Fred Wilson lit a fire today suggesting that certain bloggers need to step it up a notch to improve quality and be more like mainstream journalists.
A fair point if spoken generally, although I’d argue that the quality of reporting done by many bloggers today, at least in the tech space, is equal to or better than most mainstream journalism. I think this is particularly true when we’re talking about breaking, non-embargoed news, where contacts and inside sources matter more than having all the time in the world to think about, research, write and edit an article. His point, therefore, should have been that all news writers need to step it up a notch and aim for better quality, which is sort of like saying nothing at all.
Normally I wouldn’t take issue with the statement, except that it was partially aimed at us. Wilson specifically called out our Erick Schonfeld for his post on social gaming platforms, as well as Matt Marshall at VentureBeat for a post he wrote about Like.
Wilson’s first gripe is that Matt, in his post about Like, didn’t give enough credit to competitor ThisNext. His second – that Erick, in his post on Zynga and SGN, suggested that the “two companies are neck and neck like Hillary and Obama,” when “Zynga is almost an order of magnitude bigger.”
Wilson fully discloses his conflicts of interest in the post – that he is a friend to the founder of ThisNext and an investor in Zynga. At that point, of course, a lot of the credibility behind his opinions comes into question. The two bloggers he is attacking have no conflicts with these startups.
He fails to realize that both Matt (San Jose Mercury News) and Erick (Fortune, Business 2.0) are seasoned mainstream journalists who’ve made the crossover to blogging. So his whole argument about blogging v. mainstream media loses yet more steam.
In reading the articles, it seems to me that Matt did an excellent job of highlighting a recent surge by Like while still noting relevant competitors. Erick’s post, which I am more familiar with, is in my opinion above reproach. Erick notes the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms and suggests that developers will ultimately make a decision as to which, or both, they will join. Erick also interviewed Wilson for the post and quoted him in it.
So what this really comes down to is this. Wilson didn’t like the coverage. But instead of simply disagreeing with and rebutting the points made in the posts, he went after the reputation of the writers themselves. That would be inappropriate even if he was right. But the fact that he was both conflicted and wrong makes it inexcusable.
Wilson failed to uphold the very standards of integrity that he demands from others. He failed to contact Erick or Matt before writing, and didn’t seem to have the facts to back up his argument. In a twitter exchange between us on this issue, he defended his sloppiness on the fact that he’s a blogger, saying “if you are a blogger you can say what you think, once you become a journalist, you have a different standard.”
Now, frankly, I’m confused. Bloggers can say what they think, but journalists can’t? I think what he’s trying to say is that Erick and Matt are no longer bloggers and now need to hold themselves to a higher standard – one that Wilson explicitly doesn’t hold himself to. That sounds like hypocrisy 101 to me.
Also, in a comment to his original post, he says “Erick didn’t get it wrong…but i think he missed the opportunity to get it right.”
How can you be both wrong and right at the same time?
Wilson partially retracted his post in a follow up, saying that he was sorry for singling out Erick and Matt, and saying that he “didn’t mean to take a shot at either of them.” But he then goes on to say that the whole exercise was a good one, since it started this great conversation on the issue.
That’s no apology, Fred. An apology would include you admitting that both posts were well researched and well written pieces. And that it was wrong to attack the reputation of these writers just because the conclusions reached by them were different than your own.
One last note. In the comments Fred says it isn’t even debatable that SGN is not a real company. From what we hear on the street, some very high profile venture capitalists are willing to bet some serious money that he’s wrong.
Update: Mathew Ingram says I went a little too hard at Fred here. I don’t necessarily disagree. Fred tends to come at people pretty hard, so I went hard back. But some readers won’t know that, so it’s worth pointing out.
Hi Michael,
“A fair point if spoken generally, although I’d argue that the quality of reporting done by many bloggers today, at least in the tech space, is equal to or better than most mainstream journalism. I think this is particularly true when we’re talking about breaking, non-embargoed news, where contacts and inside sources matter more than having all the time in the world to think about, research, write and edit an article.”
I can’t agree with you any more. Nowadays I just check blogs from people who are actually working in the industry. I do not read news articles from news writers or reporters. From this point of view, most news writers or reporters will lose jobs gradually. Let’s go and see it.
