Comments on: Taking a Step Back from the Cesspool

By: rwwmike

rwwmike — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:52:22 +0000

@FredericL I think that if the companies and reporters were both doing their work, they wouldn’t need embargoes for many of the craptastic stories that get embargoed. They focus on getting the most bland, broad coverage instead of the right coverage.

When something is interesting or has an impact, people write about it, regardless. They find an angle. An exclusive doesn’t have to mean first in reporting the basic facts and repeating PR quotes, it can mean presenting that new angle.

If everyone just played the exclusive card, we could finally stop reading the same regurgitated crap from one “news” blog to another.

Wait, that brings us back to pageviews, right? That’s why we all go along with it. Damn!

By: FredericL

FredericL — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:38:33 +0000

@rwwmike all good points.

The thing I don’t like about Pando’s policy on embargoes is that they insist on exclusives, which doesn’t help the startups, I think. You know how it works – somebody posts a story first and if it’s “just” a startup, the others will just ignore it. Maybe we can just do away with embargoes as a whole, I’m all for that, but playing the exclusive card just strikes me as a bad move.

By: rwwmike

rwwmike — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:41:04 +0000

I have to say, I do like PandoDaily’s take on embargoes – if everyone is going to post the same half-assed bullshit post, regurgitating a press release then you may as well post the damned press released and be done with it. It’s the TechCrunch method. Leena Rao, you are a master copy-and-paster of press releases, I must say.

And yes, I couldn’t agree more on the points MG made about the crap that bloggers have to churn out in the all mighty ploy for pageviews. I still believe that worthwhile content could win out over crap, but most blogs won’t ever give that a try. In all the posts I ever wrote, however, I feel that the ones that had the most views and staying power involved in-depth reporting, original content and anything other than regurgitated PR crap.

I believe that tech journalism (which fortunately and unfortunately includes tech blogging) is leading the way for much of the rest of journalism and I really hope it finds its way soon.