Day two of this ridiculous juice cleanse experiment and I feel like a new man. By which I mean, I feel like my insides aren’t fully developed, I have no strength in my arms or legs and the idea of eating solid food is just a distant dream.
It’s all Lacy’s fault, of course, she actually pays for this nonsense every month or so and claims it’s the reason why she no longer gets sick when she travels. Arrington and Heather apparently swear by it too.
The rest of TechCrunch, meanwhile, are beyond skeptical, bandying around words like “science” and “proof” in a pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that they’re in the pay of Big Cheeseburger. Whatever the truth, I’ve bet Lacy fifty dollars that the only thing the cleanse will achieve for me is crippling hunger and a loss of feeling in my extremities, so I’m in for the duration. At least as I lie on my deathbed, puking water and romaine-and-celery juice into a cardboard bowl, I can comfort myself with the fact that it was free – a promotion by the company to tempt California-based hacks into starving themselves to death. Journalistic freebies for the win (see my statement of ethics: here).
Speaking of ethics, I’m just back in San Francisco from an all expenses paid trip to the beach. Promoted as ‘Geeks At The Beach’, the trip came courtesy of J.R. Johnson who runs a new site aiming to bring people together based on things they agree on, to discuss things they don’t. According to the invitation, J.R. wanted to round up ‘influential’ social media types for a day of discussion about trends in the industry, and where it’s heading next. In Los Angeles. On a beach.
Lacy and Scoble would be there – so far, so good – but so too would Seaworld-friendly haircaster, Julia Allison; LA-based red-carpet dweller, Shira Lazar and various life-casters and me-bloggers whose existence I was only dimly aware of. I hesitated for a moment in accepting: what was supposed to be a meeting of minds could very easily be a train wreck of egos and bikinis and Flipcams and bullshit. Or, to put it another way: the best. column. ever. Count me in.
As it turned out, my worries were only half founded. Yes, there were Flipcams, and lots of egos and bullshit – these were bloggers and life-casters, after all. Yes, at one point the conversation touched a little too closely on whether cupcakes were more or less important than politics in driving community discussions. And yes, certainly, some of those in attendance were clearly more interested in the beach part than the geeks part of the event. But as the day went on, a hardcore group of us – including but certainly not limited to me, Scoble, Lacy and J.R. – really did get down to some proper, substantive debate over two issues that occupy almost every day of our lives. The first was Internet anonymity – my thoughts on which you enjoyed last week – and the second was the future of journalism, and how life-casting and unpaid blogging most certainly isn’t it.
I’ll explain.
There’s a horribly pompous misconception amongst bloggers that they are somehow ‘taking on the mainstream media’. “Those old losers just don’t get it!” they cry. “We bloggers are on the scene first, asking tough questions before the mainstream media have even put their shoes on”. Indeed, as uber-blogger Scoble pointed out, taking another sip from his glass of free sake, there were no AP photographers on the plane that went down in the Hudson.
When it comes to a certain type of highly visible breaking news, no-one can argue that social media kicks the mainstream media’s ass. At any given disaster, there’s possibly a 0.01% chance that a professional journalist or photographer will already be on the scene, compared to 100% odds that there’ll be some dude with a camera-phone there. And as for asking tough questions: yep, bloggers are pretty good at that too – hardly a syllable can slip from the mouth of a politician or public official without it being torn apart by an army of ‘fact-checking’ bloggers, hungry for content.
And yet, I argued back, after camera phone dude helps us establish that the plane has crashed, who can we trust to tell us why it happened? While bloggers can own the first five minutes of any breaking story – a plane crash, a fire, a burglary – it’s always going to be the professional reporters who own the next five days, or five weeks. They walk the streets, work their contacts and – yes – trawl the blogosphere for eye-witness reports, and then take all of that information, analyse it, follow it up and ultimately provide an account of events that readers can trust.
Or at least this is what they used to do. If that were still how journalism works then the unpaid bloggers wouldn’t have a hope of competing. But unfortunately, thanks to a succession of journalistic fakes and the constant tabloidisation of the press, that trust is gone. Why should someone – either an advertiser or a reader – be prepared to pay for a newspaper when they can get the same old lies and fluff from the blogosphere?
