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NYT lawyers to indie dev: "you need to remove any reference to The New York Times from your website"

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 21 May 2013 23:03:16 +0000

Cody Brown, developer of software that makes it easy to generate classy website news features in the style of The New York Times' "Snow Fall", made a mistake: he used photos from that legendary web layout in a youtube demo. The NYT sent a cease and desist letter, and he took it down. But then something strange happened: the NYT ordered him to remove all mention of the NYT from his own website.

The blogging family tree

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:04:01 +0000

"At the close of 1998, there were 23 known weblogs on the Internet. A year later there were tens of thousands. What changed?" [Mat Honan / Wired]

Publishers maximize content marketing awareness metrics at executive roundtable

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:58:17 +0000

"Blank smart phone isolated on white", courtesy of Shutterstock.

At Poynter, Carlie Kollath Wells reports on top newspaper publishers' ability to remain profitable thanks to paywalls--and their plans to stay that way with subscription hikes and marketing.

The Dallas Morning News in May 2009 raised prices 40 percent. “We lost about 12 percent of our subscribers,” Moroney said. But, it was a good move, he said, and the paper is in the process of raising subscription rates again. “It raised a lot of money for us and it continues to raise a lot of money for us,” Moroney said. “We’re [at] about 32-33 percent of our total revenue coming from subscribers.”

All good news, right? But there's this weird abstract quality to it all. What it is we're talking about again? Let's look again at the article...

Four top publishers ... content ... content marketing ... content to populate company newsletters ... content ... content war ... content company ... content ... digital content ... local content ... unique content ...

Sure, hating that word is as old as the hills. It suggests the speakers have no interest in what "content" consists of, and makes it easy to insinuate pathological underpinnings for their failures. But it's also the message, and the message is marketing, and our reaction to it signifies only that we aren't the target market. Depending on the audience, top publishers have different stories to tell about what journalism is, and it's not always a grotesque one.

1. Journalism is public speech, the lifeblood of democracy and a healthy political arena.
2. Journalism is intellectual property, worthy of severe punishments for stealing.
3. Journalism is content, a fungible commodity.

The reason "content" is so icky isn't really because it devalues the arts. It's because it's a pitch whose appeal relies on the superficiality and ignorance of the people doing the buying. You can "just pick 2" here and still look like you're up to something fishy.

So who, exactly, wants be the buyer in these "content opportunities"? Their "clients", of course! But not the competing businesses eating their lunch, and surely not the readers whose continued consumption of it will always mark their bottom line.

"CORRERCTION" among newspaper corrections of the year

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:23:40 +0000

And this gem is way down the list. Poynter has quite a selection for you.

TV anchors quit on-air

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 15:16:33 +0000

Two local ABC news anchors, Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio, "shocked viewers and colleagues" by quitting on-air Tuesday. No reasons were given for their sudden departure beyond Consiglio saying "some recent developments have come to our attention, though, and departing together is the best alternative we can take."

Their boss, however, was less mysterious: "Sometimes people leave before they're officially told to leave."

Writer apologizes after comment backlash

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:26:59 +0000

Two weeks ago, Jon Fingas wrote an interesting opinion piece for Engadget about how Amazon and Google selling hardware at a loss--a classic anticompetitive strategy--reduces choice and hurts consumers. Spotless corporate idols thereby insulted, commenters were angry. So, ~~Engadget~~ he apologized to them.

MG Siegler:

As [he] tells it, the piece should have had more examples and “set a more neutral tone”. Um, why? To ensure that it’s yet another boring-as-fuck piece that no one would even get through let alone think about ever again? As a writer, I feel disgusted seeing such an update. As a reader, I feel even worse. It reads as if the Engadget editors think their readership to be morons who can’t think and/or reason for themselves beyond what they’re told.

Which would be a real problem, given that this situation arose because Engadget's contributor apparently believes, ~~or is made to accept~~ (see update below), that readers are his critical equals.

In this view, the writer sees his job as not to share insight or perform acts of journalism or entertainment, but more a kind of PR filtration duty for a specified "community". The process of turning industry news into blog posts has long worn its own quasi-formal language: engaging and sufficiently stripped of marketing to be readable--with a hint of snark to establish that all-important critical distance!--but punctilious in its servicing of reader expectations.

