A New Gig in IT
Hey, developers, I'm back! I'm going to be the editor for a custom portal sponsored by Intel for DevX (http://www.devx.com/Intel/). I'll be writing and assigning articles on topics of interest to the client, but aimed at developers. DevX has a huge audience (5 million visitors per month) and I look forward to learning more about how they manage their cornucopia of sites at JupiterMedia. Feel free to contact me if you have ideas for what to cover on this site or if you'd like to write for me (again!).
posted by Alexa Weber Morales @ 4/20/2006
2 comments
2 Comments:
Cautionary tale (via http://www.poynter.org/forum/?id=letters):
From KATE KAYE: I'm a reporter for ClickZ News; we're an online pub that covers the interactive ad and marketing industry. The reason I’m writing to you is because I think your audience would be interested in an interview experience I had the other day that I think raises an issue that needs addressing now that, essentially, everyone’s a media outlet. Here’s the deal: I interviewed Jason Calacanis (Weblogs CEO) Tuesday regarding the publisher’s new “local” blog, Blogging Ohio, for a ClickZ story. He insisted on an e-mail interview and soon after I conducted it with follow-ups, and he'd responded to both sets of questions, he posted the entire e-mail exchange on his blog. He did so without asking for my OK, without attributing the interview to me (although he did, mistakenly he says, originally include my e-mail address in the post), and perhaps most significant, before my story was published.
I requested that he remove my e-mail address from the post, which he did. He claims that he’s done only e-mail interviews for the past couple years and always publishes the full interview on his blog to avoid being quoted out of context or misquoted and to clue in his audience to what’s on his mind.
I find his posting of our interview under these circumstances to be inappropriate at best. Had he asked my permission and posted the interview after my story was published, I probably would have been OK with it.
I think this instance is an indicator of what's to come and it’s important that journalists start discussing it. [Permalink]
Interesting conundrum. I agree that asking permission is at the crux of the matter. For smaller excerpts of an interview, fair use would allow him to post them. However, at my old magazine we always allowed authors (not necessarily interviewees, but I could see making a case for them) to post their original articles on their own sites and use them in books.
It's true, everyone's a medium these days, but not all media are equally powerful. Is the subject's blog more trafficked than the journalist's outlet? If not, what's the problem? For real breaking news, being scooped is an issue, but for a profile, I don't see the harm. Indeed, multiple postings will increase the visibility of the article.
Further, the subject may have a defensible position of copyright given that the interview took place via email (I almost never do interviews this way for this reason; telephone or in-person is more candid and less prone to misunderstandings, provided you save your notes).
Finally, the forgotten piece of the content puzzle these days is quality. So a subject posts a raw transcript on his blog--can it compare to the honed, edited work you publish in your professional journal? Has the piece been fact-checked and liposuctioned of excess verbiage? Is it displayed with compelling images and inescapable pull quotes? Is the story rounded out with multiple sources, an unexpected angle or a well crafted context? So long as journalists and editors forget to bring these skills to play, amateur bloggers will beat them to the punch. It's our job to do it better than they can, Internet be damned.
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