What a fantastic headline: (in story context): For Retailers Today Really is the Shittiest Day of the Year. Some journalists squawk at Gawker sites for cheesy, sleazy headlines and content. I see Gawker as a […]
Category: Journalism
The Beeb Should Know Better Than Source Like This
I expect a lot more than crap-reporting from BBC News. Is this really the sorry state of tech journalism? The story cites absolutely no sources.
Google plans to pull photos from Google+ profiles to accompanying advertising, which would look to some people like endorsements. BBC claims user backlash.
Netflix should be Proud
Classic! Who says newspapers are dead? New York Daily News delivers some of the best tabloid headlines/covers anywhere.
Take Back the Facts
Wow, All Things D’s Kara Swisher sure has some advice for Jeff Bezos as he takes ownership of the Washington Post.
I think her real point is this:
To me, the most important trick is to deeply inculcate the joy of Internet journalism, without losing (actually restoring to some degree, after recent cutbacks) the great editorial values and breakthrough journalism of the Post. Fusing the old-media storytelling and news-integrity values that I learned at the Post with the Internet values of speed and personality—and, well, some level of fun at the right times—is critical.
Some Advice to the Washington Post's New Owner
Today, in the Guardian, former CIA analyst John Kiriakou accuses the Obama Administration of abusing the 1917 Espionage Act, claiming that “only 10 people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama”.
From Day One, the Obama Administration sought to plug any leaks. What’s said in the Oval Office stays in the Oval Office. That’s context for understanding the aggressive approach to whistleblowers. It’s philosophical. The current White House sees leaks as betrayals, so why not view whistleblowing as treason?
Rolling Stone's 'The Bomber' hits target
Last night I came home from San Diego Comic-Con Day 1 to find the newest Rolling Stone open, facedown on the living room carpet; the controversial cover, with Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, stared up like Jim Morrison. I had heard about the controversy over the photo, and accusations that the magazine somehow glorified the bomb suspect, for days. So had my wife, who finished Janet Reitman’s riveting account, soon as we both settled in for the evening.
Anne never reads Rolling Stone. But the cover caught her attention enough that she consumed this one article, neglecting the New Yorker, which also arrived in the mail yesterday, coincidentally containing a smart editorial defending RS editors. She doesn’t approve of the cover, and yet it clearly was effective enough. As an editor, I must commend Rolling Stone for doing with a picture what tabloids like the New York Post or online aggregator Huffington Post does with snarky headlines: Get people to read the story.
Better Place to Be
My last post on this site is dated December 2010. Luckily no squatters took residence in my absence. I stopped writing here simply because I didn’t have time. My responsibilities for BetaNews commanded too much of me, and I shifted personal blogging to Google+. Both are fine places to live—shared common areas—but I seek solitude and escape from the daily news grind; also, I’m sick to death of tech.
I’m not a computer or gadget geek. It’s just my career path. Twenty years ago this autumn, what was then Washington Journalism Review, now American Journalism Review, posted a story that changed my life: “The Future is Now” by Kate McKenna.
Bias is inevitable
All journalism is advocacy journalism. No matter how it’s presented, every report by every reporter advances someone’s point of view…to pretend there’s such a thing as journalism without advocacy is just silly; nobody in this […]
BlackBerry Fights Back
BlackBerry’s aggressive response to Detwiler Fenton claims of high z10 return rates is shocking and refreshing. CEO Thorsten Heins statements that return rates are “right in line with the industry” while calling the report a […]
What, No Penalty for Aggregators?
A warning from Google News: Credibility and trust are longstanding journalistic values, and ones which we all regard as crucial attributes of a great news site…If a site mixes news content with affiliate, promotional, advertorial, […]
The Great Tablet Newspaper Experiment Ends
How does a news organization squander $30 million? Launch an iPad-only newspaper with great fanfare, only to shut down 18 months later. News Corps’ tablet newspaper fails for many reasons, some related to necessary restructuring of larger operations.
But ultimately, The Daily fails for lack of good editorial content and oversight. The app/publication is is too much like a digitized USA Today for people with sixth-grade reading comprehension.
One Source is Not Enough
Continuing on my theme of accuracy about news reporting, particularly Apple and the wrongs of single-sourcing: As a rule I don’t quote FOSS Patents. There simply is too much pro-Apple bias in the analysis. I find little neutrality, yet FOSS Patents is often used as the only source on Apple legal cases by the majority of the US news media.
Even if I thought Florian Mueller’s posts were fair, I wouldn’t quote him, simply because he is so overused and so often as only so-called expert by so many bloggers, reporters, and other writers.