The New York Times Sunday edition team picks fights like no one else. The problem is they tend to pick the wrong fights. And mask opinion pieces as straight up factual articles.
In December they wrote about Facebook revenue woes just, as it turned out, at the time that Facebook saw a huge spike in advertising dollars that will propel them to as much as $600 million in revenue this year. Then there was the Tesla article that prompted quite a response from CEO Elon Musk. That article was retitled and rewritten to correct errors and change the overall tone.
I can’t help wondering if our occasional criticism of the NYTimes prompted their most recent attack, this time aimed squarely at us. Not only does writer Damon Darlin get a lot wrong, he just absolutely failed to write the real and far more interesting story that was staring him in the face.
When Damon reached out to me by email to talk about the story, I wrote back something along the lines of “The Sunday New York Times scares the shit out of me” because of their reputation for twisting conversations to fit whatever story they’ve decided to write. But Damon persisted, saying “I want to call you about a column I am doing on different ways news organizations approach reporting rumors.” Seemed fair enough, I have lots of thoughts on that subject.
We talked for 20-30 minutes by phone. About 30 seconds of dialog, remixed to change the meaning and context entirely, made it into the article as quotations. None of the rest of our talk seemed to influence his thesis, that blogs can’t be trusted, at all.
Damon was laser focused in the article on a post we ran talking partially about Apple/Twitter acquisition rumors. Here’s that post: Twitter Mania: Google Got Shut Down. Apple Rumors Heat Up. Damon says:
Hours later, TechCrunch, a popular Silicon Valley tech news site, was reporting the very same thing. The posts generated a good deal of traffic for both sites. They were picked up by numerous reputable sites and retweeted endlessly on Twitter. The TechCrunch post yielded 405 comments from readers, an unusually large response. Within 12 hours the Gawker post had been viewed 22,000 times, enough to earn it the orange flame that Gawker editors use to designate a post as hot news.
Neither story was true. Not that it mattered to the authors of the posts. They suspected the rumor was groundless when they wrote the items. TechCrunch noted, 133 words into its story, that, “The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations.”
But they reported it anyway. “I don’t ever want to lose the rawness of blogging,” said Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch and the author of the post. (Owen Thomas, the writer of the Gawker post, has since taken a job at NBC and did not want to comment on the record.)
Damon is suggesting that I reported the rumor as if it were real, and waited until deep into the post to say anything about it being unlikely. 133 words into it!
The fact is we didn’t talk about the rumor until the third paragraph of that story, and the statement about it being unlikely to be true came immediately after the sentence that stated the rumor:
Today, though, rumors popped up that Apple may be looking to buy Twitter. “Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up.
There’s just no way to interpret this paragraph as a cheap way to get traffic by misleading readers. We say exactly what we were hearing, and what we believe to be true. And by the way, it shouldn’t matter, but we’ve subsequently confirmed that Apple and Twitter were in fact in acquisition discussions, and the original source for our story was correct.
The other money quote from Damon is also misleading and was taken out of context:
That drive to compete with the so-called mainstream media is what’s behind his strategy. He doesn’t have the luxury of a large staff to confirm everything, so he competes where he has the advantage. “Getting it right is expensive,” he says. “Getting it first is cheap.”
Note the break between “Getting it right is expensive” and “Getting it first is cheap.” The break is there because there were paragraphs of dialog between them. Damon saw a way to slap them together to make us look bad. He did that because it fit his original thesis, which he had formed prior to talking to us.
The Real Story
The real story is what I said between those two sentence fragments, and it’s that stuff that makes all the difference. I talked to Damon about how stories evolve on our blog. How it can start with a rumor, which we may post if we find it credible and/or it’s being so widely circulated that the fact of the rumor’s existence is newsworthy in itself. But then we evolve a post to get to the truth.
Jeff Jarvis calls this Product v. process journalism: The myth of perfection v. beta culture in a post today. His arguments deserve to be fleshed out into an entire book.
We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with a sausage all the time. Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that sausage being made, too. The key is to be transparent at all times. If we post something we think is rough, we say so. If we think it’s absolutely true, we signal that, too, while protecting our sources.
A good example of this is another Twitter story we wrote, this time about Google. in Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter (Updated) we wrote, based on a solid source, that Google was in late stage talks to acquire Twitter. The post itself brought out other sources who disputed that the talks were in late stage. Within minutes after posting we had updated the text, adding “Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine. But discussions between the companies are confirmed.”