As we sat in Los Angeles, debating how to save what remains of professional journalism, Michael Arrington was posting one possible solution on this very blog. In a post titled ‘What If: The New New York Times‘ he argued that the New York Times should lay off all but 50 of its reporters, leaving behind the crack team of superstar hacks who truly drive the paper’s value. These cuts, he said, would allow the remaining reporters to be paid a generous wage for their work, thus solving the twin questions of trust and of how to pay for good journalism in future.
It’s a nice idea, but one that overlooks the fact that a superstar hack takes days – or weeks – of legwork to get to the bottom of a single story. Without content from workaday photographers or wire-feed-re-writers, the New New York Times would be three pages long and published weekly. Good journalism is a slow, labour-intensive business. And what about unglamourous local stories? Let’s not forget that the two most famous reporters of all time – Woodward and Bernstein – were junior reporters when the broke their most famous story: Watergate. A story, let’s also not forget, that began life as a dull local burglary. Which of the 50 top flight hacks would have been assigned to that?
No, it doesn’t matter how you twist it, there’s simply no way for the New York Times to regain its position as the news reporter of record in the Internet era. Instead, if Mike really wants to save the Times, while simultaneously seeing the future of journalism, he should look a little closer to home.
To TechCrunch in fact.
Because while TechCrunch might be ‘just’ a blog it’s also, as I’ve discovered in the past few weeks, a hell of a professional journalistic machine. Whatever the cynics might think, it’s a place where sources are built up, facts are checked, lawyers are employed and writers are encouraged to go out and get the real story behind the story. It’s also on something of a hiring spree at the moment – looking out at traditional media and cherry picking those (ahem) who it thinks can bring more value to the brand. In doing so, TechCrunch is one of a handful of tech blogs that commands solid advertising revenues and has – by and large – build up huge trust amongst readers. Trust which allows it to host events like TechCrunch 50, bringing in even more money to support the site’s journalism.
Right across the Internet there are countless other sites that employ the same standards for other niches – from music (Pitchfork) to politics (FiveThirtyEight) to farming (I have no idea) – each of which can afford to dedicate more time to their very specific field of expertise than the New York Times could, even if it doubled its staff.
And so if I were the New York Times, I’d realise that in the face of such solid niche competition, my days as a news-gatherer were over. I’d lay off all of my journalists, shut down the presses (a move favoured by Lacy during a recent Guardian podcast), close the doors and thank God for giving me such a good innings. Then the next day I’d round up maybe 20 or 30 of my best editors and I’d launch a brand new site. A site which, like a far more mainstream Arts and Letters Daily, would use those skilled human editors to aggregate the best specialist reporting from around the web into one all-encompassing news source.
I’d link to posts on TechCrunch, and Pitchfork and FiveThirtyEight and on any other site that my professional editors had determined was providing the best coverage of each of the days most important stories. And I’d work hard – really hard – to rebuild my brand credibility so that readers knew that they could absolutely trust the reporting on any site that had been selected by editors. All the news that’s fit to link.
For the New York Times, the cost in doing all of this would be limited to retaining the 30 best editors in the business, and the small support staff required to keep them productive – costs easily covered thanks to the millions of eyeballs that would visit just such a site every day, hungry for news sources they can actually trust.
For the specialist sites being linked to, the boost in traffic and credibility would only bring more targeted advertising revenue and more possibilities for spin off events, books and the rest, all of which contribute to the journalistic bottom line and their ability to hire from the army of recently unemployed journalists.
And as for the life-casters and amateur bloggers – they can keep having their fun too; contributing user generated content to the niche sites, and then re-parsing the coverage on their own blogs, Twitter stream or – in Scoble’s case – FriendFeed. It’s a solution where every one’s a winner. Except for the life casters, who by and large will remain losers.
Of course there’s no reason the aggregating site has to be created by the New York Times; anyone with some high-level editorial experience could do it. Equally there’s no reason why there can’t be dozens of these aggregators, each with their own editorial voice: one for liberals, one for conservatives, one for wealthy Brits, one for college kids in Guatemala. The point is that the days of the profitable generalist news-gatherer are dying, but the days of solid reporting and a strong, trusted editorial voice must never be allowed to perish.