It’s amusing – it goes to a post I wrote a few weeks about truth versus blog truth. So, in a rush to being first on scoops on a blog (and, well, against the wires) is there a rush to push down the old rules of vetting? Does the jump from MSM journalism to SM journalism mean you get to ignore the old rules? Probably not, but it is a hyper accentuated medium that we work in.
While I think the examples that Wilson gives are not necessarily the best, there are examples of wrong information (or bad examples) put out there.
But, using Alexa for an argument? Ugh, bad form.
I’ve actually been seeing this twitter exchange as it has been happening…and all I could think when I saw where it was headed was “Oh dear God, not another ‘Are bloggers journalists?’ argument.”
Boy am I glad it just turned into a schoolyard spat instead!
Nah, but seriously…Fred, you’re being hypocritical, quite whining and step up to the plate.
Jeremy – the issue isn’t, or shouldn’t be the desire to reach higher quality. That is a debate I am happy to have. The issue here is that Fred was just plain wrong in attacking the reputation of these writers. Did he even realize they were both ex-msm?
Ditto. I also think his answer that there’s some difference between bloggers and journalists misses the point. Either you have integrity or you don’t. Your readers will know when you do or don’t (they sure do know when I screw up). I want a good reputation, so care deeply about such things.
By the way, anyone who quotes Alexa or Compete as being accurate really pisses me off. In my experience these things are hardly accurate and introduce a great deal of bias into the conversation themselves.
Quoting them is almost as bad as quoting the Register or Valleywag (both organizations that have demonstrated over and over again that they don’t really care about the truth).
Funny, when there were rumors about me and PodTech the only bloggers or journalists who called to hear our side of the story was Arrington and Venture Beat.
Mike,
At times your readership likes to hear the editorial opinion and other times some of us are left wondering why you bother to bring this stuff up at all. This post strikes me as something that clearly got under your skin and you weren’t able to brush off in private so now you are airing your laundry to your faithful.
This is techcrunch. You got here by covering tech news and opinions about companies. Your public spats with well known VC’s should be below board for this blog; even if you think they have editorial relevance, let that debate happen somewhere else.
Robert – who called first?
Michael: depends on which time. VentureBeat tends to be a little less salacious than you or me, though.
that’s because he’s an old MSM, and sometimes still worries about “balanced” stories. I don’t aim for balance, I just want to be right.
There are Blogs (cap B), and there are blogs (little b). I am a little b.
I got a call from a third level acquaintance that works at a Pacific Northwest investment bank; he was panting that, “the Microsoft deal is off the table.” Fill Stop.
I asked for his attribution, he declined, and I wrote it up. If my blog was a destination, and I was taking ad or subscriber dollars, I’m not sure that I’d be so quick to publish.
But as I’m really just a small time contractor, and not a professional journalist or even a capital B Blogger, I figured what the heck.
I might turn the source over to a real writer with investigative resources, someone who can dig and substantiate the claims.
Of course, if it turns out my source was / is accurate – well, then we know how it shakes, and folks might take some of my posts seriously.
One last note: Fred Wilson is never, ever, wrong. Anyone who controls the doling out of capital is never wrong. <:?
@Michael
I think it’s all in one – and that the attack on the people was not warranted, as he was, in a way, questioning their journalistic integrity. As for his knowledge of their background, I’m not him, so I can’t answer.
My point is that this is a bigger, bigger discussion and a good one that is being aired out. I’m giving you kudos for pushing forward the discussion.
Oh, and while I got your attention, Michael, I think I found a new business model for you. I’d pay $50 a month to get the ability to post comments in green like you.
Heck, I’d pay $100 for red.
And FastCompany might pay a lot more if they got to put a logo in there.
Mike
I plead guilty to being conflicted. My bias and conflict is right there in my first post. I wish more people with a bias and point of view would get out there and tell us what they think.
Be careful not to shoot the messenger too hard. It’s good for all of us to have this kind of debate.
Yes, I didn’t like either post. Yes, I wanted to make a point. I’m sorry it came across as going after those guys and said so publicly in my second post.
This is two way medium. Erick and Matt and you don’t get to control the discussion anymore. Neither do I. When you write something you can get attacked. They did and now I did.
Time to move on.