That update is 100% correct. Google was in talks over a data deal, and there were discussions of an acquisition. Our original source got his information from a Google employee. We have subsequently confirmed that a Google employee did in fact tell him that they were in late stage acquisition discussions with Twitter, because he believed it to be true. There was some internal miscommunication about the discussions.
But anyway, media outlets like the NYTimes think that having to update a story is a sign of weakness. I believe the opposite, that it’s a sign of transparency and a promise to our readers to continue to give them the best information we have. Corrections and updates are made constantly to big news posts.
Some people ask why we don’t just wait until we have the whole story before posting. That’s where the cheap/expensive quote above comes in. The fact is that we sometimes can’t get to the end story without going through this process. CEOs don’t always take our calls when we’re asking about speculative rumors. But when a story is up and posted, it’s amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to give us additional information.
It’s that iterative process, which Jarvis nails completely, that I was trying to guide Damon to. He can like it or hate it, but it works. And readers love it. The only people who don’t like it are competitors who like to point out that a story was partially wrong, and that they got it right later. But the fact is that they didn’t even know there was a story to begin with. Our original post kicked off the process, and they, like us, started digging for the absolute truth.
The other thing Damon conveniently left out of his article are the many, many big stories that we have broken over the years. There’s a reason that we are no. 1 on the TechMeme leaderboard. There’s a reason why we have more than twice the weight of CNET, at no. 2 and the NY Times at no. 3. It’s because we have an exceptional reputation for honesty and hard work, and we spend all our time in the community building friendships with the people who are driving this industry forward. I translated the word “friend” into “source” for Damon so he could understand what I was talking about. I don’t just call these people when I have a question on a story. I also call them to hear about their kid’s elementary school graduation, or to give them advice on which venture capitalist might want to invest in them. They trust me, and they talk to me.
Here are a few of the stories that we’ve broken over the years. These aren’t stories where we followed someone else, they’re things that we broke first and nailed. I don’t think the NY Times or anyone else can point to this kind of track record:
- Google Buys Youtube (we had the parties and the price nailed)
- Yahoo’s Offer To Buy Facebook (we posted internal Yahoo documents showing their valuation modeling of the Facebook deal, and broke the fact of the discussions first)
- Google/Yahoo Search Deal (we broke the news that a deal was happening, down to the time it was being announced, although we were off by two hours because Yahoo changed the time. this was a major stock market mover)
- Kindle 2 and Kindle 3 (you heard it on CrunchGear first, months before anyone else)
- Existence of New Palm Pre (we were the first to report on the existence of the Pre)
- Palm’s second Pre-like phone (we were the first to report on the second Palm phone using the Pre OS)
- Bebo Getting Acquired (we had the price range and speculated on lots of buyers while competitors were yelling that it wasn’t true)
- Facebook In Dubai Raising More Money (story was 100% true, despite the fact that Facebook continuously denied that they were raising more money right up until they announced that they had raised more money)
- Twitter Raises Capital At $250 million valuation (we broke this story, confirmed by company a few weeks later)
- Cisco Buys Flip (we had parties and price, no on else was anywhere near this story)
- MySpace Founder/CEO Chris DeWolfe firing (we owned this story, plus we broke the news on the new COO)
- Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook (just as MySpace was kicking off 90,000 registered sex offenders from its site, thousands of them were showing up on Facebook—our post led to inquiries by the Connecticut Attorney General).
These are just a few of the big stories we’ve broken over the years, and there are countless other smaller stories that we’ve owned completely as well (like this). Readers flock to us because we have the most interesting tech news and because we always maintain 100% transparency. Our love of this community is obvious to our readers. I just wish fear of the unknown didn’t blind the NY Times and others to the future of journalism. Because that fear is driving them exactly away from the truth.
I always shudder when journalists say “don’t say something, get a source to say it and then quote them.” It leads to really awful stuff. Pretending that you’re writing one story when you’re really writing another, and then twisting what your sources tell you to fit whatever it is that your editor told you to write isn’t ethical journalism. It may check all the boxes that were laid out for you in journalism school, but it isn’t anything other than op-ed with nothing real to back it up.
