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.

Non-Top-10 List for Journalists

I’ve come to loathe top-10 lists, and I have stopped writing them. They are a sucker’s play for pageviews, although I have always used top-10s mainly for their presentation value. Now that they’re everywhere and displacing original content, I’ve got something of a personal boycott going (hence, why there have been none from me recently at Betanews). It’s with that introduction I come to maim a top-10 list posted last week. “The truth about the newsroom—straight-up!” offers 10 things reporters “want from [public relations] pitch to coverage”.

Deanna White tweeted about the post, to which I responded after reading: “My list would look nothing like this. If that’s what my peers want, someone pull out journalism’s obituary & run it” (News organizations generally keep prewritten obituaries ready to run the second someone famous enough dies).

I laughed at Deanna’s list, which I at first put in this post but later removed before publishing. Click through the link in the previous paragraph to read her list, if you want. I picked just one of the 10 to flame here: “Make it easy for me to cover your story—send me multimedia that will add to your news.” PR people want you to cover their story and to cover it as pitched. By making it easy and by the journalist being lazy, that outcome is more likely than when journalists do their own reporting. By the way, I make a distinction between PR pitchers and season spokespeople. The latter often is more useful to the organization represented and to the reporter.

Pitches and Lies
My list is succinct: Don’t pitch me. If I want something I’ll ask for it, and usually you the PR rep are in the way of my getting it. My experience is this: Most PR people lie to me most of the time. I make the assertion with no malice or resentment. It’s simply true.

Perhaps other journalists look for pitches. If your writing depends on PR pitches or, worse, rewriting press releases, then by my definition you aren’t a journalist. That’s fine by the PR pitchers, who want you to turn their story into a home run. In the PR business, three pitches and they’re out—not the journalist.

Confession: Yes, as a younger reporter I accepted some PR pitches, mainly because that’s what my employers’ expected. There’s no one holding that over me now, and I’ve come to distrust PR pitchers over the years. I’ve been lied to far too often, which isn’t surprising. PR reps are paid to protect their clients’ image and to promote its brands.

I do occasionally respond to company employee blog posts, as I did yesterday at Betanews about Microsoft bringing back the Windows 7 Family Pack. I make exceptions for blog posts because:

• They aren’t pitched directly to me
• The writer is a person I can track down for follow-up questions
• Post authors often work for the organization rather than outside PR agency
• I can quote a person who is identified rather than an unnamed spokesperson

Granted, many corporate bloggers are marketers, but I can see more what I’m getting from them.

Helpful Advice
For my fellow journalists, I offer a few tips for wringing out the truth from marketing professionals and, more importantly, media-coached executives:

• Be polite. I hear many journalists describe PR reps as flaks. I don’t. My goal is to be polite but aggressive. Flak makes the PR person somehow inhuman. Hey, they’re people trying to do a job, too. Friendliness will get you more cooperation, and that goes for all your reporting interactions. PR reps aren’t your enemies, but they’re not your friends either.
• Record everything. If it’s an in-person interview audio record the conversation. Emailing or, better, instant message conversations are another way to keep a record. The recording prevents there from being lasting accusations of misquoting or quoting out of context later on, plus you’ll get better quotes. Additionally, over time, by reviewing the interviews you’ll better discern when people are lying or being truthful.
• Interrupt often. As soon as your eyes roll upwards, the spokesperson isn’t giving what you need or, worse, is working to prevent your getting it. So cut off the person talking. Interruption allows you to take control of the conversation and even fluster the spokesperson into revealing something truthful.
• Look for signs the response is prepared or canned. Coached executives or prepared PR reps tend to speak clearly and stick to a single topic. Someone keeping constant or near-constant eye contact is lying. Your questions are getting somewhere when the ahs and pauses interrupt the answer’s flow. That’s when the chance of getting honest answers is greatest.
• If you ask a question and get an answer to a different one, ask again—and again and again. Media-coached executives will respond with prepared talking points that have nothing to do with your question. Rephrase and ask until you are answered. Interrupt if necessary, so the deflected answering doesn’t exhaust your interview time.

Enough with the pointers. If I don’t stop, the advice will turn into a top-10 list.

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

Do you have a journalism 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.

Journalist Burnout is Symptom of Sick Newsrooms

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).

Jeremy writes:

Such is the state of the media business these days: frantic and fatigued. Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news—anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.

Outfits like Huffington Post treat skilled writers like unskilled, indentured labor. Writers—be they bloggers, journalists, social media commenters or tweeters—are the coal miners of the Internet. They dig the Web’s fuel but whither before the flames produced. Burnout is acceptable to new media moguls and dying old media monopolists because there are plenty enough out-of-work journalists to replace fallen peers.

The approach is only sustainable as long as labor is cheap or until some math whiz’s algorithms replace manually-produced story aggregation. But neither scenario will produce good writing or businesses sustainable by current advertising models. There is too much content that is too much alike. It’s a dire situation: There isn’t enough advertising too fill the ad space, and ad value also diminishes because there is too much supply of the same or similar content.

There needs to be more emphasis on original reporting and building lasting audience. That’s not going to happen with so much of the reporting being similar or the same. A year ago tomorrow, I asserted that “It’s Original Reporting or Nothing.” The concept matters even more now than when presented in July 2009. I contend that writers given chance to pace rather than race, will:

• Develop more interesting topics
• Craft the writing so the storytelling is better (wordcraft is a dying artform)
• Find more satisfaction from their writing (slowing down—if not preventing—the burnouts)
• Spend the time necessary to develop sources and establish longer-lasting relationships with them

Gizmodo’s iPhone 4 scoop should be a lesson to all online news organization. Gizmodo got one of the biggest tech scoops in a generation and muffed it. The released product showed just how little Giz learned about iPhone 4. A news organization with deeper reporting culture surely wouldn’t have missed so much.

Burnout is symptom of illness—or addiction, to the quick high big pageviews or large numbers of comments give. The high isn’t sustainable, nor the business model behind it. OK, I’ve mixed enough metaphors.

Photo Credit: David Sim

Do you have a new media or news media 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.