Update: Engadget EIC Tim Stevens writes to point out that I was wrong to attribute the apology to Engadget itself:

The editorial went up and of course riled up a heck of a sandstorm in comments and elsewhere, as many good editorials often do. The editor in question, who is relatively new to us and hasn't written such a high-profile opinion piece before, wasn't prepared for the sort of vitriol he was receiving on all fronts. Beaten down by the hate, he began to second-guess his argument and posted the update, which has caused the subsequent storm.
Now, we have a policy for updates that materially change the content of the post. (Basically, anything more than quick additional bits of info or something like "Oops, that's out of stock now.") Those updates need to go through a senior editor for approval and anything big, anything that boils down to us blowing the story, needs to go through me. That didn't happen here, as this editor wasn't aware of the process. Had that update been run by me I would have shot it down, as would have any other editor, and it would have never appeared on the site.

This is an excellent policy, and I apologize for assuming that Engadget itself was responsible for the apology--even if it was removed without much explanation.

Unfortunately, it also means that my remarks on editorial confidence would apply directly to a specific person--Fingas. And they seem rather mean-spirited in that context. When it comes to your own writing, however, the fix is easy: stop worrying about what other people think, especially vitriolic commenters.

2012's tech insurgents

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:15:46 +0000

BetaBeat lists the most interesting folks in 2012's tech scene. Here's Nitasha Tiku on Anil Dash, whose "amiable agitation" is also one of my own inspirations atop the web's sea of snark and negativity.

"His disarming combination of radical empathy and prescriptive real talk tends to humanize discussions about technology that are otherwise siloed in the startup world’s upbeat echo chamber. ... Slackstory editor Nick Douglas compared Mr. Dash (once tapped by the White House to help federal agencies innovate) to a more contemporary leader, calling him “the Obama of tech”: “Someone trustworthy with important matters, who also has good shit on his iPhone. He can banter with curmudgeons without becoming one, and he can work with snobs without becoming one.”

Game writer out of a job after libel complaint

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:25:44 +0000

Photo: Shutterstock

A game writer who criticized his beatmates' journalistic shortcomings no longer has his job. Rab Florence, formerly with top gaming site Eurogamer, resigned from his position at after it received "legal threats" and gutted much of his scathing article.

"I am utterly staggered by today's events," Florence wrote on Twitter. " ... Today I was effectively put out of a job by another writer."

The imbroglio, barely a day old, began with Florence's broadside aimed at a "tragic, vulgar image": journalists who accepted gifts, participated in Twitter PR campaigns, and who pose with branded junk food for marketing set-pieces.

"I have a mental list of games journos who are the very worst of the bunch," Florence wrote. "The ones who are at every PR launch event, the ones who tweet about all the freebies they get. ... I'm fascinated by these creatures because they are living one of the most strange existences - they are playing at being a thing that they don't understand. And if they don't understand it, how can they love it? And if they don't love it, why are they playing at being it?"

Among those singled out was Lauren Wainwright, to whom Eurogamer soon issued a public apology: "Following receipt of a complaint from Lauren Wainwright, Eurogamer has removed part of the article Lost Humanity 18. We apologise for any distress caused to Ms Wainwright by the references to her. The article otherwise remains as originally published."

The deleted passage, reproduced below, quoted Wainwright on accepting gifts:

One games journalist, Lauren Wainwright, tweeted: “Urm… Trion were giving away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that’s a bad thing?”
Now, a few tweets earlier, she also tweeted this: “Lara header, two TR pix in the gallery and a very subtle TR background. #obsessed @tombraider pic.twitter.com/VOWDSavZ”
And instantly I am suspicious. I am suspicious of this journalist’s apparent love for Tomb Raider. I am asking myself whether she’s in the pocket of the Tomb Raider PR team. I’m sure she isn’t, but the doubt is there. After all, she sees nothing wrong with journalists promoting a game to win a PS3, right?

Responding to a deluge of inquiries, Wainwright's Editor-in-Chief, Michael French, claimed that that no legal action was taken or suggested: "We asked Eurogamer to remove cruel content about a staff member. They obliged."