Update: NYTimes editor Tim O’Brien, who has trashed us before, tells Jeff Jarvis via Twitter “@jeffjarvis really, it has nothing to do with a “playground fight”. it’s just a a difference of opinion. you’ve aired yours, which is great.” here. One problem – the NY Times article wasn’t labeled as an opinion piece, it was labeled as factual reporting. This is a really serious issue in my opinion.
And someone else on Twitter points out that the NYTimes loves the rumor, too.
Update 2: Robin Wauters points to this post where he questioned a somewhat sensationalist headline on a NYTimes blog post. The title of the post was subsequently changed and a link was added back to us in explanation. The link was later removed by the editor. That’s called process journalism. There is actually a whole laundry list somewhere of NYTimes articles that had to be updated based on later facts coming to light, but I really didn’t want this to devolve into “i know you are but what am i.” however, we can go that route, too, if we have to.
ugh. awful bit of text
We never liked them anyway Mike.
mike
why are you giving them the two cents that they do not need…they nytimes is out of touch with what’s happening in the valley…all the are about is making sure that the Sulzberger family can get their stupid checks on a monthly basic.
just moveon.org.
best,
lance lee
Chairman Emeritus: Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger, age 71, $1,397,200 pay
Chairman; Publisher, The New York Times: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., age
46, $960,200
Not long before NYT go belly up. Those journalists’ ctc pay might have halved already.
haha love the image that goes along with the article
NYTimes and other newspapers are worrying about their own rice pots on the stoves because print newspapers are dying out and losing revenue. They have one channel left for revenue, that is, online newspapers. But when blog writers are going ahead in picking up news (rumors/issues or whatever), newspapers journalists are freaking out that they would lose their pots on their last chance.
The New York Times is getting desperate.
Agreed.
That’s true. Fox News & Mr. O’Reilly do constantly criticize those lefty newspapers including the New York Times for being unfair and awful investigative reporting for not checking their facts.
that must mean its true. bill o’reilly usually has a good eye for these sorts of things. he’s just a smart man, and a great american.
Hardly… basically a good fight sells papers — the small articles are no better no worse than typical blog b.s. “fighting” to raise unique visitor numbers.
And hey, it works — techcrunch links, mike gets quoted… everyone is happy.
It’s a well-argued post, and certainly, the NYT can’t take issue with trying to break a story and quoting anonymous sources.
As far as nurturing your sources and friends, I think that’s indisputably the mark of true journalism.
There’s a compelling argument to be made on the other side that rumors can have real world impact on things like stock price intra-day, and that you have an obligation or discount your story’s accuracy. Thus, you’re “But when a story is up and posted, it’s amazing how many people come out of the woodwork to give us additional information.” shows you have a conflict in your incentives to post the rumor as a story.
However, there’s also a great argument to be made that a print deadline is too limiting, and that the connected era demands 24-hour updates; something the traditional news model can’t compete with.
All in all, nicely done.
I think you’re crazy for doing an interview with those guys. Next time, you should record the call on your end as well and when your quotes are taken out of context, you can simply post the entire interview…
cheap shot @ techcrunch
“Google was in late stage talks to acquire Google” now that would have been a real story Mike.
Apologies if this is an ignorant question, but in the future, why not record the conversation and post it here?
yeah well i think he learned the lesson the hard way.
from what I have seen from Mike, he is a very honest person and cares deeply about his job (remember his march leave to ’sort things out?’).
i think that he has (had) respect for journalists to take an interview and report it correctly, not use it out of context. this is the nyt we are talking about – a major newspaper that should be looking for the answer. they should not be trying to prove their opinion to create more traffic.
tough lesson to learn and its just too bad that nyt stooped that low and that mike will surely think about recording more conversations from here on out, even with people who are honest.
remember this whole situation? http://calacani...erviews-ironic/
Ys, provide a bloody transcript if you want to provide us with transparency!
The reality is that they are scared to death of blogs as successful as TC. At times when advertising dollars and subscriber number are falling through the floor they are most vulnerable with their big overheads and obsolete (paper based) distribution and business models. Blogs like TC on the other hand run circles around them by being faster , more accurate and more agile and even grow while they have to cut their own lifelines.
No wonder they resort to means that are beyond any ethical limits – I just would not expect it from the NYT rather the the more populist ‘naked girl on page two’ type outlets.