It’s a point that’s so important it kept a group of us arguing until the early hours in Los Angeles, and so important that the possible solution has been bouncing around my head ever since. Hell, it’s so important that I feel like getting up from my desk right now and hitting the streets looking for the perfect newsman-turned-entrepreneur to make it happen.
If only I wasn’t on this stupid juice cleanse and hadn’t lost the use of my legs.
Good to meet you Paul. Enjoy the juice, wolves.
I look forward to these posts every saturday now.
“Statements made and products sold through this website have not been evaluated by the U.S. FDA and are not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease. Always consult a healthcare professional before participating in the any cleanse. ”
– Source: BluePrint Cleanse Terms & Conditions (https://bluepri...Doc&docId=3)
Yes, I’ve read that too. Thanks.
OMG. That’s a longgggg article. You probably could have said that with 1/10th the number of words.
OMG. That’s a stupid comment. Maybe you should have kept your mouth shut.
+1
@phil
OMG… If you read Paul Carr’s post last week you’d know that for every time someone says “that was too long” he will make the following week’s post even longer.
Thus, complaining about the length is more of a compliment.
Definitely no need for anything longer than 140 characters.
Enjoyable read, though.
New Yorkers are dumb according to the pole they did what they didnit show was Newjerseyers they say your guys are dumb because about 80 % of us the Newjerseyers they know what a browser is because they hap to use it to commute to work even they work in Newark they hap to use many different browsers to take the train and the train not expensive you must understand for what mater can you ask it not who you know it who you know it not who you know it what you know how to use.
Yes
I’m guessing you’re the sort of person that doesn’t read books or the newspaper either (well, maybe the classifieds and the comic strips).
Paul, this is a great idea. Why doesn’t TechCrunch just create a editorially driven news site?
Because it already is?
Talking about general news, not just tech news.
“Of course there’s no reason the aggregating site has to be created by the New York Times; anyone with some high-level editorial experience could do it.”
So why doesn’t TechCrunch start NewsCrunch.com – and hire 10-15 editors to surface the best blog/J news articles at nearly real time.
i was actually thinking about this the other day while i was trawling the net for my political news and entertainment news. i like this niche aggregate system that links to other niche sites…kind of what this site is doing already…but i’m kind of lazy. as much as i like goign to crunchbase and some of the other sites linked from this webpage…why can i just come here and get all my news.
but i understand that isn’t the purpose of this website (even if it is a broad enough tech & biz wise) and i guess in this way everything is specialized/specific/neater/easier to navigate or get around and concentrate on one thing. but i actually would perfer above a niche site, somewhere i can go to get everything.
Wow. Damn Paul, if you could post a piece like this once a day, that would rock but I’ll have to deal with one a week for now.
My thoughts exactly.
Don’t you think that the real problem is not between “new” and “old” media, but that the public hardly discerns between journalists and sources anymore? And by sources, I mean Twitter users, Flickr fanatics, lifecasting bloggers, and anyone else putting information out there first, in real-time, but not being journalists in the sense of sources, etc. Many people want information, they want it fast, and they don’t care as much if it’s “right” because the correction from a different source will come along soon enough. The journalism is going on inside people’s brains as they look at sources in real-time.
I think there’s a degree of that, certainly, but I think that illustrates my point that “old” media has lost the trust of its readers and so people don’t see a difference between them and social media.
I think that trust has been lost for a long time. It’s just that there hasn’t been anything worthwhile to fill the void until recently.
Great article Paul, definitely will continue to look forward to these each week.
I’d definitely agree with you Mark, I think the big problem is few, if any, of the newspapers or television stations these days seem to make even the slightest pretense at being neutral.
You look at Fox and you know it’ll be heavily Republican biased, for example, and so economical with the truth that it’s unreliable beyond comedy value, and they have counterpart Democratic stations that are just as bad.
Compare their news to that posted on blogs and you’re pretty much seem to be at the same level of fact investigation and careful analysis (i.e. generally as little as they can get away with)
Both sides could achieve a lot more with the fine art of subtlety than with the sledgehammer approach, and worse still neither side can understand that no single political approach is suited to every situation. Or that politicians are just as bad in all parties.
I trust the BBC’s news in the UK more than any other source because at least as far as UK stuff is concerned they have to be neutral or as close to it as possible. These days their news is almost old fashioned in it’s approach: They try to tell you the facts, and not the opinions of clueless ‘experts’ on them.
