Silicon Valley Users Guide: Gossiping to reporter backfires -- hurray! |
| Published: October 24, 2007, 4:25 pm |
| Tags: dave winer, feature, great moments in journalism, michael arrington, silicon valley users guide, techcrunch, top |
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I'll be sad if Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington ever figures out what all those tedious journalism-school terms like off the record and deep background actually mean. Because I hate the way tech people act as if Arrington and other established writers work for them. They see journalists as outsourced copywriters, under specific orders what and what not to write. Yesterday Arrington blogged, "We got a senior person at MySpace to talk to us about it off record .. . this person confirmed that [MySpace cofounder Tom Anderson] is really '36 or 37' and that MySpace has been trying to keep this quiet." He was promptly chewed out by a member of the Valley's most know-it-all caste: a software engineer.Anyone talking to media knows that telling a journalist something "off the record" ... clearly means that the comments aren't to be used a primary source. The point of "off the record" is to steer a journalist the right way so they can dig in deeper and get the real story from a real source, [ Full article ] |
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