A VC - Latest Comments in Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Kid Croesus — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:51:28 -0000

I hate journabloggers, and have been burned by them before. We had a journablogger run a piece on us once which was fairly damaging, based on some erroneous assumptions that could have been quickly checked and dismissed. When we confronted the writer on her sloppy journalism she replied in her defense that "This wasn't an article, it was just a blog post".

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

fredwilson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:16:03 -0000

Love the photo and the post!

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

fredwilson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:16:02 -0000

I agree lloyd. There's so much that needs to be done with comments

Fred

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Lloyd Fassett — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:26:25 -0000

Reading a lot of comments would be like reading everything posted to Outside.In instead of what just in your neighborhood. I'm glad you were able to find / encourage a better way for the blog owner to specifically call out a comment more easily from way back when you couldn't do it. Disqus, and the others in the sector, are cool for that. But I look to you to be my comment navigator on your site that amplifies the golden droppings. This comment is here because it was in your main feed. I don't have time to read the stream of comments on nearly any site. I really only have 30 - 60 minutes total to read blogs and most of that is done on my Treo waiting in the car with my babies for my wife to come out of some store. Clearing TSA security is place to both, have a coffee and read blogs too

A hopefully easy improvement for Discus would be to enable a blogger to prioritize comments and signify that it's been done. I promise, Fred, that if you ranked comments yourself I will read at least the top one and more thank likely the top few. To tell you the truth, when I do get into the comments at all I scan to see your responses first and then read back because if you commented on it, it's probably a bit of a nugget.

At a deeper level, it's a position issue in a marketing sense. I read your blog because it's you and specifically your role is not as a discussion moderator, so I"m less prone to the discussion than your thoughts, but not entirely so either. I'm more interested in having you either signify what is interesting and/or do the work of finding it.

Now I've gone and blown half my blogging budget already today.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

MMG — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:16:04 -0000

After following this irony-laden donnybrook, I too had to join the fray and blog about blogging: http://rapspace.tv/member/m...

Thanks for the Elfin photo, Fred. :-)

MMG

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Ian Betteridge — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:20:05 -0000

Why do you assume that people being paid to be professional bloggers are interested in what they write about? And, for that matter, why do you assume that professional journalists *aren't* interested in what they write about?

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

michael arrington — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:51:34 -0000

Joe - we've found that the "hits" - the blog posts that generate a lot of discussion - are the ones that drive all stats, including, indirectly, monetization. The problem is knowing what's a hit and what isn't before it actually happens. Given that we are all rushing into new territory, I think a little leeway is appropriate.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Munjal Shah — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:47:35 -0000

It is time for the Alexa for Revenue. It is time Web 2.0 grows up to be real businesses. I don't see why you guys can't ask a startup to show you their revenue numbers like I showed Matt and Michael (when he wrote about our Likesense product) before you folks write a positive article/post. Frankly just by asking for this you all will help drive a healthy shift toward profitability for all startups in this area. My full thoughts here

http://munjal.typepad.com/r...

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

JoeDuck — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:04:32 -0000

Yes, but this is a challenge when quantity, not quality is the monetizing force for those big blogs. 100 quality posts are unlikely to make as much as 200 "fair" posts that will take less time to write in total.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Scott Yates — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:00:14 -0000

On posts like this, people do read the comments.

Both you and Arrington are to be commended for how you handled this, I think.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Scott Rafer — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:27:21 -0000

Obviously, Zynga is larger, but that doesn't make SGN "not a real company." That's especially true when cats like this are involved:
http://www.washingtonpost.c...

The freewebs guys know a thing or two about free hosting of small sites that attract lots of uniques. http://siteanalytics.compet...

