ONA: A lesson in journalism
The last panel at Online News was supposed to be about new frontiers in technology and news. I was on it and for the first time talked publicy about Daylife, the soon-to-launch news company I’ve been involved with. I joined Mike Davidson of Newsvine (doing very interesting work in reputation systems), Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, and Adam Yamaguchi of Current.
But the event quickly turned into a circus — and, I hope, a journalism lesson — when Arrington launched attacks on news media, contending that journalists will be losing their jobs and that reporters are fools if they don’t quit and start blogs. He then tried to sucker-punch The New York Times, arguing that the only reason the paper could have written a favorable story about the startup Inform was if the reporter or editor had ties, financial or otherwise, with the firm. I challenged him immediately, saying that this is a grave charge and that he clearly had no facts to back it up; he said as much. I also made it clear that Inform is, in some ways, a competitor with Daylife and that Arrington is also an investor in Daylife. It didn’t stop him. He repeated this attack, among others, on The Times. It was most uncomfortable, even embarrassing. I couldn’t sit there letting his attacks go unchallenged (all the while needing to be transparent myself about my consulting relationship with NYTimesCo). But challenging him, I found myself descending into some two-bit TV shout show, which got me accused of joining in his blowhard game.
Now The Times is frequently the punching bag of convenience for people who want to complain about any generalized sin they see in the news business; this, apparently, is the price of publishing from the top of the heap. I’ve been at plenty of events like this when darts are thrown at The Times, and Timesmen, as a rule, sit stoically and don’t rise to the bait. But I am very glad that Jim Roberts, former national editor and now continuous news editor of The Times, rose to the microphone and called bullshit on Arrington, demanding an apology. As Staci Kramer reports at PaidContent, Arrington backed down immediately, as bullies do. He said he was just trying to be provocative. He admitted he had no facts and apologized.
The stinky-cheese irony of this is, of course, that even as he tried to cast aspersions on The Times, he only succeeded in shooting his own credibility — and with it, likely, the credibility of fellow bloggers — in the foot.
This comes at the end of a conference where I was delighted to see, as I wrote over the weekend, that the wars seemed to be over. I saw no print v. online, no amateur v. pro, no blogger v. journalist. I saw constructive, imaginative efforts to share success stories about 24/7, omnimedia, cooperative, imaginative journalism. But all it takes to ruin things is for one guy to pull out the mortars. The ballroom in D.C. suddenly looked like Lebanon.
Now there was a bit of personal irony in my role here. At last year’s conference, I moderated, if you can call it that, a similar panel and pushed the crowd to stop being so mopey and get to work graspking new opportunities for news and online newspapers. I was supposed to provoke and I did. Some liked it; some didn’t. This year, many noted after the panel, I was the conciliator. But not really. If I was trying to defend anything both times, it was the growth of journalism. I keep harping on the notion that anyone can commit an act of journalism, that we must embrace new partners in our enterprise, and so it is in all our interests to see journalism not only grow but improve. But what happened in this panel did little to improve things.
Arrington does, I think, care about journalism. He works hard for his scoops. All this comes the day after he broke the big scoop that Google was negotiating to buy YouTube and, as Steve Rubel points out, other media picked up the story and credited him for it. Of course, he wants to be right. Before the panel began, the two of us talked about how to handle one of his stories; it was a journalistic discussion. So at the panel, why did he then chose to show so little respect for facts? I don’t know. Perhaps it was just to be provocative, as he said, to entertain. But the entertainment comes at a price.
Part of the problem is that it’s just too fun to maintain the fight story; it’s unproductive and damaging, but it’s a weakness in journalism’s character. So we had Mark Cuban poking the media business one day and the would-be Cuban Jr., Arrington, lobbing bombs the next. At least Big Cuban is charming. When he was booked for the panel, there was no predicting that Arrington would go ballistic. Oh, some might stay we should have known; he blogs, after all. But truly, blogging itself brings no baggage; it’s only a tool. Just as print confers no authority, blogging confers no disrepute. The tool is as good as its craftsman.
In any case, far more valuable than any of these speakers, present company included, was a panel of teens brought in to tell us old media farts how they really interact with our products. Hint: They don’t watch live TV. This made me think that every newspaper and network and station should invite in a panel of young people to scare the bejesus out of the staff and then make them want to find new ways to do their jobs.
