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.
I read BlogRunner before I read the New York Times, because BlogRunner is about a day a head of mainstream news. Quality not withstanding, mainstream media can’t keep up with the speed of blogs. Individuals will just have to start getting better at reading blogs critically, they should be doing that with news anyways.
I respect your analysis. I am not taking it personally. Again, from a marketing perspective, you are a genius!
All I am saying is, put a leash on that Duncan guy. And teach him some analytical and logical thinking skills. Geez, he sucks!
dave: TechCrunch is one of my favorite blogs. Why wouldn’t I show up? If you ask Mike he’ll tell you that I was one of the first bloggers to link to him, so I’ve been doing this since very early in TechCrunch’s existence.
Munjal – sure we ask, and often get the data. but there are competitive reasons why comapanies don’t want this information to be known publicly. A big part of crunchbase is hidden data on financing valuations and revenue numbers. We use that to help guide our posts, but agree not to publish it if requested before they tell us.
plus, entrepreneurs lie early and lie often about revenue.
@michael – ok cool. glad you agree that I’m right.
MA wrote: “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 guess you’ve never read anything by Duncan…
a) Look who’s talking about removing emotion
b) Let’s remove emotion. But you have to agree, larger trends remain about this blog:
(i) The quality is going down. You guys used to truly analyze and report in the post. Not anymore.
(ii) You do personal blogs that should not be on the main page. Just, for this post, several folks have said that.
Sorry for sounding harsh. It’s because I care. Promise!
@56/Larry:
say something that proves you are not me. Or michael will believe I am posting under another name.
Because we are both saying that many posts say everyday when Duncan posts – he sucks!! he blows!! he is just plain bad!!
@michael – yeah, i don’t agree with a, b, b(i) or b(ii) in your comment. the rest is spot on though.
Michael:
you don’t have to agree. Just like you said it, I believe what I believe.
And you do agree. Your comment #48 says that.
Well, you’ll never know what you find on TechCrunch.
I too watched this unfold today with interest.
Two points
1) CNN’s iReport is aimed at one thing and one thing only. Having ‘reporters’ and/or photojournalists all over the world for FREE. ‘Old school’ journalists that haven’t kept pace are sitting around waiting for the pink slip, whether or not their reporting is ‘perfect’.
2) AMAZING to see Robert Seidman chiming in here. For those of you that don’t remember, Seidman had a listserv newsletter at the very beginning of the Internet, profiling companies, and making predictions (that were often right when I was wrong). He was at IBM at the time and knew the landscape. Wall Street (OR the mainstream media) didn’t have a clue about the ‘coming’ tech and Internet revolution.
Michael
Hmm… Really?… I’m surprised but I guess I shouldn’t be.
If this is the case short of audited financials (which take too long to come out) this may be hard to circumvent.
You know are welcome to come and review our financials anytime. Seriously. I’ll show you cash collections from customers into the bank account – much harder to fake that.
My main point is that we gotta find a way to shift the conversation toward the level 2 metrics of any new technology wave (traffic / usage is level 1, revenue level 2, profitability is #3).
I have stayed pretty quiet since the launch of Like.com in Nov 2006 because we didn’t have any significant things to announce from a financial perspective. I didn’t think talking about another feature was worth it. The only thing we spoke about was Likesense our new advertising technology which you covered. Moving the site to a full GA from an alpha / beta is the other thing we are talking about.
It just felt like after the launch we should hunker down and build the business. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs like that who will start showing up with serious revenues. Heck maybe some of them will even surprise me.
note my update in the post.
I refuse to take this seriously until I see you laddies in the Octagon.
Two go in.
One comes out!
