Going around, coming around
Tom Forbes writes about his experience with the NY Times in its sucker punch about Walmart and bloggers. When Howard Kurtz asked me on Reliable Sources what I thought about bloggers beating reporters to their own stories by posting ahead of publication, I said: Tough. All’s fair in love and the press. In fact, I’ll go further: I think it’s healthy. It will push stories to be better. It will teach reporters, too, that they can’t wait and control the agenda and the timing of news anymore. At the end of his post, Forbes also asks: “Meanwhile, I wonder if [New York Times reporter Michael] Barbaro is being tipped off by someone else HE’S not attributing, perhaps with the intials UFCW?” Good question.
March 16th, 2006 at 6:50 am
The Daily Ablution has one of the all time greatest Fisks ever for an Independent columnist who writes a column partly based on the NY Times “Walmart exposé”
http://dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2006/03/ablution_prickl.html
March 16th, 2006 at 7:02 am
The New York Times can hold onto a story about unwarranted wiretapping for many months? The public interest can’t be served when it isn’t known. While the NYT isn’t an advocate by necessity, its choice of not being acting in the public interest is open to judgment by the public. If bloggers are serving its interest better, the public needs to know that, too.
March 18th, 2006 at 8:06 am
[...] There’s been a fair bit of coverage regarding the case of freelance journalist Michael Barbaro, who was scooped by his own sources on an article he was researching for New York Times (http://palousitics.blogspot.com/2006/03/washington-posts-take-on-wal-mart.html) . Barbaro was investigating supermarket giant Wal-Mart’s tactic of using bloggers to spread good PR put out by its publicity company. After being interviewed by Barbaro many of the bloggers who he’d contacted for comment posted blogs on his line of inquiry. Commenting on these events in his article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/technology/07blog.html?ei=5070&en=d210ee0b3bcf3b5b&ex=1142830800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1142680106-4offac4voMBv/zcKRabqeg) Barbaro took the opportunity to have a dig at bloggers for running PR (apparently some bloggers had not been citing Wal Mart as a source of their information) and PR companies for engaging in the practice in the first place. Tom Forbes, a contributor palousitics.blogspot.com, states that Barbaro and the New York Times are ‘running scared’, and backs it up with two very valid reasons. Firstly, he points out that big companies have realised that there is no reason to send a press release to a newspaper when you can rely on supportive bloggers to get your message out to the public. A good case in point is Sony, who recently signed a deal to pay the region of £12 000 per month for sponsored blog written by online company Gawker Media (http://wethemedia.oreilly.com/) . Big Media is nervously watching its economic base being eroded. RSS feeds mean that people on the internet now bypass their sites (and advertisers) to receive content. And advertisers in turn are learning that they too can bypass the media companies and communicate directly with bloggers, who will in turn disseminate information on their behalf. Advertisers no longer need big media to create hegemony amongst their readers, who are then pitched as a ready audience to potential advertisers. Consumers who are supportive of a company or product will buy directly into that company’s brand and happily position themselves as, for instance Apple or Microsoft users. Secondly, newspapers no longer have a monopoly on deciding what is news and when it comes out. This is already having and will continue to have serious impact on journalistic practices. How journalists and media organisations face up this issue it up to them, but the way Barbaro has dealt with it has won him few supporters. I think Jeff Jarivs summmed up the situation best in his recent posting on the issue (http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2006/03/15/going-around-coming-around/) “Tough. All’s fair in love and the press.†He writes: “In fact, I’ll go further: I think it’s healthy. It will push stories to be better. It will teach reporters, too, that they can’t wait and control the agenda and the timing of news anymore.†Technorati Tags: citizen journalism [...]