Wainwright, however, tweeted that she considered Florence's remarks "libelous comments" — a phrase that no UK-based publisher can fail to pay attention to, given Britain's plaintiff-friendly libel laws.

"This incident ...shines a brighter light on the problems with journalism in the UK more broadly," wrote Forbes' Erik Kain, who pointed out that Wainwright's online biography listed her as a "Video Games Consultant" working for a game publisher about whom she writes in a journalistic capacity. "Imagine if every time Jon Stewart mercilessly mocked journalists on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC he could face a potential lawsuit – even for simply quoting them directly."

Florence, announcing his departure, asked his readers not to blame Eurogamer, as "the threat of legal action brings unbelievable pressure."

"In the UK the word “libel” is incredibly loaded, and libel suits can prove incredibly damaging to publications and individuals," wrote Ben Kuchera, editor of Penny Arcade Report, in another overview of the affair.

"Someone who works as a consultant for a company was criticized for promoting those games as press," he added on Twitter. "In response, her bosses at MCV tried to suppress the critical story, and succeeded. It's disgusting. This is literal corruption."

Rock Paper Shotgun co-editor John Walker, though, pointed out something else that's also true: by raising the specter of libel after the fight was already public, Wainwright could succeed only in placing herself under greater scrutiny:

"What will happen now is all manner of places will host the original version of the article, it will be far more widely circulated and discussed, and the reputations of those who have tried to silence criticism could be far more damaged than if they had just ignored it, let alone acknowledged they could do better."

Lies writers tell themselves

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:06:03 +0000

#2. All you need to be a writer is talent. [The Awl]

Time's twitterers of 2012

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:05:03 +0000

BB editors Xeni and Maggie feature on Time Magazine's 140 best twitter feeds. Adds Xeni: "they picked a tweet I wrote last night while utterly baked out of my fucking mind on medical cannabis."

Committee to propose blogger ethics guidelines

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:45:28 +0000

The "Council on Ethical Blogging and Aggregation" is to promulgate your new guidelines for blogging. David Carr in The New York Times:

“This is not an anti-aggregation group, we are pro-aggregation,” Mr. Dumenco told me. “We want some simple, common-sense rules. There should be some kind of variation of the Golden Rule here, which is that you should aggregate others as you would wish to be aggregated yourself.”

The motives are honorable, the objectives reasonable, and the timing ... timely. But no-one is going to care about these folks or whatever theses they nail to pastebin's door, except for their entertainment value. The problem isn't that we lack a necessary formal system of crediting and linking to sources. The problem is that people break and exploit social norms and standards, which can't be regulated by committees.

Computer-generated PR spam trying not to look like computer-generated PR spam

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:42:21 +0000

PR people sometimes say "I loved your coverage of x, perhaps you'd like to hear about y!". The idea is to ensure that I, Esteemed Journalist, know that I am worthy of personalized attention, rather than being an entry on a mailing list.

Some of them, however, are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. I've started getting emails that contain computer-generated personal touches. Computers trying to copy what humans would say to avoid looking like computers!

Here's one that just came in. He/she/it even tweeted me about an unrelated subject--a nice proofing touch--shortly before the email came in. Needless to say, the pitch is terrible. As the named sender might be a real person, I've changed the name to spare them the embarrassment.

Hello Rob,
My name is [horse_PR] and I work with BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. During SOPA, I found a particular interest in, "Infographic: Hollywood's long war on technology." This infographic did a great job at presenting SOPA, in a way that the average consumer could understand.
I noticed a good portion of your site is dedicated to Gweek and Computers. I thought you might enjoy a related infographic, "12 Cities to Find an IT Job." With product and service development growing, more IT jobs are emerging across the states. This IG reviews the top 12 cities that are currently growing and hiring in the IT realm. I believe a good portion of your readership would find this IG to be a great resource!
Do you agree?
I'd love to have you feature this on BoingBoing. I've attached the IG for your review. I look forward to receiving your feedback!
Kind Regards, [horse_PR]

BlueGlass turns out to be an infographic/SEO/marketing outfit: the business model is to make ads look like content, then pitch them to sites as free editorial. The visual complexity of infographics helps conceal or transmute advertising material, and their linkbaityness makes it easy to get them picked up and linked to. I've fallen for it, once before! In this case, the offered infographic advertised the IT recruiter that presumably paid for the service.