He’s wrong. The only way bloggers need to be more like mainstream media is in how they manage their business because the model is basically the same. It would benefit blogs to structure, monetize, expand and grow using media’s model. The rest is left to the beauty of the independent voice and I don’t know if anyone will ever succeed in dictating what that should look/sound like. This kind of thinking is a little narrow because in the end, the big picture isn’t going to have the big divide that exists between media and blogs today. Media will be significantly if not entirely digital in the future, meaning blogs would be more like the independent press and free to produce their product however they’d like.
it’s funny how the fights always break out on the weekend.
Michael,
When you say “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 make very little sense.
Firstly, Fred’s trying to make a valid point about the quality of tech blog posts, and he cites the two examples he’s most familiar with; that doesn’t take anything away from his argument. (http://en.wikip...wiki/Ad_hominem).
Secondly, he’s presenting an opinion. Its pretty silly to talk about the “credibility” of opinions.
Lastly, he’s talking about particular blog posts by Erick/Matt – not attacking them personally. But it was easier for you to twist that intent to make your point. Reminds of Fox News. There is a bullying tone in this post, which is quite disappointing.
Mike you are a classic bully boy who uses the influence of this blog to get his own way whether right or wrong. Everyone knows its not worth criticizing you because you simply write posts like this and if that fails you get your “friends” to blog about it too.
In 5 years time, when we look back, the daily noise you make will not matter.
Two words: fact checking (the difference between blogging and MSM)
There is only one way to settle this: A Web 2.0 Fight Club bare knuckle battle to the death, sponsored by TechCrunch.
That’s exactly for those kinds of discussions that I read Techcrunch. You guys can pull out some great debate, on the spot, with top-ranked bloggers, about trendy topics.
Can you pass the popcorn…
Oh boo-yah big time, major league burn Arrington style /me likes ftw Suck it Fred Wilson.
As you know full well Mike I love an opportunity to have a digg at the opinions you guys here at TC make. However, In this case you made your arguments crystal clear and this is one of the posts / reasons that brings me back to TC everyday.
Great article.
Your loyal critique.
‘all news writers need to step it up a notch and aim for better quality’
Why not set your standards by these guys, all writers like you, all young men like you, all dead: Paul Douglas (CBS, US), James Brolan (CBS, US), Jose Couso (Telecinco, Spain), Taras Protsyuk (Reuters, UK), Tareq Ayoub (al-Jazeera, Qatar), Christian Liebig (Focus, Germany), Julio Anguita Parrado (El Mundo, Spain), Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed (BBC, UK), Michael Kelly (Washington Post, US), Kaveh Golestan (BBC, UK), Paul Moran (ABC, Australia), Terry Lloyd (ITN, UK), my dad.
this story broke over the last few weeks and would have been a much better example for Fred to have used if he wanted to attack the opinions of bloggers.
http://thenextw...ehind-the-hoax/
@Debbie Davies
I hope you now write/blog etc. if so pls give blog address. I can sense you have a story to tell.
Well, I think this post should have been a CrunchNotes post, not a TechCrunch post.
Dear MA
Our usual minus two cents worth. You probably would not read this since we are neither a famous J nor a famous B.
So here it is
The blog which you are pointing out… had an article sometime back regarding techmeme. I searched it
http://avc.blog...eme-a-caut.html
which probably got the publicity desired
So we guess this one is the next stunt – attacking techcrunch
sometimes I feel like these debates are somewhat fabricated to stir up controversy and increase exposure, page views, etc.
Is this really that big of a deal?
blogs are…. blogs. each writer writes multiple stories a day and so some posts aren’t great, some are wrong, some lack research, some have typos, and some are really interesting and well written. The fact Fred thinks a couple stories sucked doesn’t matter… EVERYONE has read a story on Techcrunch or VentureBeat and thought ‘wow reading that story just completely wasted my time.” It’s really not that big of a deal…
and I really agree with 79. Fred’s blog is his personal blog, Techcrunch is a company that people read for news and reviews… it’s not the place for “feuds” between people
morFuckingon
@3. Robert Scoble — “By the way, anyone who quotes Alexa or Compete as being accurate really pisses me off.”
