The Inquisitr » blogs

Watch your internet mouth: anonymous comments could get you sacked

Kim LaCapria — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:56:44 +0000

If you leave a crude comment on Kurt Greenbaum’s St. Louis Dispatch articles, he’d like a word. With your boss.

Greenbaum penned an admittedly (by the author) lame piece Friday for the Dispatch, a “nice, soft edition of (Talk of the Day),” asking readers to post in the comments:

How about you? Have you gone out on a limb for a meal? What’d you try? Did you like it? Have you had friends or family who have tried stuff on a dare?

Predictably, one commenter replied with one word- the p-word, used to describe a woman’s nether regions. So Greenbaum, the site’s director of social media, did what any logical person posting articles on the web would do- he tracked down the dude who commented and got him fired. Greenbaum smugly details his sleuthing in a later post bragging about the incident:

A few minutes later, the same guy posted the same single-word comment again. I deleted it, but noticed in the WordPress e-mail alert that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included.

About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

Greenbaum gets even more villainous in the comments himself, reminding commenters that he “didn’t say (the unidentified, now-jobless man) got fired” and only that he “resigned.” Although the commenter was stupid and Greenbaum’s actions were distasteful and excessive, this incident serves as a caution that nothing you say on the web is truly anonymous, and that goes double for at work. While fear of reprisal is never a really great reason to STFU, if you’re going to go out on a limb (or be pushed onto one) at least hope it’s for something better than a tired joke.

If you’d like to comment personally to Kurt Greenbaum (I’d recommend waiting until you get home) his personal blog is here and he obviously really loves moderating.

[ReadWriteWeb]

NYT subtly frowns on Deadspin’s ESPN horndog dossier shenanigans

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:16:53 +0000

A new media campaign retaliating against ESPN for scandal related subterfuge got some old media attention today.

Deadspin, a Gawker media blog, gets oodles of sports and sportscaster news related tips and rumors in their inbox. Back at the beginning of September, Deadspin’s editor AJ Daulerio contacted ESPN for confirmation of the rumors swirling around Steve Philips regarding the unhinged intern (Brooke Hundley) that Philips totally turned out to be tapping. ESPN spokespeople were less than forthcoming about the brewing scandal, and Daulerio got scooped and got mad- so he decided to devote a day to posting all the tips he’d gotten regarding sexual impropriety at ESPN.

Daulerio tagged the entries “ESPN horndog dossier,” and posted rumors about Erik Kuselias, Stephania Bell, Jed Drake, Katie Lacey and David Berson. There was even a “glossary“ posted that gave a bit of background info on some alleged less savory seduction practices common at ESPN. The intended effect was swift and painful for ESPN- the names named by Deadspin showed up in the top results of Google searches frequently late last week and even prompted ESPN President George Bodenheimer to issue a memo asking staff to quit blabbing about the constant in-house boning to media.

The New York Times kind of chided the Deadspin for their “ESPN horndog dossier” today, and ESPN only commented in a statement, saying:

“Deadspin’s self-admitted rumormongering is despicable behavior by any standard and shows callous disregard for its impact on people’s lives. It is not worthy of response and those responsible should be called to account.”

Although the Times piece seems to imply that the posts were all rumor and supposition posted purely out of spite, quotes at the end not only lend credence to Daulerio’s sources, but also the reasoning behind the decision to go after ESPN in the first place:

But in the interview (with the New York Times), (Daulerio) said he adhered to the same standard of proof as any traditional news organization, repeating only those things told to him by multiple sources with close knowledge of the subject.

He and Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, said the larger issue was sources being dishonest with journalists. “When an unnamed source misleads, as far as we’re concerned, they lose the right to remain in the shadows,” Mr. Denton said in an e-mail exchange.

Daulerio also contends that none of the tips posted were kept under wraps very well anyway:

“Do I bend the rules a little bit? Of course I do. We’re still a blog at the end of the day, a Gawker Media blog. The larger truth out of this, outside of my temper tantrum over getting scooped out of a story, is that this is the worst-kept secret in sports media.”

What do you think? Questionable judgment, or epic win?

Disgraced former NYC commish Bernard Kerik has bail revoked for blogging

Kim LaCapria — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:20:24 +0000

You may remember former NYC Police Commissioner and Giuliani BFF Bernard Kerik for his national prominence after the attacks of September 11th.

Once a candidate to head the 9/11-inspired Department of Homeland Security, Kerik is now in hot water due to corruption charges, including an allegation of collusion with mafia construction outfits who allegedly renovated Kerik’s apartment for free. And today bought more bad news for NYC’s former top cop, as a judge revoked Kerik’s bail for attempted jury contamination via a blog post which has since been pulled from a site promoting Kerik’s defense. (An AP article posted on the site can still be viewed.)