Sad, but really nothing to worry about for TC and Co.
man what sour grapes
How about not taking another interview without stating up front that you will record and post the interview in it’s entirety, if you are taken out of context?
This line from the NYT: “Neither story was true. Not that it mattered to the authors of the posts.” sounds like a direct attack to me.
The thing that shocks me the most is: why did they think TechCrunch would just let it pass and not respond?
They could not expect that. So they did expect the blog post above to appear and a flame of NYT vs TechCrunch “fight” to spread all over the Twitter.
Traditional media vs. new media. What could be more entertaining?
Popcorn and soda. And a lot of extra traffic for nyt.com
Call me T.O., ’cause I’m gettin’ my popcorn ready.
just wrote a more detailed comment tat doesn’t show – spam filter ?
Are you comparing TC to the NYT? =)
Why compare? NYT traffic is small by comparison to TC. They just want some link love
According to the Compete toolbar: NYT traffic is 15,577,816 and TC is 1,846,447. Were you comparing site-wide traffic or the traffic to the tech section only ?
Are you serious?
It’s really telling how your post, and Jeff’s earlier, do a much better job of analyzing the dynamic the NYTimes writer tried to get into. The big newspaper tries to bring down the notion that online media adds legitimate value to journalism, but ends up demonstrating the problem with big newspapers and the value of online media.
Did the NYTimes not realize there would be swift and detailed rebuttal of both their conclusions and their twisting of your words? Do newspapers really believe they still live in a world where “the finest journalists in the world” publish what they want, it’s accepted as fact and nobody else gets a say? If they do, it doesn’t bode well for them.
The answer is yes. They still believe that any rebuttal will not be as widely read so they think it benefits them to say something. Their audience is in the US Congress and they know, for sure, that the old guys and gals there will only read what they wrote…and in print.
zzz.. can you please stick to writing about someone buying twitter.. it is far more interesting than a detailed rebuttal to some newspaper… rumors are fun… one of the most read areas on si.com is the truth n rumors section in fan nation… as for the NYTimes it is a blog. If we wanted boring ass news stories we would read a newspaper.
But Mike, you should have known better. I know this is playing in your brain repeatedly as we speak:
“I should have known better, I should have known better”.
Why deal with the very source who hate what you represent that is killing them, i.e. the “Blogger”.. you being one of the big ones.
Fish don’t throw themselves in the pan to be fried my friend.
Mike, look at the line above: “we wrote, based on a solid source, that Google was in late stage talks to acquire…”
and edit after.
Makes me think that you should start recording all of your conversations with people like this so that you can post the actual audio in the event of an abuse of trust like this.
this, do it for the lulz. Then post it on soundcloud and twitter it and have us all RT it
Keep up the great work guys!
I give it 2 more years before the NYT is completely bankrupt and forced to close down. Hopefully that man will be out of a job.
They see it coming too, which is exactly why they are trying to discredit site like TC.
mike
are you interested in giving him a shot when he is out of a job
Third paragraph overall: “Not only does writer Damon Darlin they get a lot wrong…” no ‘they’ necessary
Fourth paragraph under “The Real Story”: “…that Google was in late stage talks to acquire Google…” probably mean Twitter. Though if anyone could pull off an acquisition of themselves, it’d be Google.
Wouldn’t want the boys over at NYT calling you out on being unprofessional for a few errors, would we?
Should be pointed out that NY Times, and many so-called “mainstream media” outlets, have been imitating blogs like TechCrunch and Gozmodo by having screaming “Breaking News…” flashes at the top on their sites.
And guess what? These “mainstream media” got things wrong occasionally too, the best example being a recent report that Brazilian Air Force found a hunk of metal in the sea which they said belonged to the downed Air France plane, but later had to retract the story as it was not. NY Times, et al, simply shrugged and said, “Well, Brazilian Air Force got it wrong; we only reported what they told us.”
Seems to me “mainstream media” has “pianist envy” of these emerging cocky blog reporters who are playing the kind of music people want to hear.
Right, b/c blogs came out with “breaking news” headlines.
yeah, we do. a lot. see above.
I invented the exclamation mark.
umm i don’t think he’s refuting the fact that you have breaking news rather than refuting the fact that you guys invented the idea of “breaking news” banners at the top of your site, which mainstream outlets such as usatoday, cnn, the times, etc. have been doing for 10 years or so..
