That wonderful fact checking at News Corp (the same quality checking that saw me named by News Corp as having hacked the site of the Australian Prime minister) has struck again, and this time it’s at the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ has been forced to pull a column on the basis that it has discovered nearly one month after it was published that not only was the content plagiarized, it also contained made up names for quotes, ala the Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times.

The Journal writes

A Nov. 10 “New Global Indian” online column by New York City freelance writer Mona Sarika has been found to contain information that was plagiarized from several publications, including the Washington Post, Little India, India Today and San Francisco magazine. In the column, “Homeward Bound,” about H-1B visa holders returning to India, Ms. Sarika also re-used direct quotes from other publications, without attribution, and changed the original speakers’ names to individuals who appear to be fabricated. The column is the only work by Ms. Sarika to be published by the Journal, and it has been removed from the Journal’s Web sites.

Mistakes do happen to the best of publications, but it’s more than a little rich for News Corp to constantly suggest that their editorial and checking procedures are beyond reproach when even their most esteemed publication gets it wrong on occasion.

10 points to the first person to bring this up against News Corp employees when they play the “we’re perfect” card at a future of media type conference.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I’m The Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”

2009: Via social networking.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today about the newfound popularity of vengeance over the web: webtribution, they call it. Apparently, wreaking havoc on the lives of those who wronged you used to be a huge pain in the ass. It was easy to get caught and embarrassing if you were found out. But now that everyone and your mom has a Facebook account, it’s not too hard to at the very least shame the hell out someone who’s upset you, and just as easy to damage their marriage, career and social standing.

Of course, the web has been used for revenge since its inception. And the WSJ discovered 4chan in its research:

“We know that in a mob people will do socially unacceptable things they would never otherwise do,” says Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center and professor of psychology at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Mass. “They feel invisible, so they cede responsibility.”

But it’s not until recent years that webtribution has really soared alongside venues like Facebook and MySpace, where everyone’s relatives, friends, co-workers and exes are gathered into one easy place. The WSJ article tells the tale of a woman who revealed her husband’s betrayal via his Facebook account, remaining remorseless even while the couple is trying to mend their marriage:

…when she found out her husband was cheating on her last March, she logged onto his Facebook account, deleted all his privacy settings—allowing anyone to see his page—and created a new status update for him: “Moving back to my mom’s because my wife caught me cheating with a woman from work.”

Almost immediately, her husband’s friends began sending questions, which Ms. Eschbach answered, acting as him. She named the other woman and explained that the affair had been going on for four years and had been carried on over lunch, sometimes at the woman’s house, sometimes in a car. She asked if anyone had a room for rent. Finally, she disparaged his physical attributes, adding that “I am surprised Jackie stayed with me for so long.”

“I wanted everyone to know what a jerk he was, and this was the easiest way to do it without saying it to each person’s face,” says Ms. Eschbach, 39 years old.

By the time she was done about an hour later, there were 55 comments from family and friends on her husband’s Facebook page. Some asked if the status updates were true. Others, including his sisters, angrily criticized her husband and the other woman.

Okay, show of hands- who wasn’t totally like go, the wife in that story! But of course, web vengeance isn’t always (or maybe even often) fair. The piece begins citing a woman who claims to have been wrongly outed as a homewrecker by the ex-girlfriend of her now husband. The potential exists for all of us to be damaged by a romantic rival, a disgruntled co-worker or someone who just plain doesn’t like us.

While it’s worse news for jerks, it does kind of give the average schmuck a bit more insurance they’ll be treated more fairly across the board- retribution resolution is just one scathing Yelp review or blog post away.(Liskula Cohen most definitely disagrees with me there). But venting anger on the web doesn’t always have to be about revenge in a vacuum- scams and questionable business practices are exposed through web anger, too. In the comments, I’d be interested in hearing if you’ve ever been on either side of web revenge. Have you used social media, blog posts or message boards to vent at someone specific? Or have you been on the receiving end?

[Source: WSJ via Gawker]

Hyperlocal news startup Fwix is one of the smart new breed of hyperlocal players finally making a go in a fabled yet long unprofitable space, and yet apparently story telling now extends to their latest payment idea.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Fwix is “going where Google and other giants haven’t: sharing revenue with the people who write the news” by “agreeing to split revenue with the people who write the local information.”

It gets better: from the CEO: “One of the things I want to change in the industry is how we pay people that are producing the content.”

Yes, apparently this revenue sharing thing is new and radical, a massive shift in what has been done before, because revenue sharing is such a amazing idea that it has never been tried before.