Check out the new Crunchbase profiles with compete and quantcast graphs embedded
actually, you both have a good point.
*bloggers are inferior to journalist! mostly, they didn’t go through any training and usually there is no real moderation..it’s like a point and shoot digital camera.
another interesting point will be experience – Arrington went from being a lawyer to being the Executive editor/ Columnists / Publisher / Owner….seriously, think about it:)
**that said, tech was always a weak point and Arrington was smart enough to take advantage of it. also, he seems to be reasonably smart and fairly honest.
**i would love to see more blogs like Daring-fireball. he knows that he is not a journalist and he doesn’t wish to become one. his blog is different, interesting and extremely accurate. besides the fact that he is a genius…you can really trust him.
Mark,
Copenhagen, DK
P.S – we need more intelligent bloggers! abusing the notorious “”changing the world”" statement just make you bloggers look insecure and a bit foolish:)
Been over this ground before…the blogger/journalist dichotomy isn’t useful…it’s about who you trust as a reliable, incisive and perceptive source of information, whether it’s ZDNet, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, NYT or a lone blogger in his or her basement. As Mike pointed out both Matt and Erick are seasoned writers and researchers with years of MSM experience. Fred points to some posts he disagreed with and has a personal stake in the subject matter. Startups like TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, as well as my own ZDNet blog network, have earned enough trust among readers to be valued sources of information to millions of people on a monthly basis–they teams work really hard, produce a lot of content with limited resources and for the most part get it right, and if not it’s part of an ongoing dialog that tends to correct itself. They are smart, they hustle, get to the point quickly with some perspective, and stimulate conversation.
The need for speed, which is part of being competitive and in a fast moving industry, can impact the depth and fullness of stories, the amount of context provided. Readers (or Techmeme) don’t necessarily reward with their clicks the best written, most fully researched posts with their shrinking attention spans. But those of us doing this job know that quality wins over quantity, shallowness or just refactoring other people’s work without adding value.
Hey, for the record I like Duncan’s posts and disagree with the other commenters that continually harass him. I like posts with personal opinions on the topic at and hand and not just dry facts. I don’t always agree with him, but that’s fine, I still find him point of view valuable. I have been reading TechCrunch for a longtime and think it has adapted very well to its growth.
I think comments tend to be very biased to the negative because that is human nature, happy people don’t tend to see the need to comment. Michael is right to only consider the comments as one (small) input into how he drives TechCrunch forward.
I read Fred’s blog on occasion. He has lots of conflicts. In fact, his blog is riddled with them. I sometimes think his blog exists to espouse ideas that align with his portfolio, which is his right to do, although it is sometimes over the line IMHO.
It all boils down to perspective. X is bigger than Y is always always a subjective view – and even with numbers like revenue, you edit that numbers quite good. (Guess why certain companies still pay dividends although their results are bad and alike.)
What more bloggers should do is realize that their views are most likely personal and if they claim they are objective (”this is a fact” “compared to x”) they need proof to back it up and should be professional enough to research critically.
As such I agree that if somebody is involved with a company and then states “is bigger than” it is even more relevant to prove by independent measurements why you have the opion (not fact in most cases).
I do not find it inexcusable, but more stupid – as if readers will not notice and make a mental mark on it.
My view: Should bloggers decide that they want to go pro, they need to bring more to the table than Joe normal Blogger.
@Jim: MSM and fact checking? What rock have you been living under the past decade?
this is a ridiculous debate, but feel compelled to say one thing to fred…you can’t get out of taking responsibility for your posts/views by saying “i was just trying to strike up a debate on the issue”. that’s sorta what it sounds like you’re doing
There’s one thing that I think a lot of people overlook, but it is hinted at in the comments on this post. Whether it’s a blogger, newspaper reporter, columnist, whatever, is an article/post/video being passed off as fact or opinion?