Fred
emotions sometimes get the best of people. anyways, I have to say this article is very well written.
In support of your viewpoint, Mike, bloggers are becoming more reputable that many mainstream, traditional publications. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are hiring bloggers or setting up their own quickly to be with the times.
AllThingsD spun off from The Wall Street Journal. The New York Times acquired The Freakonomics Blog. Publishing content has become quicker through blogs whereas for traditional media, it takes so many steps to publicize content such as editing and approval from superiors.
I’ve seen so many cases where news appears on TC and it took NYT or WSJ to get the articles online the next day or even the day after that. These days, people more faster than ever so traditional media needs to address this concern if they want to see themselves competing in the near future.
Robert
I left a reply to your comment about comscore and alexa and compete on my blog.
there were some good replies to both of our comments
http://avc.blog...#comment-156128
fred
It’s really refreshing to see a post that isn’t filled with stupid spammers asking you to visit their crappy VC-funded site.
Regardless, Michael, you make a good point. From my experience with traditional media outlets, they make tons of errors. I’ve been misquoted myself and I think that while there are some genuinely sleazy bloggers out there (just as there are sleazy journalists), most people are trying to be honest and sincere.
Fred – “Erick and Matt and you don’t get to control the discussion anymore.”
When did we ever? or even try to? or want to?
anyway, agree its time to move on. I’ve said my piece.
hey you guys are always yappin about breakin a story. sounds pretty journalistic to me.
nevertheless, i suppose people think a blogger turns into a journalist as soon as the blog becomes so big it becomes somewhat of a “go to” place for news, stories, etc.
side note – is it “saying your peace” or “piece?” interesting discussion here –
http://www.usin...eace-piece.html
http://itre.cis...ves/001884.html
learn something new every day.
Who’s Fred Wilson? Why should I care what he says?
whatever the medium, there are journalists, there are columnists and there are hybrids. The internet eliminated a lot of the barriers involved with a guy in his bedroom choosing to be one, the other, or both.
This conversation changed absolutely none of that, but, as some of us actually are in it for the entertainment too, thank you Michael and Fred.
Jason – because he may fund your next startup. He’s mean, but he’s a good investor.
Robert – yep. pass the popcorn.
you big boys all love to fight . . . . and make up . . . .
(yes, I already see the making up happening)
drama generates traffic, makes you guys “personalities” rather than just “writers/bloggers.” In the end, fighting makes everyone feel more important . . .
Sadly it shifts the spotlight away from the entrepreneurs who’s sweat and blood are invested in the startup being written . . . and thus truly deserve the celebration. A 1,000 word post, a 60min spent on researching and writing will never really compare . . .
lets wrap this thing up and move on to whats important please. . .the entrepreneurs, the startups, and the employees . . .
mike,
1. I agree with your post. your points, as they are laid out in your post, are valid.
however,
1. Erick is just an example. Perhaps not the best one. In my opinion, he should have chosen Duncan who spouts personal opinion rather than a discussion or post based on details and calculations. I don’t pay TC (through my ad viewership) to listen to high school gossip.
2. Journalists care about their audience. You should too! You and TC have started feeding us anything and everything these days, including public commentary, politics, naked Scoble (ohh la la!). If you read the comments and cared about us, you would stop. But you continue to inflict Duncan on us. A true editor would have cared, you apparently don’t.
3. There are extremes on either end. If “National Enquirer” (SF Chronicle for those in Bay Area) folks were to publish their news in a blog format, would they be journalists or bloggers? Either way, they suck but let’s talk semantics here.
will – it’s not about feeling important, but it is about expressing personality. and in this case it was staking out territory on both sides – “don’t screw with my investments or I’ll get you” and “don’t question our reputation or I’ll get you.”
here’s a secret – a lot of what we write about generates the traffic. And every day I sneak in a bunch of posts about startups that get the benefit of that traffic. Don’t worry, I love entrepreneurs and startups. What we are doing is good for them.
@24 (Will)
Without money, would the entrepreneurs be putting in their blood, sweat, and tears?
michael – trust me, we listen to the comments. but people who comment are not even close to a statistically relevant part of our total audience. If all we did was listen to commenters we’d be paralyzed (we get very strong opinons directing us to do exactly opposite things, with the threat of leaving the blog). In the end we choose our own path, and people choose to walk it with us or not. that’s the beautiful thing about blogging.
