Jan

20

No attribution

January 20, 2008 |

Louis Gray wrote what I think is an important post today (sadly, it’s diving down the list on Techmeme rapidly) about the fact that some bigger “A-list” blogs tend to be rather stingy with their attributions to news that broke on “B-list” blogs (I’m just waiting for Calacanis to jump out of the woodwork to tell us that there is no A, B or C list):

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been at times shaking my head as I’ve seen the site’s reporters deliver an absolute minimum of original reporting, underdeliver on giving credit to those finding the news first, and in one blatant example, stealing quotes from a story I had written, without giving attribution, and not making edits when notified.

Louis points out Mashable as the main culprit here. I have no ax to grind with Mashable (I don’t break news, after all), but if Louis’ attack is correct, then Mashable should definitely do something about this and from the comments on his blog, it seems they are.

The problem however, I think, goes deeper than individual blogs and attribution, though. I wonder if the problem isn’t a bit of an oversaturation of tech news blogs in the blogosphere. There is, after all, only so much news to report and writing a quick news report is a lot easier than writing a review or to deliver commentary. There seems to be a lot more emphasis on breaking news today than delivering any sort of critical reflection about the news (and I am not saying that my reflections are very groundbreaking either!). In the end, it comes down to money, as usual. Big blogs need to keep driving visitors to their sites (I know, that an unpopular way of saying this, but in the end, that’s what it comes down to - editors and writers need to be paid after all).

Just looks at how everybody is citing the bogus numbers of growth for Podshow today.


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