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Robinson ruled that Kerik’s decision to post confidential documents on the website indicates that he has no intention of complying with a court order barring such disclosure. Robinson said:

“My fear is that he has a toxic combination of self-minded focus and arrogance, and I fear that combination leads him to believe that his ends justify his means,” Robinson said. “The failure of Mr. Kerik to abide by the direct order of this court … must be appropriately addressed.

“He sees the court’s rulings as an inconvenience, something to be ignored, and an obstacle to be circumvented.”

Kerik was stripped of his belt, shoelaces and tie. He will likely be sent to the Metropolitan Corrections Center, just adjacent to One Police Plaza- the site of his former office as Police Commissioner.

[Image: Gothamist]

Photoshopped Ralph Lauren model fired for being too fat

Kim LaCapria — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:51:40 +0000

Did you see the badly photoshopped Ralph Lauren ad making the rounds on the internet last week?

If you missed it, the model in the ad had been clearly edited- so much so that her pelvis appeared smaller than her head. While Ralph Lauren (the company) attempted to strong arm the image off the blogosphere, BoingBoing held their ground to use the image under fair use.

…instead of responding to their legal threat by suppressing our criticism of their marketing images, we’re gonna mock them. Hence this post.

As Wendy Seltzer from the Chilling Effects project said, “Sounds like a pretty solid fair use case to me. If criticism diminishes its effectiveness, that’s different from the market substitution copyright protects against. And I’ve rarely seen a thinner DMCA form-letter.”

While the company claimed that the image was mistakenly released by a Japanese department store, Filippa Hamilton, the 23-year old French model, told press that Ralph Lauren had fired her for being overweight. At 23, 5′10″ and 120 lbs., Hamilton’s face is familiar to anyone who has seen Ralph Lauren print ads in recent years, but even at her abnormally low weight, the company claims she’s too fat to fit into their clothes. Ralph Lauren admits that Hamilton was fired, explaining the termination came “as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us.”

Hamilton didn’t mince words in her reaction to the termination of her contract:

Hamilton, who had modeled for the designer since 2002, said in response: “I think they owe American women an apology, a big apology; I’m very proud of what I look like, and I think a role model should look healthy.”

[Source: Radar Online]

Fines Coming For Bloggers, Celebrities Who Don’t Disclose Endorsements

AHN — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:00:34 +0000

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will soon begin fining bloggers and celebrities who endorse products unless they disclose any and all “material connections,” such as payments or free products. The controversial new rules come as the FTC updates its advertising rules for the first time since 1980.

“Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect,” the FTC said in a statement. “The post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.”

“The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media,” the FTC added.

The rules will likely come into effect across several platforms online, including Google’s popular blogging platform, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and microblogging sites like Twitter.

[Image]

NYT Motherlode blogger Anita Tedaldi returns adopted son, sparks controversy

Kim LaCapria — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:36:24 +0000

A post on New York Times blog Motherlode has divided readers with a controversial post about a failed adoption.

Anita Tedaldi, mother to five girls and wife to a deployed soldier, adopted a South American boy who’d been abandoned by the side of a road. His age remains unknown, and ostensibly due to the rough circumstances of his formative first few months, the boy failed to develop a familial bond with Tedaldi or her daughters. (Her husband was deployed at the time.) So Tedaldi “returned” her adopted son after eighteen months of being his mother.

Tedaldi’s story blew up on the internet today after an interview with Today’s Matt Lauer, sparking an equal outpouring of strong criticism and non-judgmental support. She told Lauer:

“I loved him and I cared deeply for him,” Tedaldi told TODAY’s Matt Lauer Thursday in New York. “I tried to do the same exact thing I did with my biological children, but over time it became clear that our family maybe wasn’t a good match for him, that we were unable to meet some of his needs.”

The original post is heart-wrenching, a candid look into a situation most parents will be lucky never to face. And the outcome is a foregone conclusion – you know going in it isn’t a happy ending and that Tedaldi ultimately relinquishes the boy to whom she does not feel a true parental bond. No follow up information is given on D’s fate- whether he was able to bond with his third mother, or if his failed adoption affected his development further.

You can read Tedaldi’s original post here, and watch the Today show clip below:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Google’s Sidewiki is a bad idea – very bad

Steven Hodson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:41:40 +0000

With the launch of their Sidewiki toolbar addition Google’s “do no evil” mantra gets yet another slap upside the head. Even though it was only announced mid-morning the news of Google’s attempt to take over the conversations that are an integral; and important, part of our blogs Sidewiki is getting a lot of press from that self-same blogosphere.

The majority of the posts I have read have been centered mainly around the announcement itself and many are making note that this isn’t really anything new

The base idea of Sidewiki is old and has been tried before in different forms – like a decade ago by the name of Third Voice – but I’m curious if Google will give it a new push. – Google Blogoscoped

Over the years, numerous companies have offered services that allowed users to annotate web pages. Now, with a new project called SideWiki, Google is going to join the fray as well. – ReadWriteWeb

This is indeed an old idea that wasn’t a good one when it was first tried and still isn’t regardless of the fact – or especially because of the fact that it carries the Google brand name. On the surface the first thing to be concerned about this idea is how bad it will end up being yet another spam garden because trust me it will. The other problem comes in the basic acceptance of the service which as Philipp Lenssen suggests is more of a social one.