They’re still not perfect and only a idiot relies on news from a single source.
the BBC are not bad but you dont ever hear them criticising the EU or being really critical of any aspect of our piss-poor political and economic status quo – prhaps because they occupy a large and confortable part of that status quo
Excellent novel Hemingway.
you realize hemingway is famous for writing short, terse sentences right?
If anything I’m the reverse Hemingway.
*Pulls out shotgun and shoots someone else*
Hemingway or…miller?
or more like Bukowski?
sorry. i don’t have a fancy green thing!
Anyway, keep going champ.
For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
Clever girl. You’ve read Hemingway. Now we know.
+1. i read the comment and that was the first thing that popped into my head. wow. smh.
What’s all that fluff in the middle? You didn’t get back on topic until the last sentence…..
Paul, as you mentioned in your previous column you failed in every single business endeavor, that is till it was time to give a strategic advice to the most important news corporation in the world, nu nu…
So who’s going to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, or even closer to home, Ciudad Juarez Mexico or a dozen other Mexican cities and towns ravaged by the the drug wars. Who’s going to Dafur? Are you going to spend weeks on end researching Or any other hotspot to report on the news? You? Desk jockey. And when you talk about the New York Times to “regaining its position as the news reporter of record” you live in a silo, your world is in a (tech) bubble of glass and you’re rubbing up against it like a bad windshield blade.
That is an astonishingly misinformed comment. Before joining Tc, I was a columnist at the Guardian in the UK. I also still write for the Telegraph.
Before *that* I was co-founder of a book publishing house.
My old media credentials are pretty sound. Sorry to burst your – er – glass bubble.
Misinformed comment? Give us some facts about your time at the Guardian. Did you work from the Guardian’s offices, how many days of the week were you there, how many editorial meetings with the editor did you attend? You write for the Telegraph, you say. Has the Telegraph newspaper ever printed a story by you, if so please give the facts, and I am not including the Telegraph’s platform for blogs that enables anyone to publish. Once I’ve read the facts I’ll decide whether to trust you, or not.
Yes, misinformed. You accuse me of living in a tech bubble when the vast majority of my working life has been spent working for traditional media companies.
What on earth your strange time-and-motion study requests mean, I have no idea.
Not sure what you mean about the Telegraph either. I am a paid writer for them, as I was previously for the Guardian.
In any case, from your follow up comment – seemingly posted under a different fake name – I don’t think you’re misinformed; I think you’re a loon.
Dear Readers:
Four your informations, Mr. Paul Carr did not quit any of his previous jobs. He got fired from every job. The reason it because he talk too much so he keep wearing the water cooler down. If you thing he write too much, you should hear him in person, he talk even more than he write. He talk and talk and talk and talk and talk until his teeth fall out. He also wave his arms when he talk so it sometime smack people in the face.
Sincerely Yours,
Prince Momar
lol
Paul, and what’s the answer to the first question? So who’s going to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur etc.? Your article doesn’t answer that…
yeah he did. actually. he answered that initially in what he wrote when he talks about the new news company sourcing/reparcing stories from other trusted niche sites…so presumably the informtion is coming from somwhere but not the new news organization. he answered the question, even if it might not be layed out the way people would like it to be. hahaha so there’s already an answer to the question and really i would think it was a non answer but he repeatedly said that original news finding is dead, and he also mentioned that life blogging is not journalism. so think about it…if there is another niche site that has reporters who go to these places mentioned in your questions and the new news organization uses information from them…then that’s the answer is it not. i think this is like another form of ap, reuters and some other news companies, but it would be more specialized…i was going to say the base of users would also trust the company and it’s information more, but people also trust the ap and reuters right.
Michael Ware will cover all of that stuff. No prob.
Paul, it was great meeting you this weekend at Twiistup. Great column. I look forward to more.
Paul, please write a full column on anonymity, if not here than on your blog.
I’ve written about it (and Internet hate generally) in the Guardian, here: http://www.guar...runch-arrington
And on my own here, where I talk about why I decided to close comments…
http://www.paul...comments-closed
Hey Paul,
Your argument is similar to one that Umair Haque made a few days ago. Check out the Nichepaper manifesto, great minds etc… http://bit.ly/oO2JP
Awesome article.
I hope you somehow manage to avoid being fired this time around.
