Heh, this is really getting to Scoble.
We should now start deriding people who link to non-credible sources. I
will. Anyone who links to that jerk down in Australia anymore is simply
not doing bloggers any favors. Same for anyone who links to the
Register. I don't believe a word they write. At least not while Andrew
Orlowski works there. Om Malik chimes in and corrects Andrew's latest against Apple's chief, Steve Jobs. So does Apple Insider. And so does Michael Parekh. And so does Zoli Erdos.
And then he has some great thoughts on how to deal with bad journalism.
We need to be vigilant against bad journalism. Here's a hint: when
you see a story about a company and that story doesn't even attempt to
get that company's point of view, then it probably is a non-credible
journalist writing it. All credible journalists will get at least three
sources to every story and will try to remain objective and impartial.
Here's another hint: when a story or a blogger doesn't link to
anything outside of his/her article. The other day I made a mistake in
one of my posts about Adobe. But, I LINKED so that you could check out
the story for yourself. Another hint? Lack of comments on articles.
Tells me that the writer can't stand up to criticism. Yeah, I've gotten
close to turning them off cause the anonymous jerks do get to you after
a while, but this is the reason I don't. Another hint? When a story
contains only one anonymous source. Come on, if you really have a good
story about a company you should be able to get one on-the-record
source. Yeah, I can see reasons to not require that, but they are rare
exceptions, not the rule. Another hint? When there are more
anti-the-article links than pro ones. Another hint? When no one
credible will defend the article.
And he goes on and on. I like that he posts comments and answers questions in his own blog. It's all about having a discussion and using the writable web to do it. Scoble is a cool guy, I was reading his stuff back before he left Userland to work for Microsoft.
We had a brown bag discussion at work last week about how to talk to the press. Part of the discussion was about how journalists can be unpredictable in what they write, and how we can better communicate with them to try to overcome that. One thing that was stressed was that they will talk to your competitors/enemies and verify your story. I wonder how much of that practice still exists with the news on the internet. I mean, now the rush is to be the first one to break a story. Doesn't that lead to sloppy journalism? Hopefully, I would think that these sloppy players would drop out of the market because readers would stop trusting them and therefore stop reading and linking. Maybe that's still the case, unless the dirt is "too good to be true." Yeah, I think I'm right on with that, which is why celebrity-rumor magazines still sell like hotcakes. (Where did that saying come from? Do hotcakes sell really well? And if so, why doesn't IHOP have more competitors?)