One of the bigger issues facing this type of app may not be technological, but social (and perhaps even legal): What happens if people loudly rant about examplestore.com, and the examplestore.com owner doesn’t feel like it’s fair that this is all written “on top of their homepage"? And what if some of the ranting people happen to be competitors of examplestore.com?

As with most Google products though the response has been mostly one of what this new service will bring to the web. The only one with any balls at the moment to come right out and say that this is a bad idea comes, surprisingly, from Jeff Jarvis.

Google just introduced Sidewiki, which enables anyone to comment on a page using Google’s toolbar.

I see danger.

Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value (if the real conversation about WWGD? had occurred on Google instead of at Buzzmachine, how does that help me?). On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and so it bifurcates the conversation and puts some of it behind a hedge. Ethically, this is like other services that tried to frame a source’s content or that tried to add advertising to a site via a browser

I agree whole-heartily with Jeff one this one. Sidewiki is nothing short of an attempt by Google to take control of the conversations that happen on blogs. Additionally they are forcing bloggers to either install their toolbar or move to the Chrome browser that will have Sidewiki support built into it.

Sorry but using products is a choice and no company has the right to force me to use their products just so I can keep in contact with what my readers are saying. In effect Google is inserting themselves between the reader and the blogger. In the process, as noted by Martin Bryant at The Next Web, they are giving themselves yet another potential advertising revenue stream. Sure they are saying that there is no plan to monetize the service “right now” but that isn’t the same thing as saying emphatically that they won’t be.

In an interview with Joseph Tartakoff at paidContent Caesar Sengupta and Aseem Sood, Google product managers, said a couple of things that I disagree with. The first is this little gem

Sengupta tells us [paidContent that Sidewiki is “complimentary” since it provides additional features

This is bullshit plain and simple. Sidewiki might have some interesting features but the service doesn’t add anything to blogs that benefit the blogger. In fact it takes away one of the most important parts of a blog – the conversation – and locks it on the Google servers. As problematic as blog commenting systems might be, even with 3rd party options like Disqus, JS-Kit, and Intense Debate, the conversation content remains where it is suppose to – on our blogs.

The second point I have a big problem with is from Aseem Sood where he says:

“Right now, our goal honestly is to increase the engagement of users on the web,”

Sure as long as that engagement benefits Google because Sidewiki does nothing to benefit bloggers except add more overhead to their blogs and time.

Sorry but this idea stinks to high heaven and like Jeff Jarvis says: “This is wrong for the internet and, I’ll predict, bad PR for Google”.

hat tip to Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb for the YouTube link

‘People of Walmart’ blog holds up mirror to middle America

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:22:32 +0000

Initially conceived as somewhat of an inside joke between (genuinely Wal-Mart loving) friends, the blog “People of Wal-Mart” has become a viral sensation.

People of Wal-Mart is a photo blog devoted to America’s mightiest retailer, a compendium of the strange combination of OMGWTF and “oh, huh, well- it’s Wal-Mart” that you experience walking through any of the retail giant’s locations across America at any time of the day, evening or middle-of-the night. The newish blog has been hugely popular since its inception, and a new piece in Time means that even getting to the photos is a bit of a challenge with all the traffic. A site founder explained the impetus behind the site:

Andrew, his brother Adam and their friend Luke started People of Walmart after a shopping trip to a South Carolina branch earlier this month. “We turned a corner to see a stripper — at least, I think she was a stripper — with a shirt that read ‘Go F___ Yourself,’ and she had a 2-year-old kid in one of those child harnesses that looked like a dog leash,” says Adam. They turned another corner and saw a guy with a ZZ Top beard.

The guys behind the site are surprisingly respectful in assessing their subjects, employing some basic ground rules and refusing to publish people such as those operating motorized scooters (”I can’t tell you how many people send in pictures of overweight people on motorized scooters. But we won’t post them because some of those people need scooters for a reason,”) the Amish (who are actually forbidden to appear knowingly in photos) and Wal-Mart employees who are “just doing their job(s).”

Just bear in mind that if you’re heading to Wal-Mart today, you might want to forgo the non-existent shorts or Captain America costume.

Is Social Media ruining the good old heated debate

Steven Hodson — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:03:02 +0000

I was reading a post by Ryan Tate over at Valleywag this morning which lead in to posts by Edward Boches and Bob Knorpp where the common thread between them all being that we are all becoming a bunch of agreeable wishy washy Charlie Brown types.