Enough with the off topic rants. This blog sucks!
evprator – and yet, you are here.
Another argument about whether bloggers are journalists. Getting pretty boring. The only people who care are the bloggers who are wannabe journalists, and the journalists who don’t get it and are frightened by blogging. I think that’s a pretty small number of people.
meh.. you can’t have a standard in this format Fred. bloggers don’t have at stake what the publishers do and they don’t have to answer to any stakeholders.
Theres definitely a need for greater level of quality, but it’s a progression. just like the free market you have to let it take effect naturally. And as everybody is fighting to gain traffic and ad dollars, i don’t see how this load would not lead to better and better future.
great content = more viewers = more revenue streams.
But i have to note that i especially enjoy reaching TC because of Arrignton. Wrong or right, i want to hear his options (as he so ineloquently makes them)
@ Mike – point taken, and understood. I come here for the dog food – and the dog foods are the startups – thats why I’m always back regardless of the side show. (and do know that you share the same passion)
@ Dave – I’m guessing you’ve never put your kids’ college education on the line to pursue (or joing) a startup? Having a portfolio of 10-20 investments does not come close to the emotional investment and financial risk an entrepreneur puts into his ONLY baby . . . 5 years invested in the best part of your 30’s or 40’s . . . its not an easy thing . . .
(BTW we are all really lame. . . its president’s weekend are we are commenting on a blog 10PM at night)
correction: this road*
That’s sad Michael.
a. I admire your mathematical acumen. You are good at looking at numbers. However, it seems you never read the concept of weighted mean. The people who comment on your posts are the ones who are the most passionate about it – one way or the other doesn’t matter. They are your cheerleaders, they are the ones telling others about it.
b. @27 + Michael: If you cared about the entrepreneurs, you wouldn’t lower the quality of this blog. I have seen it go down, very down. Let’s choose Duncan again. He’s great at getting comments and increasing traffic but he makes us often wonder – does this blog have a focus (as it used to) or is it now just about spouting personal opinions? Remember, we come here to find out new cool exciting startups and….VOILA, your expert opinion and analysis of it. Duncan (sorry man!) lacks that. You also get pissed off too but at the end of a day you seem to be a man who has the capacity to think logically.
c. Why am I saying so much? Why do I care to tell you that you are going down the drain? Think about it. Yes, you can respond with either – (i) Hey, you are not part of the people I am trying to target or (ii) I do care, let me make some changes. But don’t just say that I am not “statiscally relevant”. By the way, just so you know, 300 unique people is a good enough sample size for estimating the behavior of large populations – read up!
http://www.surv....com/sscalc.htm
http://www.raos...samplesize.html
its funny how scoble always seems to show up
Nice Michael! One of the things that draws me to TC are the well written stories. Yes, I may not agree with all the conclusions, but I think they are more balanced than not.
It seems Freddy may have had a wine glass to many prior to posting such non-sense. The fact that you called him out speaks volumes and shows (at least me) that you don’t or won’t take shit from anyone. Furthermore, you stepping up publicly to *protect* Erick shows true leadership on your part.
Dave (and will) – yeah, saying entrepreneurs are only doing startups for the money is like saying people only donate to charity for the tax writeoff. The ROI on doing a startup only makes sense for insane people who attach utility to risk. Economists say rationale people do the opposite.
@36
Ha! Good one. It’s like watching the discovery channel. You know sooner or later a Hyaena will make an appearance…
You are describing yourself here:
“Wilson fully discloses his conflicts of interest in the post – that he is a friend to the founder of ThisNext and an investor in Zynga. At that point, of course, a lot of the credibility behind his opinions comes into question.”
You have claimed over and over that your conflicts are disclosed and that is all that matters, why is somebody who is a VC and not trying to become a news orginization held to a higher standard by you?
Your long rambling attack response reminds me of a bitter and guilty Roger Clemens in front of congress, not journalism.
Mike,
People make mistakes and have a natural interest in trying to defend companies where they have a vested interested – similar to you defending a post on perhaps DanceJam (you may or may not not this has come up
) Some could argue that blog writers are influenced by those who advertise on their pages – and fair enough. If you were using hard enough money to invest on advertising on a blog – and then you got a really bad wrap – you probably wouldn’t be all tha impressed.