Hallelujah. This is the first piece I’ve seen on TechCrunch that actually understands what journalism is. And from that understanding, then goes on to make some logical and sensible comments and recommendations on its future.
Eons better than uninformed stories, for example, about why j-school isn’t worthwhile anymore…
Hi, Paul.
All good points, you’ve made. The remaining question, of course, is who’s left standing to cover that dull local burglary that emerges as the next Watergate. City council meetings and the like are the great missing — and unsexy — piece of the new journalistic puzzle.
And one other problem, I’m sad to say. Not a change in media, but a change in readers. Note the second comment about your article: “OMG. That’s a longgggg article. You probably could have said that with 1/10th the number of words.”
The article, of course, isn’t actually long. Less than two thousand words, and about the length of a short front-of-the-book magazine article. So if many people can hardly fasten their attention to two thousand words, how on earth can they be expected to consume — much less digest — a truly complex story?
I’m starting to think we’re in big trouble. But I hope you and the other people on the beach (an altogether different issue regarding new media) can craft a solution. And quick.
Thanks
that guy probably meant it’s “too long for techcrunch’s standards and scope”. certainly techcrunch very rarely publishes analysis or interviews. why is it so? either because, as you suggest people just want fast facts, or because the editors don’t have enough time on their hands to write a full analysis on the facts. i ‘d like to think it’s the latter
Given the attention span of students that were coming through an educational establishment I used to work for, I’m not so sure. I’ve heard numerous students complaining that a 20 minute lecture was too long for the average students attention span, even though that particular lecturer was known for being a great public speaker. It seems worse here in the US than it was back home in the UK, but it can pretty much be defined by either the length of a TV program between advert breaks, or the length of your average forum post (maybe a couple of paragraphs or so at most.)
It’s shocking how bad it is and it only seems to be getting worse, especially as it seems fewer and fewer people read books. There was a huge fuss in the media back when the Harry Potter novels started getting to be of significant length, due to all these kids that were struggling with such large tomes. I’m not exactly that old, touching on 30, but when I was that age I remember reading books easily twice the length with no hassles :-/
True. People always stress the importance of consuming huge amounts of information fast. That is not important nor beneficial; information is way too cheap and abudant today. Brains are not information consuming machines, but thinking machines. To a large part, this trend was enforced by the popular media which seek to create short, easily-identifiable and retransmitable messages.
This trend will have a negative impact on societies because it teaches people to avoid to consolidation in favor of retransmission
Agreed this is part of the answer, but you add some difficulty when you say readers “could absolutely trust the reporting on any site that had been selected by editors.” Tough to check the credibility of every story coming from all those local bloggers.
I don’t agree on the loss of trust in the NY Times, and clearly throwing away that brand would be one of the dumbest things that their investors/owners/stakeholders could do. With that said, some out-of-the-box thinking is going to be needed to shift trends for the old school media types.
As an aside, this is one of the highest quality posts that i’ve ever seen on techcrunch.
you didn’t read my NNYT post. your point of disagreement is actually agreeing with me.
that’s what i was going to say.
yeah actually. that is exactly what i was thinking when i got to his last word and punctuation. even the way he laid it out isn’t that different from how you laid out the NNYT.
It is such a nice change to read something on the internet rather than being able to scan it and get the jist. Keep up the good work.
Hey i thought Paul Carr was fired?
Anyway, here’s my recipe for “The TechCrunch Times” of the future:
Editorial: M.Arrington (he’ll be 70 by then )
Schonfeld: Valley news
Lacy: World Tech News
Kincaid: Technology insider
Siegel: Gossip & celebs
Carr: Astrology, Tarot & Cocktails
‘njoy
i like it! maybe i’ll actually get a travel budget.
Absolutely. Your first mission is to find scientific evidence for the benefits of cleansing with juice (or any other industrial liquid)
haha- touche! all i need to know is it’s the only five month period i’ve had in my life that i haven’t had a cold or any other malady. at some point, i don’t care if it’s a placebo or not.
There is a phenomenon called the “adherer effect”, which you may be experiencing, which would produce positive results even if it were a placebo. One way or another, if it’s keeping you healthy, congrats!
yeah, well the mission is in an ebola-infected base in antarctica. good luck
You can’t tell me you haven’t been sick since starting Blueprint, because you were coughing in that very article: “(Cough, cough, Kevin Rose.)”