Given that I am making hay of BlueGlass's incompetence, I thought it only fair that I publish this infographic in full. It may be seen to the right.

Washington Post hack to post post-facto fact check

Rob Beschizza — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 05:13:23 +0000

The Washington Post ran an article about the "inventor" of email, which it identified as V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai. But there's a problem! Ayyadurai didn't invent email. After publishing a risible "clarification" and some error-strewn sneering at critics by its ombudsman, amends are finally being made. But a correction remains to be made—because they're still fact-checking a headline they already accept is untrue.

TechCrunch not dead yet

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:26:22 +0000

Jeff Roberts at PaidContent claims that TechCrunch's traffic is plummeting.

TechCrunch, the long-time darling of the digerati, is smashed to bits and all of AOL’s horses and men will be hard-pressed to put it together again. The site has lost almost every one of its top writers and traffic has dropped sharply, dropping by 35 percent from a year ago. ... On top of the declining traffic, an editor at popular aggregator Techmeme, which TechCrunch at one point dominated, noted yesterday that the tech blog is already sliding down its “leader board.”

It eventually becomes clear, however, that Roberts sources the claimed traffic decline to ComScore. Providers of traffic estimates and samples are not entirely candid about their methodologies, valuable as they are in competing for the advertising industry's attention. Moreover, they tend to give lowball figures for sites who don't sign up for (or stop using) expensive direct measurement services.

As for the TechMeme leaderboard, TC's slid from first place to ... first place. The editor, Lidija Davis, didn't say quite what Roberts claimed she had.

This doesn't mean that TC's readership isn't falling, or that it isn't going to lose its top spot at Techmeme to The Verge. What it means is that traffic measurements from Alexa, ComScore, and the like might be bullshit; and, therefore, any "news" based on them.

Irony Vigilante Bill Keller: NYT copyright infringement was "illustrative uploading"

Rob Beschizza — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 08:25:02 +0000

Bill Keller, former executive editor of The New York Times, rails against those who mock him. The newspaper published someone else's column without permission while he was busy insisting that copyright infringement is theft, and has been subjected to much ridicule as a result.

The law should not go after minor transgressions. Moreover, I specifically said a real reform should also relax some copyright protections – such as cases where a work that is long out of print could be made widely available to a new audience. Nowhere did I suggest that the law should criminalize the illustrative uploading of a 36-year-old alt-weekly article that is otherwise unavailable.

Well said, Bill Keller!

The interesting thing about Keller's new op-ed role is that, like the Times' "public editor", it appears to be an unmoderated sinecure by design, occupied by a fellow whose lack of self-awareness may be disconcerting to some colleagues.

Previously: NYT publishes "infringement is theft" column and rips off another paper's article in the same weekend

Salon cuts post count by a third, gets 40 percent increase in readers

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:44:48 +0000

Salon's Kerry Lauerman found that the given wisdom of publishing more content did not yield more traffic.

[We published] Short (a few hundred words) summaries or explainers about a major news event covered more in depth by somebody else. In its best form, we wrote short little decoders of a big story, and tried to link generously to the original source. At its worst, we monitored Twitter and Google for trending topics, and dispatched an intern to cobble together our own summary, posted it quickly, then prayed to the Google gods that the effort would win, if only briefly, their favor.
I'm not proud of that last approach, a mandate from above, which we were able to quietly scuttle after it was proven to have absolutely zero impact.

They're now publishing a third fewer stories, but have increased traffic by forty percent since cutting out "aggregation" and focusing on original stories.

Your website is not a truck

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:59:14 +0000

Jeff Atwood on exactly how much attention to pay to feedback.

1. 90% of all community feedback is crap.
2. Don't get sweet talked into building a truck.
3. Be honest about what you won't do.
4. Listen to your community, but don't let them tell you what to do.
5. Be there for your community.

What your favorite blog says about you

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:41:24 +0000

Nick Douglas explains what your favorite blog says about you. Vote Ron Paul!