And far more valuable than continuing this old fight is finding ways to work together to expand and improve journalism. We can’t afford the fight anymore. And beside, the fight is old news. So give it up. Move on.
: Here is Arrington’s take on the session. He says it was a waste of a weekend.
I could have, and should have, sucked up to these people. Others at the conference were. They still command a lot of traffic and a link thrown our way is always helpful. But I didn’t do that. I never do that, and I’m told that its bad for my career. I made enemies this weekend. Most of those people will never look at TechCrunch without thinking about the things that I said, and judging me for those statements.Will I do this again if invited? Yes. But I will make sure that I prepare my statements in light of the fact that mainstream media is not prepared to discuss their shortcomings. That’s the path that other new media representatives took at the conference, and is obviously the way to win the game. Tell them what they want to hear, even as they lie dying on the hospital bed.
He misses the point and, sadly, the lesson. I criticize these companies plenty and came back for another round and I now find them quite eager to discuss their shortcomings and figure out what to do about it. The problem wasn’t criticizing them. The problem was ignoring the facts.
Mike says in his comments that he and I agree abot much but say things differently. We do agree about much. But I think that in a crowd of journalists, the way to win is to commit better journalism than they do. That, I’d hoped, would be the lesson learned.
: Chron.com’s Dwight Silverman reacts to Arrington:
Don’t be surprised if, when you start throwing bombs, your targets pick up the explosives and hurl them back at you. Arrington said things that have been said umpteen times at other conferences — most notably by Jarvis — but they were said more thoughtfully and with more respect for the immense job journalists have for navigating a major sea change in their industry.Arrington in his post accused journalists of not having a thick skin. But it sounds like he’s the one who can’t handle it when his insults and contempt aren’t accepted with gratitude and graciousness.
By the way, the last person to suggest he’d “dissolve the company and return what’s left to the shareholders” [which was what Arrington said about the Times and Post] was Michael Dell, speaking disdainfully of Apple in October 1997. And we all know what happened there . . .
: Dave Winer says:
…nothing is accomplished by prolonging the animosity between bloggers and pros. There was a time when the bloggers wouldn’t throw any punches, I’m sorry that this time, apparently (I wasn’t there) it was a blogger that provoked a fight. We all can do better, that is inclusive of both pros and amateurs.
Tags: newspapers, norg, ona, Weblogs
October 9th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Blogger behaving badly
Suppose you were to invite a guest into your home, someone who is successful and intelligent, and you asked him for his take on the various aspects of your life. Because of the quality of the invitee’s work, you’d expect…
October 9th, 2006 at 9:01 am
[...] But on the other hand, these flashpoints often strike me as useful metaphors of the dynamics of a transition from an old to a new way of communicating. And this is how I think I’ll remember today’s controversy, Mike Arrington’s appearance on a panel at the Online News Association conference, an appearance at which sparks flew over the old media’s role in a new media world (or vice versa). Arrington blogs it here, and presents a portrait of a decent guy trying to help out who after just speaking out was set upon unfairly by the old guard and its apologists, essentially for simply levelling some controversial comments at The New York Times (and I’m parsing a little here). Others look at it differently, to say the least, including Staci Kramer )(Who’d have thought that Michael Arrington could make Jeff Jarvis and Mark Cuban seem calm”) and Jeff Jarvis (”uncomfortable, even embarrassing”), neither of whom can be fairly called an apologist for anything. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 10:03 am
[...] Journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis (and here and here) said this year’s ONA conference was an improvement over last year’s, where he heard “a lot of resistance to change and blogs.” Jeff frequently blogs about the convergence of new and old media and old media’s resistance to it. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 10:18 am
[...] Jeff Jarvis’ take on the panel: “The stinky-cheese irony of this is, of course, that even as he tried to cast aspersions on The Times, he only succeeded in shooting his own credibility — and with it, likely, the credibility of fellow bloggers — in the foot.” [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 10:28 am
[...] This morning, one of the first posts that caught my attention was Jeff Jarvis, talking about a lesson in journalism. As I read what Jeff wrote, I thought to myself, “yep… that’s what you should have expected from Michael”. After I read what Jeff had to say, I headed over to Michael’s Crunch Notes and read his side of what happened. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 11:25 am
[...] I agree with Jarvis that nothing is accomplished by prolonging the animosity between bloggers and pros. There was a time when the bloggers wouldn’t throw any punches, I’m sorry that this time, apparently (I wasn’t there) it was a blogger that provoked the fight. We all can do better, that is inclusive of both pros and amateurs. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
I love your last ‘graph!