Or was that just your twee way to name-drop? I must admit, it is downright adorable the way you know how he likes to drink green tea instead of coffee. Excellent reporting, news bunny.
I guess it was intentional for your ethics link to return a 404? Hmm…
Yeah, that’s funny. I’m still trying to imagine the most trusted site for farming news.
Ha, that’s slightly brilliant. Have repaired the link!
Dang, it was funnier when it appeared to be some sort of intertubes deconstructivism….ism.
So … Michael Gray blows you up on Twitter and you write this. Ha. Guess he shook you up.
I didn’t realize that I would be looking forward to this every Saturday afternoon now, but here I am. This is fun.
But I’m confused…you are all for moving journalism entirely online (or at least making the center of journalism online and branching out from there) and using top-notch journalists to really flesh out the good articles. And you want this “epicenter of journalism” to encompass all things worth blogging about, but then you mention that there should be as many different versions of these aggregators as possible in order to reflect which side they’re speaking for (i.e. your mention of liberals v. conversatives, etc.) You don’t think it would be great to have many different views come from many different journalists, but all speaking from the same “voice”?
I’m only saying this because, even though I’ve never given it much thought until today, I agree with your views on journalism but can’t help to think that it sounds both insightful yet contradictory at the same time.
Agree? Or did I totally just misinterpret your article? Lol.
i think that’s a yes and no type. he is talking about these individual editors turned reporters collect information from various niche sources and reparce the information, but i don’t think he’s talking about a continuous monotone slant to the reparced stories. it would be necessary that the new news organization have a “brand” and a what do you call it kind of like a mission statement that all the workers and the linked sites adhere to…which can be something like reporting truth, or all about what’s behind the news…but to be truly successful and probably get the most viewers…the new news cannot be so one voiced or monotonous that uhm you are alienating people. kinda like how i can go on sites like the huffington post or even some of my local newspaper sites and read reporting from all viwes…but i think if what paul meant was for all the editors to have the same lean on all they write (which would become boring real fast, even if they have different technical writing styles) the maybe it would allow for more cohesiveness and for sites like the new news company that have a biased slant to also exist.
i actually think he’s talking about something that recovers news and that based on what the site deems credible they can amass a database of news sources that have the same or opposite messages.
there’s actually pretty good discussion on techdirt about something like this but it’s mostly based on an artistic model. both conversations share similiarities though.
also isn’t this like how some tech companies now are doing business…they aren’t the creators of some of the features or coding but they buy what they need and rebrand it under their corporate name and therfore instead of going to say the maker of this and this product come to for example apple, or google, or ms, or intel. that’s the whole aggregate sourcing out symbiotic relationship.
There used to be a time when the celebrity/gossip news was only on the celebrity and gossip channels. Now that it’s jumped and gotten comfortable on CNN, MSNBC and FOX, it has bred massive distrust.
Same goes for print media. When quasi-celebrities are appearing on front pages of local papers and giant write ups of albums or concerts or celeb divorces appear in place of actual, important content, then the problem of trust becomes exacerbated.
Great column, Paul.
It’s called realclearpolitics, realclearmarkets, realclearworld, and realclearsports– they do exactly what you’re talking about and have been around for years. they are missing “realcleartech” though. soon enough.
You missed the ethics link (intentional? ;p) the right address seems to be here: http://www.paul...ment-of-ethics/
This is the best and most thought-out idea for journalism in the Internet Age that I’ve yet seen. Awesome.
Another great piece Paul.
A Saturday treat. Thank you.
if more people used adblocker plus. blog sites like TC would die. and thus face the same extinction level event as newspaper companies. ad supported media either online or offline are going to get crushed.
Brilliant brilliant brilliant! My god, it’s about time TechCrunch had a real journalist on staff who understands what real journalism is all about. Plus, you can write with style and wit. Keep it up!
That said, I completely disagree that TechCrunch does much fact checking or reporting at all — just a lot of speculation and editorializing. You really need to read more TechCrunch articles (particularly MG and Sara) and you’ll see what the rest of us have been enduring for the sake of discovering a few nuggets o’ truth.
I’ve read plenty, thanks. I’ve also actually been in the office and watched the process. I’d say that makes me pretty well informed.