Their Mashery-hosted API ain't half bad either. ;)

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Devin Anderson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:26:56 -0000

I would say it's innate, that is what has made MSM successful for so long. The majority of people are just cruising through looking at the headlines. With so much content available online, it's the sensational headlines that are going to draw the most readers, but perhaps those aren't the readers that you want anyways.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:07:02 -0000

Scott

SGN is being spun out of freewebs

As a standalone company, it's got very little right now

That could change, but right now it doesn't seem to have much

And warbook's active daily users has declined almost 30% since the start of
the year

fred

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

scott crawford — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:06:35 -0000

Whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong, whether I find a place in this world or never belong...
Sorry, couldn't resist. It is a wonderful thing, dialogue having a place to live and breathe an honest breath.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Anne H — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:01:39 -0000

Do the "journabloggers" have the same support structure as traditional media players? I'm thinking of support people that might assist in gathering stats, double-checking facts, editing and so-on. I'm not saying that excuses anyone but if a primary focus is to be first or get the "exclusive", I can see people taking shortcuts for the sake of expediency.

There may also be a revenue factor. Some sites may get their revenue from ad impressions so the more pages or stories, the more ad impressions. The mainstream sites may rely more on direct advertising. Here the emphasis in on page count, not accuracy.

I hope readers look at sites differently and make their own determination. For example, I expect someone from the New York Times to do thorough research. I don't have that same expectation if I'm reading Engadget and yet I read and value both.

I think the bigger issue for me is that many readers don't question what they read regardless of the source. They look at stats out of context (or scale) and don't consider what info is missing or if someone is benefiting from the story.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Scott Rafer — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:02:18 -0000

Fred, SGN is a part of freewebs, compete.com rank #216. It's a direct outgrowth of Warbook, with facebook daily uniques of 70k. I've no clue whether SGN or Zynga comes out on top (my bet is that it's not a relevant issue), but both are very real companies.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:02:06 -0000

peter, i don't know if the like story is wrong. and erick didn't get it wrong on the zynga story but i think he missed the opportunity to get it right.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:59:41 -0000

it's hard enough to compare two company's traffic correctly. there certainly aren't any services out there that compare revenues. so to say that Like.com's revenue for this year (and its only Feb) will be $10mm and thisnext's will not is really not possible.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Peter Kafka — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:29:52 -0000

Fred, don't know about Mashable and RWW, but the other "journablogs" you mention are all staffed by former MSM journalists.

But the bigger point: If you've got a beef with a story, why not just say you have a beef with a story? If it's wrong, it doesn't matter whether a "blogger", a "journablogger" or "journalist" wrote it - it's still wrong. Presumably you've taken umbrage with something written by members of all three categories in the past.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

jeremystein — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:07:40 -0000

thats not directed at anyone in particular-- i just can't ever see the beneficial side to it.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

JD — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:05:36 -0000

Fred,

Exactly.

AttentionMeter makes the process of triangulation easier. It doesn't include comscore, but includes most of the free services.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

jeremystein — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 20:04:17 -0000

arent journalists supposed to be objective? i think bloggers should generally subscribe to the athlete plan-- only complement strengths. it doesnt do you any good to put someone down.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Steve Deadalus — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:31:07 -0000

as always, great points. you're quite right about the mediocre nature of journoblogs. incredibly, the reading public doesn't much seem to care - even though lots of lazy stuff these days is getting passed around as "insight" or "scoop" material ....when it's anything but.
l
anyway, keep calling `em as you see `em.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

jjpamp — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:42:52 -0000

All too often I find serious factual errors on blogs, but the funniest (or saddest) had to be on TechCrunch. There was a story on Revision3, and the company name was spelled incorrectly several times - even though the article contained the company's logo! Every writer, and let's admit it, journalists, bloggers, columnists and whatever else are all merely writers regardless of medium, needs to have a basic checklist to follow when writing. The top two items need to be fact-checking and spell-checking. And sites with paid writers and editorial directors should copy edit every article before posting. There's really no excuse.

Re: Journabloggers Should Do Their Work Too

Robin Wauters — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:38:35 -0000

to Jeremy above who said "The unfortunate reality that I'm starting to accept is the majority of readers/viewers/audiences care a bit less about facts and research, and a bit more about sensationalism and fancy headlines."

Yup, situation hasn't indeed changed much for a few thousands years now. Even before 'journablogging' was born! ;)