Now to clarify the parameters here; we are not talking about the perpetual idiots who do nothing more than try to destroy people verbally. We are not talking about the area of blogging that deals with hot button subjects like politics or other editorial slash news types of blogs.

What we are talking about is the Social Media arena where services like Twitter and Facebook are the face of social media networks. We are talking about those bloggers who deal with the whole social media ecosphere. We are talking about the marketers, PR people and other promoters of the whole idea of Social Media.

Of the three posts I think that Bob Knorpp did an excellent job of breaking down the reasons why services like Twitter, Facebook and social media related blogs are geared more to the old clap on the back “great post” type of response. It all boils down to the very way that they are structured, after all we are encouraged to follow “friends” not “people you disagree with”. At the heart of social media the idea is that we should all be striving to “get along” rather than to intelligently challenge ideas and concepts being proposed.

Bob puts it this way

While debate does happen among friends, by their very design the social networks are predisposed toward forming circles of like-minded people. Same with personal blogs. It’s unlikely you’re going to waste time reading the opinions of an individual you don’t agree with. So finding spirited disagreement in such circles is simply not the norm. Which raises the question of whether such environments are healthy if not matched to at least some mainstream engagement.

Even looking through the comments to Edward’s post it is easy to see that there is is some confusion when it comes to how people perceive what is being discussed. The one’s that disagreed with Edward more often than not seemed to be missing the thrust of his point. Where Edward was trying to make the point in relation to social media the commenter’s where defending their points of view by using examples that have nothing to do with social media.

As commenter Ben Kunz, who called Edward’s points “absolutely wrong” said

But the broader the audience, the sharper the response. Adweek columns draw a bit of hostility. When I’ve written pointed opinions for BusinessWeek to a very diverse readership, damn, all hell breaks loose. I thought the Widget Association Whatever was going to lynch me when I called animated boxes on web pages a passing fad.

Excuse me but none of those examples have anything to do with social media or the other examples that Edward was using.

Some of the underlying themes as to why we see this type of “can’t we just all get along” mentality appear to be along the following lines

Time: in order to be able to craft a well reasoned and thought out objection to some-one’s ideas or thoughts takes time and people don’t want to spend the time needed to respond. As well I would add it takes a willingness to defend one’s own points of view when it comes to the subject being discussed.
Attention Span: with all the information constantly coming our way becoming involved with long drawn out discussions that require a larger portion of our attention than pithy one-line responses before skipping on to the next tidbit of information isn’t something that a lot of people want to do.
Fear: as the emotions around discussions can increase the more likelihood that tempers will get heated and out will come the dreaded “troll” word. No-one wants to be labeled as such a person so we either hold back honest opinion or we don’t get involved at all.
Closed Circle: because we only have so much time in a day that we can spend being involved in online discussions or reading it is human nature to gravitate to those who match our own “world-view”. This type of closed circle of reading and involvement very rarely leads to heated discussions where we are pushed to defend points of view and at the same time learn from each other.

This idea that Social Media is all about “goodness and light” can be seen in the popularity and reader, follower/friends, numbers. Take a look on Twitter and the Social Media leader board there and you will see that the “always positive” contingent has follower numbers that are through the roof, whereas those that like to push the limits, those that question the ‘status quo’ have a lot less followers e.g.: @1938media. When it comes to blogs it is people like Chris Brogan, Louis Gray and others who find their readership grow by leaps and bounds. Those on the other hand who constantly question the “social media party line” often find themselves relegated to the blogging hinterland.

In the Social Media realm there seems to be this need to put on a face of everything is positive and those nasty little negative people are only an aberration. The primary reason for this of course is because Social Media is the current golden child of the Internet and there are a lot of people investing their futures in it which means having to paint a pretty picture in order to make it palatable for companies because we all know this is where the money is when it comes to making a living.

The problem is that all this warm and fuzzy can make things very boring and eventually drain the life out of Social Media. As Ryan said in his post

It’s so hard to start a good fight on Twitter. Praise someone effusively, it gets "re-tweeted" endlessly, while nice juicy feuds get smothered in the crib. Every Twitter user is president of his own fraternity. How stale!

Stale indeed.

Poison pen wielder of Skanks in NYC revealed as… Rosemary Port?

Kim LaCapria — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 15:27:18 +0000

Rosemary Port, 29, is the party-girl behind the curtain of now-defunct, legally plagued blog Skanks in NYC.

Port, an unemployed nightclub promoter, is none too pleased with the forcible unmasking and is said to be exploring legal action against Google. (Poor Google, they can’t seem to please anyone in this whole kerfuffle.) Port has retained the services of a lawyer, who spoke to the NY Post about his client’s reaction to the surprising verdict:

Port countered yesterday by hiring hotshot Manhattan lawyer Sal Strazzullo, who said his client doesn’t regret the blog — “she regrets the court’s decision” that her identity should be revealed.

“I’m shocked that my right to privacy has been tampered with,” Port said in a statement.