Except that it’s one of the oldest payment models in blogging and has been used by every one from two man blogs through to huge concerns for years. I should know, I was a co-founder of a VC backed blog network that was founded in 2005 exclusively on revenue sharing for…wait for it…bloggers.

The sarcasm aside and the obvious lack of research from the Wall Street Journal, the original Fwix release doesn’t actually claim credit for revenue sharing. Somewhere between the release and the Wall Street Journal, the interesting part was overlooked until later in the article: Fwix’s new AdWire service is not just rev sharing with their bloggers (nothing new), but with sites that embed their widgets and send them traffic as well.

I can’t recall having previously seen rev share applied to people running widgets before, although widgets used for advertising purposes (with money changing hands) isn’t new. I’d give a review of the widgets except for two things: Fwix has perhaps the most detail-less info pages I’ve ever seen for a service like this, and every site they claim is running the widgets don’t show the widgets when I visit them. On the last point I’m thinking geotargeting, given there’s a dirty great big blank space on The DailyKos where I’d presume there would normally be an ad…or in this case, the Fwix widget.

To be fair to Fwix, it’s more likely that the Wall Street Journal is following in the proud tradition of its parent company with sloppy reporting, but likewise the record could have been corrected.

Marriott says it’s seen a 25 percent drop in newspaper demand by guests. “I visit more than 250 hotels a year, and more often than not, I’m stepping over unclaimed newspapers as I walk down the hallway,” says CEO J.W. Marriott, Jr.

Starting this month, you’ll be asked at check-in whether you want to receive the paper outside your door in the morning. You can opt to get USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, a local paper, or nothing at all.

Marriott says it was the first major hotel company to start offering automatic paper delivery about 25 years ago.

The Journal’s new look may appear more modern, but the principles behind it could not be more antiquated. In our information-driven era, the subscription-based news service appears ostensibly misguided and misplaced.

Consider this: Only 5 percent of the WSJ’s average Web audience pays for a subscription. Ninety-five percent of the visitors, then, are non-paying. Yet, the Journal is restricting its most unique (and thus highest traffic potential) content to a tiny fraction of its audience.

Imagine how much more overall traffic the site could pull in if those non-paying visitors had the added value of that enterprise content within the wsj.com site. Instead, they constantly have the experience of clicking onto something that they can’t read, getting frustrated, and then going elsewhere to find the information. More site-direct traffic, of course, equals more advertising dollars — and with the kind of high-paying advertisers a brand like the Wall Street Journal could secure, that means a lot more cash ultimately flowing through its coffers.

Information these days is free for the taking, and trying to fight it only hurts media companies in the end. Unless Lars Ulrich is on the Journal’s advisory board, I find it hard to comprehend why the paper is reinforcing stereotypes about old media’s lack of understanding of new technology and 2.0-style thinking. In an era when so many newspapers are struggling to stay alive, this type of non-adaptive thinking just seems counterintuitive.

I guess the one good thing, though, is that the new design does more clearly mark the subscription-only content — which will make things far easier for those of us with the handy knowledge of how to access it without paying. (Hint: Headline. Google News. Search.)

In the article Too Fit to be President?, Wall Street Journal political correspondent Amy Chozick endeavored in the best News Corp tabloid style to create a story around the rather bizarre notion that voters wouldn’t vote for Obama because he was too thin, saying that “some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.”

In the piece, she includes the quote “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” and originally didn’t attribute the source. Sadly No reports that the source was a Yahoo Message Board where Chozick actually asked for negative comments using her own name:

Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president? Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his “no excess body fat”? Please let me know. Thanks!

Some of the early responses

Easy to see that for some people in the world, totally meaningless drivel is what keeps them occupied and up at night.

The good news is that these people probably do not see the real problems in the world – living in the one they are in.

Hopefully, there is something that can legally keep you from voting – or remember to vote on November 20th – you will miss the rush!

les1954

Re: Is Obama too skinny to be president? 15-Jul-08 10:21 pm
Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.

onlinebeerbellygirl

I’ve added the emphasis in the last response, but it’s the exact line used in the Wall Street Journal. Yes, Onlinebeerbellygirl is the source.

The Wall Street Journal has since amended the article to include where the comment came from, complete with correction statement at the end of the post. Besides the entire premise of the story being bizarre and trashy at best, is the mainstream media suffering so much from budget cuts and cut throat competition that one of the most respected papers in the world has to resort to sourcing quotes from people known as onlinebeerbellygirl on Yahoo Message Boards? It doesn’t bide well for the future of quality journalism, does it.