For example, I’ve read enough of Sarah’s posts to know how to spell her name.
Come on, want a list of current articles on techcrunch with errors on them? or misreported news? i don’t think anyone believes fact-checking is a priority for techcrunch
This is racist !!!!!!
which goes to show, you can never be too careful
Dare I ask how it’s racist?
see the same comment from the same commentator on your previous article
Ah, ok, thanks.
Idiots, they’re everywhere. Unfortunately some bigger idiot thought it would be a good idea to give them internet access too, and teach them how to type
they are indeed …
it’s a joke and a bad one at that.
the language is unfounded.
sorry, by the time i probably should have gotten your point, i’ve decided to write this silly comment already. so basically, i don’t know what this piece of work is all about.
i do bet though that actually, paul’s musings are capable of enlightening even the dumbest apes among us. Supposed they actually read them.
props (+1) for not linking to the sponsor of the trip. -1 for mentioning him.
I think it’s important to credit the guy who put together the trip: the discussion it prompted was really interesting and he (and his team) worked hard to make it happen.
I decided against linking to his company because I thought it would undermine all of the good aspects of the trip by making some think it was a PR job.
Good prose is such a treat. Great hire Mike!
Paul: It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work well. The problem is similar to what Eric Schonfeld mentioned on Charlie Rose about the disconnect facing Yahoo and Microsoft – their sales people representing an external content source. With everything in house the Times has quality control. There are often typos or other minor article infractions on TC. I don’t mind because it doesn’t significantly diminish article content, but mainstream readers would nitpick.
I don’t see what’s the big mystery for newspapers. I don’t think their structure is the problem, it’s just their technology. They simply need to adapt. The papers got caught with their pants down, but instead of quickly adapting, unfortunately, they still don’t fully understand new media – at least the people in charge. Their new model should be simple: cut the press run to about 1K, just for historical value, and charge a premium for it. Hell, make every page full color. Everything else is online. Hire a new media team. Incorporate them into the traditional structure and voila, costs are cut yet news is delivered faster and far more efficiently. As for trust factor I think bloggers can keep both politicians honest and media reporters too.
So you’re defending Sarah Lacy. She probably got you this job at TC so there’s a motive to do so.
However, I do think that Sarah’s articles are sponsored. Have you read her coverage of stuff she writes about? It’s the most boring and stupid startups ever! And she writes about them like they’re the next Twitter or Facebook. Ridiculous.
You fail, Brian. Go away.
Brian, I would hope I got my job based on my abilities as a columnist, but thanks.
You “think” Sarah’s articles are sponsored? Well that’s some brilliant journalism, Brian. I “think” the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese.
Sarah is a friend and a colleague and, as such, I’ve been lucky enough to see the way she works. Like everyone else at tc, and any journalist worthy of the name, she never accepts sponsorship from companies she covers. In fact she’s written extensively against the practice. She is a thousand times as professional as I am, and then some.
I can’t believe I actually have to spell that out. As ‘Iso’ put it, you fail, Brian. Go away.
I agree with your idea that -”it’s always going to be the professional reporters who own the next five days, or five weeks.”- but I have to admit I’m skeptical about the publics interest in stories beyond 5 minutes.
A disturbing number of people think when they’ve got the first whiff of a story they know what the entire pie is made of. Then they move on to their next news snack.
Its very possible the blogosphere is retraining people’s attention spans by introducing into our daily lives even more bite sized, but not really filling content.
Certainly not everyone’s blog entries are as detailed or long as yours Paul
I was so psyched at the beginning, I thought you’d spend the whole column plumbing the shit out of the cleanse company. 22 paragraphs of heaped abuse, a shot across Sarah’s bow, pissing on the shoes the PR freebie, and betting some yet-to-be-earned capital on most TC readers thinking “thank god, someone there called outright bullshit,” and gathering around for the coming fistacuffs.
But this was nice too, even though you lost the plot’s sweet meats. Besides coming back to it in the last sentence, that’s cute and closes the loop for us readers.
Paul, I just read on your own blog that:
1. You don’t read comments.
2. You don’t like people commenting with something like “Great Post”.
Given the above I will comment as follows:
Fucking brilliant wicked post!