Strazzullo said Port is “very scared” her name is now public, and “confused” about how a judge could let that happen. “This doesn’t happen to people every day.”

The post couldn’t wrangle a comment out of Port, although her boyfriend charmingly told a reporter “you wish you had my life” as the couple hopped into a car on the Lower East Side. The boyfriend, Daniel Dimin, is apparently the inspiration for the whole Skanks in NYC debacle. Port is said to have begun the blog after target Liskula Cohen trash-talked Port to Dimin.

Cohen also had another round of attention from the Post- she was interviewed after opting to drop the $3m defamation suit against Port. And in the article, she seems to be just as nutty as her litigious ways might suggest. When the reporter appears to be noting Cohen’s smoking habit, Cohen flies off the handle:

“My grandmother wouldn’t like it,” she said cutely. I wrote it down. A throwaway line.

Oh. My. God.

In an instant, lovely Liskula turned on me in a sputtering, cursing fury. It was not pretty.

“What are you doing?” she snarled. “Leave my family out of this!

“What do you think — I’m a f- – -ing asshole?” she said, staring straight into my eyes while unleashing a torrent of curses that nearly made me lose my pen.

“That isn’t nice, is it? IS IT?!!” she demanded.

Waah: Liskula Cohen goes after blogging because someone called her a skank

Kim LaCapria — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:24:49 +0000

And she’s not gonna take that lying down.

Liskula Cohen, a NYC party girl who dabbled in modeling before her face was disfigured in a 2007 attack with a broken bottle, won a ruling to reveal the identity of the writer of a blog calling Cohen a skank. Yes. She went to court and sued Google because someone called her a skank. But as the above picture illustrates, isn’t truth and absolute defense against libel?

The blog has since been pulled down, but Gawker gacked the text that sent Cohen sobbing to the courts about her reputation and the mean mean words on teh internets:

I would have to say that the first place award for “Skankiest in NYC” would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen. How old is this skank? 40 something? She’s a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank.

Yeah she may have been hot 10 years ago, but is it really attractive to watch this old hag straddle dudes in a nightclub or lounge? Desperation seeps from her soul, if she even has one.

Enjoy the pic.

Bloggers have long endured attacks on free speech and attempts by those who wish to silence them, but this is the first ruling of its sort. From PC World:

…The Delaware Supreme Court overturned a decision to reveal a blogger’s identity, after the person accused a local politician of having “an obvious mental deterioration.” A second posting said the politician “is as paranoid as everyone in the town thinks he is.”

The court favored the blogger, fearing that unmasking him or her would have a chilling effect on anonymous speech. Furthermore, the court said that blogs often provide an open forum for the offended party to respond directly to the original posts.

More recently, a Maryland court protected anonymous posters on a newspaper’s Internet forum, after a local Dunkin’ Donuts store manager claimed they were defaming him by calling the restaurant dirty. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed an earlier decision to reveal the posters’ identity, but laid out a five-step process for judges to follow in future defamation cases, including alerting anonymous posters of a subpoena by a message on the site in question, and offering a clear statement of how the inflammatory comments caused damage.

Thanks to Cohen’s sad inability to tolerate unkind assessments, bloggers have a whole new set of legal concerns. While libel and slander are one thing, this blogger was taken to court for her opinion. That’s a frightening thing, even scarier because a judge sided with Cohen on the matter. The blogger’s attorney insists it’s a First Amendment issue:

“These words are not actionable,” Salisbury said. “They were not nice, they were insulting, offensive to some. That does not mean that the law provides redress for these insults. So the defense is really, this is free speech.”

So, what do you think? Is calling someone a skank protected free speech, or defamation?

FAIL Blog to Guinness Book: Welcome teh internets. Please RTFM.

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:07:10 +0000

Last week, FAIL blog pointed out that there was a world record for “Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Act” occupied by 9/11.

What’s more, this record had a page that encouraged someone to “break this record.” *facepalm* So FAIL blog made a fail out of it, and Guinness World Records Limited got their panties all in a twist. GWRL sent the standard “blogger, stand down” e-mail, to which FAIL blog responded with some epic win. The removed the pic- sort of- but in a way that ensures the outcome is way less desireable for GWRL, and guarantees more people will know a) that it happened and b) that GWRL are “douchebaggy cyber-bullies.”

Well played, FAIL blog. Full text (and pic) of the anti-apology:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thanks for writing us an email regarding the “Record Breaking Fail”. Unfortunately, douchebaggy cyber-bullying emails will only bring upon you more shame on your house. I am also resisting the urge to write this email in ALL CAPS.

I believe it is the duty of FAIL Blog(TM) to call out organizations when they encourage the public to do such things as “Break the record” for the “Most Individuals Killed In A Terrorist Act”. We firmly believe that our publication of your fail is protected under the concepts of fair use, commentary and non-trademark use. Please RTFM and we welcome you to teh interwebs.