A “news” site must be held to a different standard than an opinion site. I fully expect the NYTimes site to have fact- and spell-checked articles that are as fully vetted as possible, and the opinion pieces are clearly marked as such. On the other hand, I fully expect the ZDNet blog site or John Dvorak to be more about shock value and page views.
The problem is with sites like TechCrunch, where news and opinion are mixed together, and it isn’t apparent if an article is about a company, product, or service I might be interested in, or merely one of Arrington’s rants.
As far as the blogger versus jounalist nonsense, consider this: Blogs are not much more than CNN for the web. Think about it. A continuously updating feed of news, commentary, and interviews. Click on a link or change the channel. It’s an old concept adapted to a newish medium.
Don: Mike’s little secret. He only posts to crunchnotes if he doesn’t want to give traffic to the post. He uses TC as a bully pulpit because of the traffic. Crunchnotes is where he puts the throw away posts.
Apologies if I use examples specific to my interests, but
The problem is that people are holding bloggers to a standard (the MSM) that is largely mythical. Fact checkers in the media are a long extinct species. In fact, I would say bloggers actually do a better job – if only because of comments. When Eric Schonfeld promulgated the myth that Kevin Rose can actually write code (http://www.tech...-in-45-minutes/) he got called on it – repeatedly – in the comments.
But the MSM today published a piece about digg (http://business...icle3386033.ece) stating it was founded in 2003. Something that 30 seconds on wikipedia would have revealed as incorrect. Really shoddy work.
And you guys even fixed the misspelling of my name (which was there forever) in the latest crunchbase redesign. Thanks!
Let the readers beware.
Bloggers undoubtedly want to have more readers, more content.
Like Rush Limbaugh, Arrington is an entertainer at heart (as are most successful media personalities).
I’ve always believed that they laught themselves to the bank — believing less than 20% of what they say/write, but know they are saying stuff believable and interesting to sad lemmings who waith breathlessly for the next Arrington missive — eager to quote him at parties.
In essence, they serve a purpose — provide entertainment to those who fail to be able to think for themselves. But beware..they leave out more than they add in — otherwise, their success would be muted.
Totally agree with Ray.
Michael,
Disregarding the argument on both sides, this is a very nuanced discussion yet you posted a hysterical, inflamatory blog title, whereas Fred posted an “i’m sorry” follow-up (although not completely), and reached out. You kept the salacious title, which will be crawled in a few days and will go immediately to the top for a “Fred Wilson” search, potentially ruining his name.
I suggest you move your “Update” from the bottom to the top for those that might only have a few seconds to judge the character of Fred Wilson, and change the title of the entry. If it was anywhere other than the front page, I’d say you could keep it.
Cheers,
Kevin
This discussion is important. The sources of information are shifting and none of us has all the answers. I’m not sympathetic to the Wilson posting, but no matter.
Many blogs, including some hosted and sponsored by MSM, are routinely trafficking in sensationalism and pejorative insults rather than analysis and reporting. Clearly that is becoming evident to more and more readers, who are asking where they should go for information and intelligent opinion. That is why this thread contains such lengthy and passionate dialogue.
But it amazes me how many hypocritical posters come here and to other comment threads to demand transparency and accuracy, then themselves hide behind anonymous monikers, like for example “69. Dissapointed,” “70. Bully Boy,” “88. Jenkins” and many others.
In this weird transitional era it’s all just text on the Internet, regardless of whether it’s published by Fortune, TechCrunch, or in a discussion thread. Anyone with an interest in accuracy and honesty should show their commitment to those values by being as transparent about their own identity and affiliations as possible. Otherwise it’s impossible to take their opinions seriously.
-David Kirkpatrick, Fortune
Agree with Kirkpatrick…transparency in this kind of discussion is essential…
I just read some of Wilson’s blog posts. Appears to be a VC-blogger power-broker wannabe, a la Graham, and going through his growing pains (e.g., defensive about being based in NY).
Too bad his cred=nil now.