"The more I toggled between my editor's e-mail and the eight-paragraph Gawker item, the angrier I got, and the more disenchanted I became with the journalism business."
Eight paragraphs off one story? Not even credited up top? They’d nail HuffPo for that. There’s a fine line between being an aggregator - distilling it for the people who wouldn’t click through anyway, leaving enough for the people who would be interested to click through for - and just, like WaPo writer Ian Shapira says, “cherry-pick the funniest quotes, sell ads against it and ultimately reap 9,500 (and counting) page views.”
When I started at FishbowlNY, I was very paranoid about not missing anything. I remember one New York Observer story that I painstakingly blogged, after which my boyfriend at the time pointed out that I’d written a very nice book report, but not added anything to the piece. So, my rule on blogging is - add something. If you’re just making sure your audience knows it, give them the succint, salient details and then link out. Better is if you can add context, analysis, information - and attribute like a mofo.
NB: I first learned the formula for attribution from Gawker (hyperlinked story title followed by square bracketed publication name) and it’s still something I try to do. Gawker doesn’t do it nearly as much. I would be curious to see how much traffic Gawker sent WaPo’s way.
NB#2: I had an email exchange about this with Gawker ME Gabriel Snyder about this piece, about a white supremacist getting play in big media after the Holocaust Museum shooting, which I wrote up and sent to Gawker and which John Cook used to write this piece, including my screengrab. The original version said I “noted” that the white supremacist was interviewed on NBC, and then went on to present all my information and research and digging into the dude’s blog. After my email, they changed it to “attacked” and lengthened the link, and said I “noted” something else, but that still felt like too little. If the goal is to present great information - great. And it’s not like Charitini, where I posted it at the time, gets anything from traffic. But crediting for the work I do - even for the things I dig up and find and post on Twitter - means something to me.
So in this case, I’m on Team Shapira. Great for Gawker to pull and note and praise his piece; but 8 paras without even naming the pub - let alone the author! - prominently is just, as the Gen-Xers might say, not fucking cool.
The Death of Journalism (Gawker Edition) [WaPo]
Generational Consultant Holds America’s Fakest Job [Gawker]
Speaking To Generation Nexus: Guru Explains Gens X, Y, Boomer to One Another [WaPo]
Holocaust Museum Attack Is an Excellent Media Opportunity For Deranged Racists [Gawker]