October 9th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Arrington, with his sensationalist language (”provocative” seems the wrong word as it denotes something that would make one think about an issue), makes Geraldo look like an Edward R. Murrow award winner.
October 9th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
[...] Tara embraces Chaos, poor Micahel Arrington had a bad weekend and Jeff Jarvis has a different angle on what happened, Ashish got a plug from Dina Mehta while Jason Calacanis doesn’t think I’m one of those ’smart people’.  But that’s OK - cause I know Jason is paying bloggers to blog - so I get to say “I told you so”. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Beyond the discussion of Arrington’s effect on the last ONA panel, I’m glad you mentioned the youth panel. I’ve been saying for years that folks in the TV business need to rethink what they are doing. But sadly, because they still see themselves as the kings of the media world, they keep churning out the same cheap news and information products, or cutting back on the quality products they have. The new generation is telling us appointment television is dead, unless you give them something worthy of that appointment. Thanks for taking note.
October 9th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
[...] As Jarvis says the way to win is to commit better journalism than [journalists] do. [...]
October 9th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Youth panels can be very enlightening. But it really depends on who is up there and how they got there. I’ve been at Hollywood events where the so called youth panel was featuring a bunch of 20somethings that wanted to get a job in the entertainment industry. Predictably, they did’t have much to say.
But then again, it was very telling that Hollywood thinks of 20somethings as youth …
October 9th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » ONA: A lesson in journalism: I’m all for the degrading of traditional media to the extent that it has to adapt, but I agree as well that the approach Michael took is perhaps not the best. However, I will say that I might have done the same thing. I think the more productive stance however is to reduce both blogging and traditional news writing down to its core components. Reductivism is often a good way to figure out where the root of issues lie and reconstruct from there to build something that is mutually beneficial. You know who did this? TechMeme. To a lesser extent (because it trusts the wisdom of crowds too unilaterally), Digg. That’s my opinion on the matter, for what its worth. [...]
October 10th, 2006 at 4:24 am
‘Being provocative’ isn’t uncommon as an excuse for offensive behavior, usually when it hasn’t made the desired effect. I just listened yesterday to a pollster saying Democrats chose Santorum as an object for attention because he was a polarizing person.
Sort of avoids the issues underlying debate, doesn’t it. When those issues are weak, they need the help. I suspect if he’d been on firm ground, Arrington would have stood on it. NYT as an object of attack kind of avoids the fact that it didn’t get to be a contender because of namby pamby or sloppy handling of the news.
October 10th, 2006 at 5:28 am
I notice in some posts about the war of the proses that bloggers are dfined as amateurs and MSM worthies as “pros” and this distinction seems to be accepted by some without a murmur. Who in these ranks has checked the handicaps of all the bloggers running loose without let or hindrance? Are they all duffers? And isn’t kinda documented that half the bloggers extant used to be anonymous newspaper wretches? And grudgingly consider pros, at least by the more charitable of their peers?