That said – you’ve called Fred to the table, he has responsed in turn and admitted he acted wrongly. Good debate, but agree its time to move on.
Tim
@39:
Thank you?
Honestly, I didn’t get you. Can you please explain in detail?
Sometimes I feel like Michael is my lawyer.
Thanks for the vigorous defense.
The only point I’ll add to this whole nerd fight is that if you look at Fred’s original post, the Adonomics data that he uses to prove that I did not do my “homework” is the exact same data I link to in my post. So this really isn’t a debate about the facts.
While I agree with a lot of what you are saying Mike, calling him out on TechCrunch seems pretty unfair to me. I mean, he is posting on his personal blog an opinion, not in the Wall Street Journal, not on TV, nowhere with a huge audience. And you pick him apart on TechCrunch instead of CrunchNotes for everyone to see? Does it give you power to have your audience agree with you against him?
I read TechCrunch to learn about new companies, not to see you carry a beef against someones blog post.
I guess when I come to think about it, you probably just proved Fred Wilson’s point eh?
Let’s keep your personal gripes on CrunchNotes, and the professionalism on TechCrunch.
If Fred didn’t have a rep for being thoughtful, interesting and usually right, I doubt we’d be having this discussion. I also think a blogger has MORE cred then most MSM journalists.
Case in point: 3 days ago David Cohen, author of the Colorado Startups blog and founder of TechStars, found out we’d sold our website URL and a license of the software to a company in Texas. He emailed me and asked me what’s what. He waits for my input before blogging about it. The Boulder County Business Report, a weekly business newspaper, heard the from a flawed source we’d sold the company. They got virtually every fact wrong. They called and left a voicemail asking me to call them back then promptly posted the completely incorrect story 2 hours later and emailed it out in a daily update to their readers and posted it on their site (i.e. now it’s findable via search engine).
Who was more responsible and why?
David’s personal rep is on the line. To most of the people I know, that’ having ALOT more at stake then the publishers do. What else do we have in business beside our reputations? David (or any good blogger), assuming they don’t deal in rumors, waits to get the facts from all sides before he blogs about something. The Newspaper story had no author, just the ‘entity’ of the newspaper, and they run with one uniformed hearsay source and put it on the net (and now I have investors, employees and friends emailing me asking what’s going on).
Given a choice, I’d rather bloggers with personal reps to protect break all news. They’re accountable and far more accessible than any MSM story without a byline- which it seems is more and more the case.
Fred may have pissed off some people, but it’s his rep and I salute him for saying what’s on his mind, be it right, or wrong. To Fred I say: Keep it up man. You and other VC bloggers like David C., and Brad Feld, along with several others, have, overall, made the tech world a much more transparent, understandable and interesting place to be.
Michael, Om, Matt – it is time for the Alexa for Revenue. It is time Web 2.0 grows up to be real businesses. I don’t see why you guys can’t ask a startup to show you their revenue numbers like I showed Matt and Michael (when he wrote about our Likesense product) before you guys write a positive article. Frankly just by asking for this you all will help drive a healthy shift toward profitability for all startups in this area. My full thoughts here (I did a trackback but it didn’t show up)
http://munjal.t...evenue-ale.html
@44/Ian:
Michael doesn’t care. As he says earlier in a comment, and I paraphrase, “I don’t really care what the readers think. I will say what I want, take it or leave it”
So why do you believe he is going to care about anything you have to say? A post like this will get published again and again, irrespective of the beautiful (and rightfully so) argument that you just made.
Michael to Ian: “YOU AH NAUT STA-TIS-T-CULLY RELEVANT” (spoken like ahnold)
Ian – fair point, but Fred has a very large audience and I think he can fully defend himself. Plus, he started it.
@michael – hey, take it easy. don’t turn a statement about commenters in general into something personal. I value the input, we just don’t make our editorial decisions based solely on what commenters say. Like I said, people I respect (including you) give us completely conflicting advice. Don’t fault me for making decisions based on my own judgment. If you think about it, and remove the emotion, you’ll see what I mean.
what happened Michael, still punching numbers in the URLs I sent to dismiss my 300 number?