC right to Suspend Keith Olbermann?

On Nov. 5, 2010, Keith Olbermann essentially got the boot from MSNBC for making three undisclosed political contributions—or that’s how I interpret suspended without pay. The donations violated MSNBC policies designed to prevent any apparent (or even actual) conflict of interest. For someone who does cover politics (Hey, wasn’t that Keith headlining election-night coverage?), it’s not unreasonable that there be no apparent bias.

Bias, eh? Don’t make me laugh. In some mythological land existing in some news management’s imagination, there is unbiased reporting. In the real world, there is no such thing. Good journalists may strive for objectivity, but there is always some slanting influence, even nothing more than culture, experience or personality. News reporters are as opinionated as anyone else. They have their favorite brands and political leanings that can be tough to set aside, even unsconsciously. Then there are factors going on behind the scenes, like the quest for ratings, subscriptions or pageviews.

Keith’s show long ago moved from news to opinion. A real peacock (not the NBC mascot) couldn’t bluster more colors than KO’s liberal primping. For example, on October 27th, Keith opined: “If the Tea Party wins, America loses”.

[polldaddy poll=”4051223”]

Keith pontificated:

Vote backward, vote Tea Party. And if you are somehow indifferent to what is planned for next Tuesday, it is nothing short of an attempt to use Democracy to end this Democracy, to buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one another, which have combined to keep us the envy of the world.

That’s a fairly strong opinion. So, what? NBC brass is shocked that one of its star anchors has liberal political leanings? I mean, c`mon now. That said, MSNBC does have policies in place governing political contributions. Keith violated them, and, strangely, fairly late in the election process. I guess someone put the fear of Tea party into him.

Keith donated 2,400 bucks to each of three Democrats: Jack Conway in Kentucky and Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grivalva in Arizona. Those aren’t exactly huge sums of money. But any one of the contributions would violate NBC news rules prohibiting political donations without special exception. This kind of restriction is common among reputable news organizations, and KO has been in the business long enough to have known better. Bias considerations aside, he broke the rules.

[polldaddy poll=”4051794”]

Did Keith think that perhaps he was above the rules? After all, he is among MSNBC’s most popular anchors, if not the most. I’m much more bothered by attitudes of entitlement than political contributions. Quite possibly Keith is the news because he believed he was above the news.

This afternoon, KO thanked his fans, whose support perhaps he hopes will get him off the hot seat and back into the anchor’s chair. He tweeted: “Greetings From Exile! A quick, overwhelmed, stunned THANK YOU for support that feels like a global hug & obviously left me tweetless XO”. Exile? Yeah, I’m bleeding for you (of course, that’s sarcastically meant!). No doubt, the headhunters are banging down the door with job offers. No one should feel sorry for Keith Olbermann.

But you should feel, or think, something about his self-described exile. Was MSNBC right to suspend him? Please answer the simple poll above.

[Update: About 30 minutes after I posted, MSNBC announced that KO would return on Tuesday (November 9th). So I’ve added a second poll, to supersede the first. Did MSNBC do the right thing? Also, I corrected the time stamp. Looks like my Webhost failed to turn back the clocks. I hope that won’t cause other problems.]

[Editor’s Note: This post was moved from joewilcox.com to Oddly Together on May 21, 2011.]

Do you have an ethics 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.

Journalists, Don’t Fall for Predicto’s Flack Attack about iPhone 4 Recall

This morning, I received a PR pitch from social networking survey service Predicto, which existence I had no prior knowledge. I’m simply aghast by the flagrant misuse of data and assertion that based on a Predicto survey, Apple will likely recall iPhone 4.

From the email:

With Apple slated to hold a press conference tomorrow, the most likely topic seems to be how to correct the iPhone 4 signal issues cited by users and proven in a recent Consumer Reports’ study.  As such, Predicto Mobile, the nation’s largest premium mobile service content provider, has turned to consumers for their input, polling its pool of 2 million subscribers to see what they think Apple will do.  And according to results so far, it seems likely they will be pulled from shelves.