October 10th, 2006 at 8:14 am
[...] All is not as smooth as it seems. Jeff Jarvis, in his blog BuzzMachine, reports a clash of cultures at an otherwise harmonious ONA event last week. At a panel session about new frontiers in technology and news involving Mike Davidson of Newsvine (doing very interesting work in reputation systems notes Jarvis), Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (who broke the news about Google’s talks with YouTube last Friday), and Adam Yamaguchi of Current, “Arrington launched attacks on news media, contending that journalists will be losing their jobs and that reporters are fools if they don’t quit and start blogs.” Jarvis continues, “He then tried to sucker-punch The New York Times, arguing that the only reason the paper could have written a favorable story about the startup Inform was if the reporter or editor had ties, financial or otherwise, with the firm. I challenged him immediately, saying that this is a grave charge and that he clearly had no facts to back it up; he said as much.” Far from withdrawing, “It didn’t stop him. He repeated this attack, among others, on The Times. It was most uncomfortable, even embarrassing. I couldn’t sit there letting his attacks go unchallenged”. - Jarvis points to what he calls “the stinky-cheese irony of this”. “Even as he tried to cast aspersions on The Times, he only succeeded in shooting his own credibility — and with it, likely, the credibility of fellow bloggers — in the foot.” Arrington, of course, sees it differently. It was, he feels, not a good experience for him. - “I also made some points about journalism in general after a few defensive flurries were sent my way. First, that most mainstream media isn’t interesting to me because they report news so late. By the time something hits the New York Times, it’s usually at least a day old in the blogosphere. Second, I was discouraged by the fact that there is no discussion in mainstream media. Publications never cite their competition, and readers cannot say what they think (as they can with blog comments). And third, I encouraged journalists who were stuck in the big media machine, with their career going nowhere, to consider blogging as an alternative (I was also going to say that I was hiring, and for people to contact me, but I never was able to say that). I also called out the New York Times in particular - their recent launch of an offline new reader showed that they don’t get what consumers really want, I said. And I also said that many of the fluff pieces in the Times technology section must either be generated from back scratching, or lack of understanding of the product. None of this went over well at all.” He remains unapologetic “Will I do this again if invited? Yes. But I will make sure that I prepare my statements in light of the fact that mainstream media is not prepared to discuss their shortcomings. That’s the path that other new media representatives took at the conference, and is obviously the way to win the game. Tell them what they want to hear, even as they lie dying on the hospital bed.” - [...]
October 10th, 2006 at 9:04 am
“Youth” panels are always about what “age” thinks it doesn’t get.
October 11th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Good and bad at ONA conference
Adrian Holovaty spoke (always worth hearing). Other good folks on the panel too. I was off at another session listening to the solo mojos.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:06 am
[...] And as everybody needs to learn, credibility, reputation, trust, and value — that is, brand — is not something you own but something you earn. [...]
October 25th, 2006 at 1:34 am
[...] My newfound emphasis on the topic of disclosure, however, came from my friend Mike Arrington’s little dustup with traditional journalists at the Online News Association conference which Jeff Jarvis writes about here and Mike writes about here. The subsequent post by Nicholas Carr called ‘A glass house‘ really struck a deep chord with me. I know Mike and I don’t believe he is purposely trying to deceive anyone, but he does have a competitive streak and many other interests across the Web 2.0 landscape which puts him in a precarious position. From my discussions with many people, there are no truly easy ways to make disclosures and there is no standard accepted practices for how to disclose and when to disclose. As I have consulted my clients over the years, it is often the perception of impropriety that is the problem not the actions themselves. [...]
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December 11th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
[...] As Nick Denton at Valleywag points out, the discussion of the New York Times adding social-bookmarking links to its stories — which TechCrunch described as “surrendering” to social news — degenerates into some name-calling by Mike about news consultant Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine and Rafat Ali of PaidContent, amid what appears to be some deep-seated anger at the Times (likely in part because of this). [...]
December 12th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
[...] Fabrications? Them’s fighting words, big fella. But I have the DVD and plenty of reliable witnesses to Arrington’s meltown and effort to bully The New York Times, which ended with The Times demanding and getting a sheepish apology from him. As I said here, bullies always back down. [...]
January 6th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
[...] I’m going into this workshop hoping to offer some useful advice, not to deliver the usual Silicon Valley “newspapers are screwed, prepare to be disintermediated” spiel (that’s been done before, many times.) Despite some serious challenges, I think newspapers can have a bright future if they have the courage to make some adjustments. We’re in an era where anyone can play — including newspapers. [...]
April 7th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
[...] Arrington has received plenty of criticism about conflicts of interest in his tech news blog TechCrunch about “insider information and conflicts of [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title ONA: A lesson in journalism. Thanks for informative article
June 24th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
[...] Arrington, who once, without evidence, claimed that a New York Times article favorable to a startup in competition with a startup he had invested [...]