In simple words: this is an epic post. I especially like how you put people like me in a good light and you’re not afraid of saying what you wanna say how you wanna say it.
“where facts are checked…” – you’re kidding right? have you searched your own site for retractions?
So the end game of MSM News being taken over by New Media News is that MSM News has to die along with the daily newspaper (save the trees!!) — with the NYT as the biggest target. As soon as Old News and newspapers die and the New Media news takes over, then a newer version of print newspapers with a new ROI basis and new model will take over. That’s the beauty of creative destruction. But Paul is right, that the investment in hard, patient stories that take time and contacts will be hard to replicate. But truth and big stories will always find an outlet, let’s hope the outlets have enough “trust” factor to not be subject to misinformation.
Jebb dykstra
you just described almost exactly how the huffington post operates. they take the aggregator role you describe, and anchor it around a voice/point-of-view that builds a community (sticky-traffic).
Great Piece Paul,
As the random guy with a cell phone camera. I totally agree, we can take the shot, but we will never have the back story and actually go out to find all the facts of what makes up the story. We were just at the right place and the right time with the right technology…
I don’t think there is a clear answer to what is the next step. It will come from trial and error of what is working and making money…
Trouble I have with journalists is 100% of stories of which I had personal knowledge, and there have been a number, were reported incorrectly, starting from when I was 12 years old and our town was flooded, to the tsunami in Thailand, about a 50 year span of false and erroneous reporting.
hilarious +1
I think you underestimate the complexities of what you are proposing; but there is clearly merit in the concept. I was a little disappointed that this was quite SFW.
I think this may already exist as Slashdot but with less reliable editors, Paul.
From what I understand, cleansing diets are mostly for people with health/digestive issues. Instead, this company markets to out of shape, over weight people who live a sedentary life and are looking for a drastic miracle water solution to cure their problems. They promote it as a miracle water solution that will have you “finally fitting into your ’skinny’ jeans.”
Of course consuming 1,200 calories/day for 3 weeks will have you losing weight. You’re starving yourself, doing something that would kill you if done for an extended period of time. Then once you get back to the lifestyle you’re accustomed to, you’ll gain the weight right back.
I guarantee that people who make a habit of healthy eating and portion control, combined with daily heart-pumping aerobic exercise will feel and look much better then this or any other 5 minute abs program or fad diet.
For anyone that really is committed to changing their lifestyle and getting fit, but doesn’t know where to start, I recommend the p90x program. I’ve seen the dvd’s and they will definitely have you shedding body fat away, while improving your overall strength and fitness. They’ll kick your butt like a highschool wrestling or gymnastics workout and the endorphin boost will leave you feeling great.
It’s three days, not three weeks. Three weeks would kill me.
From your last post: “I don’t know about you, but I give this ridiculously misguided experiment three weeks.”
What’s the deal with the number three?
JESUS CHRIST MAN, say it is a bullshit waste of money right now! Make fun of believers right now! You could drink any frigging juice & with some false hope & a desire to maintain p2p chumminess & total loss of respect for technology and science, you could still prevaricate like this.
Gah. What a wimp.
Sir Paul!
Your insides must be retched and ulcerous after switching from your juice cleanse experiment to the depths of a serious Diet Coke binge!
I think in the ~12 hours I saw you on “the beach” (with the geeks, as I was one), you seemed to have downed at least a case of the stuff. (At breakfast too, no less!)
Anyway, good to see you down there, mate. Good times. Wish we had more time to debate the good stuff.
Hope to see you again soon. In fact, if you’re around on 8.12? Please my guest @ the next SF New Tech (http://812sfnew....eventbrite.com) — ping me for a comp code!
And readers, don’t be fooled: the sheer verbosity and pithy nature Paul exhibits in his column only slightly mirrors his real world persona. He was pretty much a dick the entire time — versus only in every other paragraph.
Cheers,
Myles
This post reminds me of this link I came across on Hacker News recently:
“Can you trust TechCrunch enough to share their stories?”
http://www.kull...-enough-to.html
Nice blog post.
Good to meet you Paul. Enjoy the juice.
http://www.rmutp.ac.th
It’s alright to have several small politically-bent news aggregators but I think having mainstream news aggregators politically-bent-and-proud will just turn journalism into cheerleaders of political sports and push polarization beyond point of return.