Predicto asked question: “With Consumer Reports declining to recommend the iPhone 4 due to flaws, will Apple recall the phones by 8/15?” The email conveniently left out the date but offered something else: “Predicto.com managing editor, Kirthana Ramisetti, is available to comment on how the public is reacting to this and other current event topics. Kirthana has been featured in a variety of entertainment outlets including E! News, CNN, CBS TV, CW New York, and more.”

I typically keep emails private, but this was a PR pitch that I assume other journalists received. Besides I want to share context for my email response:

Thanks, [unnamed PR person],

But the two things don’t equate. Consumers saying that Apple will “recall the phones” doesn’t the slightest mean “it seems likely they will be pulled from the shelves.” You can’t possibly predict what Apple will do based on what consumers think Apple will do. The sample size of 808 self-selected people is too small to be reliable.

You can say there is sentiment among some people that iPhone 4 should be recalled. But, again, based on what? Consumer Reports’ official report ranked iPhone 4 highest among smartphones, while the no recommendation came in a blog post. CR has since updated to assert that the antenna problems it observed are resolved by using Apple Bumpers.

I think that measuring sentiment is a valuable tool. However, Kirthana shouldn’t be making damaging statements about Apple likely recalling iPhone based on the opinions of 808 survey respondents who may be ill-informed. As a measure of sentiment, the results show that Apple has a PR and perception problem that needs fixing. But if the data is responsibly interpreted, it reveals little else.

Best,

Joe

I added the links to benefit Oddly Together readers. I didn’t include them in the email.

There are other problems. Most egregious: The question is leading, by using “due to flaws.” Leading questions lead respondents to answer a certain way—in this case “Yes” to recall. The question also is wrong. Consumer Reports didn’t describe the antenna issue it observed as a “flaw,” so there is a second problem—the question isn’t just leading, it’s misleading.

I can only hope that other journalists will be discerning about Predicto’s pitch, which is all too tempting to accept. Speculative buzz about an iPhone 4 recall is a hot topic, and along comes Predicto with a survey and affirmative answer. Smart journalists should know better than to accept any PR pitch without careful review. It’s better to be responsible to your audience, the public companies affected by the information and to your own conscience and reputation than to write the easy, PR-pitched pageview-generating story.

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

TechCrunch and Woot play to AP’s Weakness

Some people—heck, some organizations—have no sense of humor. Humorless perhaps best describes Associated Press, which apparently didn’t get Woot’s joke about owing money for a blog excerpt. TechCrunch’s MG Siegler put AP in its place today, that’s assuming there isn’t yet a nasty takedown-notice response coming.

Some quick background: About two years ago, AP decided that no one should excerpt its content without paying for it. The policy defies decades of journalist practices and fair-use laws. I could understand AP going after blocks of text, but no, it’s the little excerpts, too. Excerpt up to 50 words and AP expects you to pay $17.50; 100 bucks for 251 words or more. The approach is controversial, as it should be.

Now for the story: On June 30, 2010, Woot announced its acquisition to Amazon. AP reported the news in an eight-paragraph story. Overnight, in one of the best creative-marketing blog posts I’ve ever seen, Woot called out AP for doing to others what it won’t have done to itself. AP excerpted from Woot’s acquisition-announcement blog post. From today’s Woot post:

Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do? So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right? How about this: instead of cutting us a check for the web content you liberated from our site, all you’ll need to do is show us your email receipt from today’s two pack of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones, and we’ll call it even.

What a simply brilliant response! As a long-time journalist and someone who blogs under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, I’m delighted by Woot’s tongue-and-cheek approach. But the story doesn’t end there. MG Siegler posted: “Woot To The AP: Nice Story About Our Sale—You Now Owe Us $17.50.” In follow-up post “AP Not Amused By The Woot Story, Tries To Play The Oil Spill Card,” MG delightfully explains what happened next. Briefly: Paul Colford, AP’s director of Media Relations, asserted that Woot’s CEO had been interviewed for the story. All true, except the story quoted three words — ”I’m really excited” — from the interview in the last paragraph. The larger excerpt came from Woot CEO Matt Rutledge’s blog post.