The difference is all in what you do when the data turns out to be bad. One approach is to blame the upstream source, take a defensive stance, and then just bury the story when it turns out wrong. A different approach is to accept that in this business things change quickly, so embrace that change and keep updating+editing the story as it matures. The latter can result in some confusion and certainly requires more discipline, but at the end of the day it’s what I’d rather see. Traditional media tend toward the former, TC and such towards the latter.
Michael, you can say this so much easier:
“I just invited the New York Times to suck it”
The author slams blogs but admits to being a part of a “blog” himself. He says that’s OK because he has a “journalistic parent” in the New York Times.
http://neptune....yperlocal-blogs
So I guess he would be fine with TechCrunch if it were too just get bought out by a “legitimate” news organization already.
I agree with several earlier commenters. The NYT and its ilk are scared of you, and rightly so. You have little or nothing to fear from them.
The point of the matter is that for him this is mostly a story that needs to be written and published by a certain date. I don’t think that either the author or his intended audience pay too much attention to this particular subject, and it doesn’t really matter for the author or for you that his analysis was incomplete.
I don’t think deadlines really matter here Maksim. If something is not labeled as opinion or column it needs to be factual. Many things TC do here annoy me but there is always disclosure.
Perhaps NY should have disclosed: We were once the cool kid on the playground but now we are bankrupt. Sadly nobody wants anything to do with us anymore so we have reverted to tall poppy syndrome.
Reminds me off the difference between developers who ship shrink wrap software vs web guys who release early and often.
Agreed. Reminds me of a quote I had when discussing something similar with my Twitter followers a week or two ago:
‘Old failing journalists can certainly only be found in old failing media’
Man, that NYT piece was horrible…
Sounds like Damon Darlin could learn a lesson or two from TechCruch on journalist integrity.
Good thing is they’re giving Techcrunch free publicity.
Dude, welcome to the world of every conservative everywhere.
Think President Bush is evil and everything he every did and said was wrong? Perhaps you’ve never understood before the methods of the NYT and the rest, and how this level of bias and mistruths have been influencing your thinking for decades.
Now go out there, question the ‘truth’, and make up your own mind about things. Now that you personally have been a victim of this, perhaps you can understand how it happens to others. Now maybe you can read the news with the eye of a victim.
With every news article you read, either praising Obama or damning Bush, on ‘global warming’ and Iraq, ask yourself, what is the reporter’s agenda, and what did they misstate, misrepresent, or simply not report upon in order to reinforce their bias?
In other words, live like conservatives do every single day.
GE manufactures wind turbines and florescent light bulbs, and also owns NBC, which hosts ‘green week’. A former GE executive is the current president’s ‘energy czar’. Where’s the ‘in-depth reporting’ on these incestuous relationships between government, the environmentalists, and big corporations?
Get the picture?
Love it.
You should also talk about the events and award functions. You pay money you get a chance to be on the speaker panel.
What ever said and done TC does a great job of being honest. (Being honest means getting the truth out FAST..*smiles*)
Mike looks like you are hurt and it shows in your post. Let go. Next time don’t pick up the call from these reporters. hehehe
Given that I am your average reader, and don’t actually care about the issues enough to investigate and question thoroughly (ie noticing surface-level contradictions such as GE execenergy czar doesn’t give you much), then would you rather I got my news from the NYT or Fox News?
I think you’re going off topic with this one. We’re not talking about editorial bias as much as the journalistic process and integrity. Regardless of political slant, it is sloppy journalism to report a rumor as news without getting solid information first, but it is even worse than sloppiness to make false accusations as this article did. TechCrunch clearly labeled the Apple+Twitter story to be a rumor, and one that Arrington himself expressed doubts over, but felt that it was newsworthy because it was being so widely talked about and reported on. If anything he offered a voice of reason on the topic… stating why he thought the rumor was unlikely to be true. That’s good journalism in my book.
As far as political bias, I guess I’m a liberal and therefore I see things through a different lens. However it seems to me that many right wing news organizations (think Fox) are very poor journalists who often side with emotion over facts. I have staunch conservatives in my own family who are frustrated by the way the GOP and many right wing news outlets ignore both history and sound science… instead finding tidbits of “truthiness” that support their point of view. But again… this is off topic.