Since we at FAIL Blog(TM) don’t have a legal defense department, we have complied with your request to remove the trademarked term and logo from the original image. We have used the “naughty bits filter” on the image to secure your naughty, naughty, trademark assertions. However, we have posted your email so that our audience can see why we had to remove the name of the failer from the image. I hope that this is the outcome you have expected as now NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS LIMITED HAS FAILED.

The full legal response can be read here: icanhaz.com/legalresponse

Cheers,
FAIL Blog

Hee, hee.

[Source: FAIL blog]

(Video) Blogger, please… don’t say BJ on the news

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:47:59 +0000

Kind of scary looking blogger Marcy Wheeler raised a few eyebrows by using a common euphemism for oral sex on a MSNBC segment.

Marcy’s expressing frustration at lack of investigation into the recent news that Dick Cheney supressed a whole frickload of information from the POTUS and Congress, and she invokes the whole “Clinton got impeached for a BJ” argument. The anchors quickly begin tripping over themselves to apologize on Marcy’s behalf but the damage has already been done. Won’t someone please think of the children?!?

Girl, you’re making us all look like we don’t have home-training or manners!

No related posts.

Eleven examples of techno-diversity fail

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:30:36 +0000

Not too long ago, we discussed whether or not hating on MySpace makes you a big fat racialist.

In the vein of technology and awkward race relations, 11 Points (because top 10 lists are for cowards) has a hilarious post cataloguing eleven instances where Photoshop (or perhaps Gimp) were used to create the illusion of diversity. The University of Wisconsin (above) isn’t the only collegiate culprit – Towson and the University of Texas have some embarrassing course catalogs as well. And the Olympics, with mysterious floating disembodied black hands.

My personal favorite was the unfortunate black man that was ’shopped right off the edge of a tiny rowboat full of men in uniform. Well, almost- they did leave his knee.

[Source: 11 Points]

Fancy Fast Food is kind of recession chic

Kim LaCapria — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:00:14 +0000

Remember all the fancy places you used to go eat while we were all throwing around imaginary money?

Fancy Fast Food recreates the pretty platters at upscale restaurants using only the ingredients found in fast food meals. A bit of alchemy with Burger King breakfasts, Taco Bell dollar menu items and Big Macs yields some pretty cool-looking results.

Tapas made out of White Castle stuff.

Spicy chicken sushi made from Popeye’s food.

(Top: Breakfast quiche from a BK Croissan’wich.)

[Fancy Fast Food via Consumerist]

Myth: Reporting the news is what makes it news

Steven Hodson — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:29:39 +0000

If journalists don’t write about it does that mean that news doesn’t happen and if they do does that mean they have some sort of copyright over the reporting of that news?

For as long as there has been a news industry what is considered important enough to take up so-called valuable space on a printed collection of paper or take up valuable airtime has been limited to a select few. It is the people in editorial boardroom or producer’s offices who decide what they think we need to see or read each day. The majority of the time it is the news that is most likely aimed to promote our most visceral responses – hence the popularity of “bad news” being the good news.

It’s good news for the news gatekeepers because it is almost guaranteed to bring in the most readers or viewers. The worst the disaster, the juicier the scandal, or the more heart-wrenching the story, the better. Sure we every once in a while go through our angst ridden worrying that the news is too negative and that there isn’t enough good news. The problem is good news isn’t profitable news and what is important to the news industry is the stuff that keeps the shareholders happy and the management bonuses flowing.

As Jeff Jarvis points out today

The realization of that myth – the myth of necessity – hit me head-on when I read an unselfconsciously narcissistic feature in The New York Times this week about the room where the 4 p.m. news meeting is held. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has likened that meeting to a “religious ceremony.” The Times feature certainly acted as if it were taking us inside the Pope’s chapel: “The table was formidable: oval and elegant, with curves of gleaming wood. The editors no less so: 11 men and 7 women with the power to decide what was important in the world.”

Behold the hubris of that: They decide what is important. Because we can’t. That’s what it says. That’s what they believe.

I was trained to accept that myth: that journalists decide what’s important, that it’s a skill with which they are imbued: news judgment. I worked hard to gain and exercise that judgment. The myth further holds that no judgment of importance is more important than The Times’; that’s why, every night, it sends out to the rest of newspaperdom its choices. News isn’t news until it’s reported and it’s not important until The Times says so.

Our supply of news is dictated to us minute by minute, day by day. That doesn’t mean though that it is the only news out there. An incredible amount of new worthy things are going on everyday – from the bad to the good. Just because the large majority of it doesn’t make it through the editorial “money” filter doesn’t change the fact that those events or information isn’t news.

The news isn’t about the reporting of it. It isn’t about the people writing about it. News is about the event, the happening, the information. It is about the people who were involved with the event. It is about the people who made the happening happen. It is about the people who created the information.