You can read MG’s post for all the nitty-gritty details, and they’re good reading. But I must blockquote how he finally handled AP; it’s simply astonishing, and nastily spotlights AP’s pay-to-excerpt policy. He writes:

I’m a little confused by this whole thing. So is Rutledge. I think the AP is too. But I’m going to go with what I can only assume is their policy now. Since I technically ‘interviewed’ Colford for this post, I’m going to copy an AP story below. I’ll go with an oil spill one since he was so quick to point those out. And sure, I only got a few words out of Colford, but since that doesn’t seem to matter, I’m just going to paste an entire AP story below. I like this new policy.

Sure enough, amended to MG’s blog post is an 882-word AP story.

Photo Credit: Rochelle

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

Eight Reasons I Love 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.”

All eight of Sarah’s codes are excellent, but the first is most appropriately first. The complete list [typos and grammar corrected]:

1. Fact Check: Don’t spread rumors. Double check your facts.
2. Update: If news changes or stories progress, update old posts and text with current and relevant information. When you make a mistake or make incorrect statements reverse and update them. Don’t update and erase. Update with a line through or note.
3. Tell it how it is: If there are stories, images and/or videos being posted, mixed-mashed, photoshopped or damaged report those findings in ways that could have a false representation of the event that actually took place.
4. Disclosure: Avoid letting advertisers influence content. If a company is paying for posts, that needs to be disclosed.
5. Ego: Don’t ever begin to believe that you’re better, smarter or more priveledged than your audience. They will see it as arrogance and you will lose them, quickly. Your fans are everything. without them, you’d be nothing.
6. Minimize harm: Don’t call names. Have integrity and credibility.
7. Honest and Fair: Don’t plagiarize; link to where you get your ideas
8. Be accountable: Treat others how you wish to be treated, have a mission, admit to mistakes and typos, be wary of doing favors for advertisers so they don’t influence the content.

If most bloggers or journalists lived by Sarah’s code of ethics, there would be more accurate information dissemination and less spread of gossip and rumor. 

Sarah is founder of the Pop17 vlog, which some more seasoned journalist might dismiss as fluff. I find Sarah’s approach refreshing and her on-air demeanor to be perky and endearing. That she applies a reasonably good code of ethics to her work is all the better.

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

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.

Please read at least one of them:

1. “The Price You Pay Google for Paywalls” is an unexpected case study. Camera enthusiast site Reid Reviews is nearly invisible to search engines because Sean Reid puts the content behind a paywall. Anyone considering charging for content should read this post. There are consequences. Posted April 10, 2010.
2. “The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism” explores a fretful trend: Blogs (and some news sites) single-sourcing other blogs or news sites; there is no original reporting. Aggregation of this kind has created a Wild Wild Web of gossip and rumors masked as news. Posted March 22, 2010.
3. “Can You Charge for News? Ask Google” looks at how the Google free economy impacts three sites’ different content strategies. The conclusion: Even paywalls must keep a certain amount of free content to appear in search engines. Posted Aug. 11, 2009.
4. “Process Journalism and Original Reporting” is a rare defense of TechCrunch, which has been harshly criticized by traditional media defenders for conflicts of interest. Maybe, but TechCrunch is successful for a reason. Cofounder Michael Arrington treats news as a process, and it’s a process readers participate in and contribute to; it works. Posted July 20, 2009.
5. “Iran and the New Democracy” explains how social media tools released since early 2006 (November 2005 for YouTube) are empowering anyone to gather news; they, and not Craigslist, are the driving catalysts tearing down traditional media’s informational monopolies. All this change occurred in just four years (three years, when I wrote it)  Posted June 21, 2009.

Photo Credit: Nationaal Archief; Kids read a newspaper transmitted wirelessly, circa 1938.

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