Not entirely. Americans shouldn’t lean in only 2 directions and we’ve all got to admit that the NYT is heavily biased and, like Fox News or the NYPost, distorts facts and misrepresents to suit editors’ agendas.
It wasn’t “sound science” when newspapers said that men beat their wives more on Super Bowl Sunday or that Russian women only marry US men because they’re “desperate” (as if US men have nothing else going for them). But the NOW told them to write that and so they did.
The fact that you think critical thinking is a quality of conservatism shows that you are truly a fool, and you deserve what they sell you, because make no mistake, everyone is selling something, left right or center.
Agreed. I think more than 10 Million libertarian Republicans sat out the past two elections and pray everyday for the demise of ALL newspapers so their Twitter accounts will benefit from increased traffic.
Anyone with a Twitter account competes with newspapers and should welcome that their relative power will be increasing now.
Too many of those who call themselves “conservatives” were and remain very wrong on premarital sex and tobacco and authoritarianism.
Maybe the death of newspapers and concurrent rise of Twitter accounts will allow us to get a 3rd Party Amendment passed that will end the ridiculous process of politicians getting into office on a plurality of votes.
Where is the line between a tech article and a tech blog post anyway?
What can I not get from TechCrunch that I can get from the New York Times tech section?
Mike did you voice record your phone call?
I figured you would since this story was inevitable given the desperation of the nyt
Dude, what do you expect? When you are # 1 you must expect all kind of cheap shots. You think the anyone wants to remain less than #1?
None the less, you have a way to craft your words
, getting exactly the type of response you want from your readers. You why you are so good at it/ The blog allowed to listen to your comments near and far. Thus letting you realize just what effect a change in a word can make in a post.
The truth is Mike, it is the culture of the blog that has evolved you + your natural talent. Thus readers will also drive interest via comments and an inside view.
Thus it not only appears very authentic, but so down to earth and real it leaves an impression. Like a two way convo. A blog with a human touch. Though one would expect all blogs to have a human touch.
The Times is famous for crap like this. They’ve done stories about a new generation of ad buyers, making them out to be clueless because they don’t buy in the Times, etc.
The world has changed right from under the Times and they just don’t know how to cope. I read a long Times Magazine story today about politics. It was well written, but I can’t help but think the people quoted in that story would probably have a similar reaction to yours.
Great post Mike!
In the end, who will decide what to read and believe, are we, readers. And I’ve chose TechCrunch as my daily tech news!
“We don’t believe that readers need to be presented with a sausage all the time.
-Yes
“Sometimes it’s both entertaining and informative to see that sausage being made, too.”
-Yes
The key is to be transparent at all times.
-Yes
Jayson Blair 2.0, eh, Mike? Well-opined
Process journalism? What about this exchange?
TC headline: Sneakerplay shutting down.
Co-founder: We’re not shutting down.
TC writer: Yes, you are.
The writer made no attempt to contact Sneakerplay before running the story and refused to change the headline when it was totally refuted by the co-founder of the site.
http://www.tech...comment-2553882
7 months later, Sneakerplay has been acquired and is still going.
People, keep in mind that what you read here on TechCrunch – especially this story – reflects Arrington’s agenda and biases just like Darlin’s story reflects his. Think about at Arrington’s complaint about the way that Darlin quoted him as saying “Getting it right is expensive … Getting it first is cheap”. Arrington is not claiming that he said, “Getting it right is expensive but we always try to get it right no matter what it costs … Getting it first is cheap but we don’t cut any corners with the truth.” Michael might be outraged but it sounds like he actually said the things that Darlin quoted him as saying!
Without question, rumors are legitimate reporting fodder. Think about how many we read before Obama and McCain named their running mates. But there’s a big difference between the headline “Company A to acquire Company B” and the headline, “Source: Company A to acquire Company B.” You really shouldn’t say the former without on-the-record confirmation from the company.
that post actually looks like it was handled pefectly. the final word on truth is usually not someone who’s an actual part of the story.
KADISCO BELIEVES RUMOR EQUIVALENT TO NEWS
by TheCorsican
In a recent blog post, user Kadisco stated that truth and rumor should be considered equal.
While commenting on a story about process journalism on the uber-blogging site TechCrunch, Kadisco said, “Without question, rumors are legitimate reporting fodder.” S/He went on to completely contradict him/herself, saying that corporate press releases, statements, and official denials should be taken at face value.