What the new media, blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Facebook (to a lesser degree) did was to allow the people responsible for creating the news to be the ones that distributed the news. Or as Dave Winer put it – “The new world pays the source, indirectly, and obviates the middleman”. No longer is our flow of news being dictated to us by the select few and what they think is important. We are getting to make those decisions now.

However being entrenched as our sole providers of what is important in the world isn’t something that the news industry will give up without a fight. Rather than try and find their way in a new world of news and information distribution that doesn’t flow through their gates, the industry is trying to bend and manipulate this new media into their way of doing business.

The news industry of the past is locked into the believing that if they aren’t the ones reporting the ‘news’ then it doesn’t exist. It is because of this belief that they then turn around and try and claim ownership of the ‘news’. Because they are the ones that paid someone to write about something that happened the industry figures that they have an ownership – a copyright – over it all even right down to barring online linking to that news or information.

In their effort to bend this new media way of getting our news the only thing the news industry is doing is hastening the breaking of their stranglehold on the distribution of the news. They still have all the same abilities to reports the news and the people who are a part of that news. All they are losing is the exclusive rights to distribute it – as they should.

News isn’t distribution and who controls it, news is what is happening in and around our lives except now we are the ones who can distribute it – as it should be.

Judge Posner: Ban Linking to save newspapers

Steven Hodson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:00:00 +0000

I think there should be a new law – lawyers and judges who don’t have the first clue of how the web works should automatically disallow themselves from any involvement with anything resembling legal decisions or arguments that have to do with technology of any kind. When they do they only show to the world exactly how little they understand how things work and how dangerous they are.

Case in point is the recent ramblings of Judge Posner on a blog he shares with another judge, The Becker-Posner Blog, in which he waxes romantically about the importance of newspapers but at the same time is pessimistic about their chance of survival. He concludes this ode to newspapers by uttering the most moronic collection of words that you could imagine anyone, let alone a judge, about how the newspaper industry could be saved.

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

- Judge Posner

Now others like Jeff Jarvis and Stowe Boyd have already done a good job off ridiculing the thought that the banning of links is the way to save the newspapers, not to mention the obvious threat to First Amendment rights.

This is another case — like the failed attempt of the music industry to stop the spread of digital music — where those who ‘own’ the elements of our culture want to make us pay for the privilege of living in our culture. And of course, the bug media companies would strike deals with each other to cross link, creating an oligarchy, and pushing all the non-professionals out.

People like Posner would figure out how to make us pay for air, if they could.

- Stowe Boyd

Good God. Posner is not just trying to mold the new world to old laws – which is issue enough – but is trying to change the law to protect the old world and its incumbents from the new world and its innovators. He is willing to throw out fair comment and free speech for them. That is dangerous.

- Jeff Jarvis

The point that I wanted to look at is Posner’s apparent believe in the illusion that the news industry can stay doing business the same way that it has since almost the first turn of a printing press. In his post he likes to point the finger at the rising cost of producing the physical medium by which we read the news. As well he condemns those “not affiliated with a newspaper” living like vultures off of the still breathing carcass of the news industry.

So what will happen to news and information? Online news is free for two reasons. First, in the case of a newspaper, the marginal cost of providing content online is virtually zero, since it is the same content (or a selection of the content) in a different medium. Second, online providers of news who are not affiliated with a newspaper can provide links to newspaper websites and paraphrase articles in newspapers, in neither case being required to compensate the newspaper.

- Judge Posner

The judge ties this in with the current economic problems and how people are abandoning an outmoded way of getting their news for ways that suite their needs better, which unfortunately are free.

What Posner doesn’t seem to want to admit is that maybe – just maybe – newspapers are failing because their model of delivering the news just doesn’t work anymore. It might be nice to blame the economy, the readers, those nasty new media vultures – when in fact they are just the symptom of a world that is moving on to discovering new and better ways to get their daily news and information.

The idea that any industry will remain invulnerable to change as we move inexorably into the future is flawed. Try as they might all industries as we know them today will change no matter how many roadblocks they might try to put in the way. Change will come regardless of how people like Judge Posner try and turn back the clock.

Any business today that still wants to be here in the future will only do so if they acknowledge that no matter how hard they try they can’t roll back time. When they do the only thing they are postponing is the reading of their epitaph – which will probably happen online.

The blurring line between blogger and journalists

Steven Hodson — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:11:38 +0000

The other day Duncan wrote about how a group of ex-Seattle Post-Intelligencer journalists have banded together and created a new Seattle oriented news site called Seattle Post Globe. While the story in of itself was interesting it got me thinking about something.

For as long as there have been blogs there has been this contention; especially among old media journalists, that blogging was in no way comparable to the work they did. Blogging was just a bunch of wise-asses who couldn’t string a coherent sentence together if their lives depended on it. It was the overriding opinion that nothing could supplant good well sourced journalism – which blogging definitely wasn’t.

