NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> $1,027 - the price of journalistic ethics?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> $1,027 - the price of journalistic ethics?
Cliff Kurtzman (cliff_at_tenagra.com)
Fri, 2 Jan 1998 15:57:08 -0600
Commenting on what has been said on this thread...
Kathy Gill wrote:
>I firmly do NOT believe that bob or infoworld should have benefited from
>the column. Jeez -- he even used his INFOWORLD e-mail address!
Well, my understanding is that neither InfoWorld or Bob MetCalfe profited
from the column. The entire amount earned was donated to the Electronic
Frontiers Foundation.
What Bob did was find a company and technology he thought was impressive,
inform his readers about it, and (rightly or wrongly) he conducted an
experiment to see what impact his column could have. He then gave the
money earned from the experiment to a cause he felt was worthy. I would be
very surprised if there were any other affiliation between MetCalfe and the
company.
Steve Kruse wrote a note about how he does not consider trade magazine
writers as real journalists. I have a good bit of experience being
interviewed or quoted as an "expert" for Internet stories in both the trade
and general press. In addition, a service my company provides distributes
links to all the Year 2000 computing news stories that appear online in
both the general and trade press, so I have a chance to read several
hundred such stories on this single topic each month. I can tell you that
there is often a very substantative difference in quality of reporting
between the trade press coverage and the general press coverage, and the
quality leans very heavily in favor of the trade press.
When I'm interviewed in the general press, it is not at all uncommon for me
to show up saying something completely different than what I said. This
happened a few days ago when I conducted an e-mail interview with a
reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper, and the column showed up
quoting me saying all kinds of things that were not even close to what I
had said in my e-mails. This happens all the time with the general press,
but less frequently with the trade press.
Another case in point is the story I was interviewed for in one of the top
three newspapers in the US. The reporter told me he was doing a story on
how no one is making money online, and failed to include a single reference
I gave him to any of the business or publications that I knew of (including
some of mine) that are quite profitable indeed. It went against the
conclusion he or his editor had reached before doing their research, and he
was not going to let the facts get in his way. Again, while there are
exceptions, I find this to be a familiar scenario with the general press
but treatment to be fairer with the trade publications.
As I see coverage appear in the general press about the Year 2000 computing
crisis, the articles are sometimes hastily written by reporters who are
generally unfamiliar with the topic. They have to learn and write about
the topic and industry in just a day or two, and often they are not able to
get a handle on it that quickly, which is not surprising. Although there
have been signs of improvement over the past few months, many of the
stories that appear in the general press are terribly superficial and
poorly researched, to the point of providing completely false information
and doing a severe disservice to the publication's readers. The trade
press on the whole (and there are exceptions here too) provides much better
and more accurate coverage.
Steve also wrote:
>Face it, you can directly relate how much ink/publicity a company receives by
>how much it spends in advertising.
As to a company like Microsoft or Oracle receiving a disproportionate
amount of coverage, well, whether they advertise in a publication or not,
they are major players in the industry and their products impact a lot of
people. I don't find it odd that they should get more coverage than a
(presently) smaller company like mine does.
Tenagra has never advertised anywhere in the trade press (or virtually
anywhere else), but we and our clients are doing cool and ground breaking
things in the Internet industry so the trade press covers us. There have
certainly been times when a reporter has not covered something we had hoped
they would, but never a time where we felt it was because we don't
advertise in their publication.
--Cliff
Clifford R. Kurtzman, Ph.D.
President and CEO
The Tenagra Corporation
http://www.tenagra.com/
281/480-6300
Internet marketing, public relations, consulting, and web design
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