Who is this Kadisco really, and what is his/her relationship to TechCrunch? Is s/he really just a reader with an opinion, or does s/he in fact have a close relationship to TechCrunch? Is it possible that s/he is in fact an advisor, or even an employee of the blog?
Kadisco, while attempting to give the appearance of a dispassionate observer who is critical of the blog’s practices, tipped his/her hand when s/he said, “The writer made no attempt to contact [the source] before running the story and refused to change the headline when it was totally refuted…”
Only an employee or someone very close to TC would have inside knowledge of what a particular writer did or did not attempt, much less what that writer “refused” to do. This quote shows that s/he had inside knowledge of not only that particular story and its writer, but the very process that resulted in the story being written.
This sham is nothing more than a pitiful attempt to drum up additional hits on the site by stirring up a phony controversy.
Long live print media!
How on earth, do you have so much wasteful time ?
Wow, and newspapers wonder why they are a dying breed.
Don’t take any of the guff headed your way. I’m loving the track record.
A real journalist can trash someone in 750 words.
A blogger needs 3 pages and 100’s of hyperlinks.
Boys from the men…
Yellow Journalism…. that poor guy was just trying to show the world what yellow journalism means by performing a live example…
And all you guys are after his life unnecessarily…
C’mon Arrington, you gotta agree he succeeded. That article he wrote is as good an example of yellow journalism as can be…
As a TC fan, I’ll say that the reasons I read it are described in this article: Transparency and Trust. I get that stories take time to build, and appreciate how hard the TC team works to report what they know at posting. It’s an honest, fresh, and entertaining way to report news.
With so much of the web going “micro” these days, I think only makes sense to embrace this type of journalism. If you have to wait for a story to evolve and have all the facts at the time you report it, chances are its already happened and the news is already out there. Give me timely, relevant, and call out what you’re not sure about over old, late, but 100% accurate 24 / 7 / 365.
I think the NYT just lost a valuable source. I would ignore them moving forward.
They’ll need you more than you need them. Just wait and see.
I think they should keep their team focused on tracking what happening in silicon valley?
“There’s a reason that we are no. 1 on the TechMeme leaderboard. There’s a reason why we have more than twice the weight of CNET, at no. 2 and the NY Times at no. 3.”
No, that’s not the reason, Michael. the reason is that gabe’s “editorial” person has a particular editorial point of view. nothing more, nothing less. but whatever..this tired debate between so called old and so called new media is boring beyond belief.
Anybody who has ever been interviewed, be it by the NYT or most other papers, will tell you that their words have been distorted in print, taken out of context, or highly diluted. I am quite surprised that *you* are surprised by what happened.
There are some great journalists at the NYT, some not so great, so let us keep things in perspective. Furthermore, newspapers are dying—that is a fact—and no article against blogging can ever change that. So why worry about this one? May you are indeed too honest or naive (in a good way)…
probably the same argument happened many years ago when carving into rock was becoming outdated
Why is that bloggers are always crying about being misquoted or misunderstood?
I think it due to the fact they are always changing their tone, stance, and opinions. They love something one day, despise it the next.
In one post they attempt to be journalists breaking news. In the next, they are the worst kind of foul mouthed, ranting pundit.
Even when they focus on the same topic or position for several days in a row, they often state the fact or their views incomplete thoughts or muddled prose.
Clarifying their approach, thinking, and execution would go a long way in being understood.
Google this…. Jayson Blair.
If the NYT, which I so very much love to read, wants to talk about fact checking, just mention Jayson Blair. It was only six years ago.
That old saying…. something about glass houses and stones… throwing them… hmmm… not sure…
It’s disappointing really. The NYT is a blog. Whether they want to admit it or not, they are. They have an incredible amount of resources compared to other blogs. But they are, at the end of it, a blog. I haven’t bought a paper copy of the NY Times in several years and yet I read it every day. Sounds like the way a lot of people get their news these days.
Articles like this one from Damon Darlin don’t help their cause. I would look with suspicion on articles from this author in the future.
Journalism begins and ends with credibility. It is, and always has been, the coin of the realm. Darlin just tarnished his coin and that of the Times.
Greetings from Nürnberg Germany….!
The topic is in Germany pretty similar….but it is great to read about this topic abroad too!
thanks guys … I try to read every day your blog!
Andreas