But oh how times have changed in the last five years or so. Newspaper after newspaper is either seeking the protection of Chapter 11 or just shutting the doors. Journalists are seeing the once proud profession being thrown into disarray as the advertising foundation that supported their work is in itself in a state of confusion. This is leaving many journalists wondering what the hell they are suppose to be doing next.

Out of these ashes though many journalists are banding together and relaunching themselves on the web. Just as the new Seattle Post Globe gets its feet wet in this new world we have seen the same thing happen with journalists from the former East Valley Tribune and the Rocky Mountain News. The interesting thing is as you look at these new journalist offerings is that they are built around the same format as blogs.

This of course raises an interesting question. Have these journalists become what many of their profession despise and blame for the fall of newspapers?

Have they in effect become bloggers?

If this is indeed the case then what makes them any different from those of us that have been blogging all this time?

As we see more and more of this type of thing happening; and trust me we will, has the line separating journalists and bloggers finally been blurred beyond recognition?

Have bloggers and journalists / columnists finally become one and the same?

Huffington Post announces investigative journalism venture

Steven Hodson — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:25:02 +0000

One of the things we are constantly hearing as we move from an old media world to a new media world is the danger of losing investigative journalism as newspapers head further in their downward spiral. so it is interesting to read of the announcement on Huffington Post that they will be funding; in collaboration with Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors, the Huffington Post Investigation Fund. The fund will have an annual budget of $1.75 million which will be enough for ten staff journalist.

This venture came about because Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief, is concerned that the massive layoffs being experienced in the newspaper industry is hurting investigative journalism at a time when it is needed most. Huffington also hopes that this move will encourage others to fund similar ventures.

The Huffington Post skews liberal, but its founder promised that the work done by the investigative fund would be nonpartisan. The group would be discredited quickly if it puts out faulty information, said Nick Penniman, the fund’s executive director.

"We care about democracy, not Democrats," he said.

Rosenstiel said the HuffPost is following another recent trend encouraging content to be reproduced virally for maximum exposure, instead of trying to direct people exclusively to the site.

The HuffPost also promises to give a higher profile to work produced by other reporting groups, such as The Center for Public Integrity and The Institute for Justice and Journalism.

Source: Huffington Post

I realize that there is probably going to be a lot of controversy over this just because it is the Huffington Post but it is an encouraging sign that we are at least trying to find new ways to keep journalism alive.

How many ways can I tell you this is a f#@*ing bad idea

Steven Hodson — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:56:38 +0000

I am a strong proponent for bloggers trying to monetize their work. There is a very fine line though, that we walk between reasonable advertising on blogs and RSS feeds and poisoning the well. It is all too easy to step over than line and end up doing ourselves more damage with reader dissatisfaction as we chase that elusive fine line.

As much as I believe in the right for bloggers to run advertisements as a way to make a living we are betrayed by other bloggers who go heavy on advertising. It is a constant battle for responsible blogger trying to make a few bucks on one hand and not pissing off their readers on the other hand. Tie this in with the epidemic; it seems that way sometimes, of ad blindness and the proliferation of ad blockers that people use with a sense of entitlement and that fine line becomes a razor’s edge.

For the longest time RSS feed were the refuge against advertising insanity that seem to engulf blogs as advertising on RSS feeds was next to nil. Sure there were a few companies that were trying to utilize RSS feeds as a new advertising playground but for the most part they were pretty marginal. Then along came the purchase of Feedburner; and their ad network, by Google and within a short period of time they rolled out AdSense for RSS feed.

In the beginning it was primarily text based ads that were the staple of AdSense for feeds but that quickly expanded to include those irritating square graphic ads.Generally though, with the exception of the ads; especially the square ones, that showed up at the top of an RSS feed post the ads were pretty unobtrusive. That could all change if one of the original ad networks for RSS feed has its way.

According to a post on Clickz, this week will see the launch of video ads in RSS feeds using the Pheedo ad network

The feed management firm and ad network has begun offering video ads that can reach the users Google Reader, Bloglines, NewsGator and other feed readers. Universal Studios, National Geographic and Fox Searchlight are among the early advertisers to use the product, according to the firm. Pheedo represents ad inventory inside feeds owned by New York Times, CBS, Huffington Post, and a great many smaller publishers.

“The challenge as in anything with RSS ad serving is making it work with syndicated traffic,” Pheedo CEO Bill Flitter told me today. “Now, video advertising in RSS is scalable and possible hasn’t been done before.”

Anyone stop to think that the reason this idea hasn’t been done before is because it is a fucking lousy idea. For bloggers it will be a way to further antagonize our readers and help spread the disease of ad blindness. For our readers this will only further confirm that bloggers are in it just for the money and don’t deserve to be supported in any fashion.

This idea has to be stopped dead in its tracks. It is a bad idea for everyone involved – including the advertisers because the last thing they want is to be trying to sell to pissed of people.