My favorite closing night RNC content on Twitter.

Posted: August 31, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Internet, Politics | Leave a comment »

I kept tweeting, and RTing tweets about this election year’s RNC, and then thought instead of annoying my followers who aren’t into politics, why don’t I just make a Storify? Enjoy!

Teens are lying about being cyberbullied now, or something?

Posted: August 29, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Internet | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

A writer wrote about a predominantly teen issue in a way I found offensive so I wrote a rebuttal. The writer found it and countered, clearly still missing my point.

Because it looks like I have to spell everything out in really plain text, here we go:

Let’s say you write about a web community as an unbiased journalist; if the piece you wrote was an accurate reflection of the community, someone somewhere within the community would have something positive to say about your piece.  Something like, “hi, thanks for writing this!” at least.

But what if ALL the feedback you receive from the community is negative?

Well, then you did something wrong, something got lost in translation. (Did anyone from the 1D Larry community say anything positive about the article? I looked and couldn’t find it.) We’re not talking about one or two trolls, we’re talking everyone had a problem with it.

Further, if feedback from said community uses words like “bullying,” “harassment” or “victimized,” how can you not realize you did something wrong? If it is minors saying it, well, …shit.

Whether you meant to bully or not does not erase the experience thousands of young women said they had. Did thousands of teens (tweens and 20 year olds too) secretly conspire and all agree that article you wrote about them made them feel ashamed of themselves and their internet activities? Was it all a grand conspiracy to accuse a journalist of wrongfully cyberbullying them? No, obviously not. These ideas must have come from somewhere, from somewhere in your post.

The writer of the post in question wrote of her piece, “It explicitly avoided shaming the practice of shipping Harry/Louis.”

If it explicitly “avoided shaming the practice of shipping Harry/Louis,” then why did the people in the community reading it take it that way? Are they just all making it up?

Again, I repeat so it sinks in: Just because you say it isn’t so does not make it so. Just because you said you didn’t bully or shame doesn’t mean anything if thousands of young women are crying about the words you wrote about them. Teens don’t casually accuse journalists of bullying or shaming them, and dismissing and denying their complaints comes off like you don’t respect them. Denying it does not make their trauma, their pain and frustration any less real, either.

It makes you look like you think they are crazy, at best.

Wait, they already think you think they are “crazy”…

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Journalists! Please don’t cyberbully teens because of their sexual fantasies!

Posted: August 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Internet | Tags: , , , , | 96 Comments »

Everyone is on the Internet now. Including your grandparents and children.

It’s a crazy digital world, and journalists covering the Internet literally go where no other writer has gone before. These journalists are on occasion making the rules up as they go, too.

These Internet writers hang out in weird fetish bars (think 4chan or Reddit) or peep in on journalists exchanging proverbial blows in a virtual newsroom (think a Twitter or Google+ debate).

Sometimes in their quest for a story, these writers even spy on teens gossiping in bathrooms about homoerotic sex, and because said teens don’t think anyone is listening they don’t bother locking the door. (In this particular case, that bathroom is Tumblr, and the privacy settings are off.)

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The Wall Street Journal continues to botch YouTube coverage

Posted: August 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Business, Marketing, Media, YouTube | 1 Comment »

I am browsing Twitter past everyone’s bed-time, like I do, and I come across a The Next Web article (courtesy of Steffen Konrath) about The Wall Street Journal’s latest reporting snafu.

The WSJ had erroneously reported Google is pledging an additional $200 million in its premium content channel’s marketing budget. This caused a “rais[ing of] eyebrows” as it made the pledged total marketing budget $400 million. That’s a shit ton of money, especially when you consider Google only gave 150 million to the content creators.  A 150 million pie being split with 100 channels!  ”Channels,” which equate to established YouTube celebrities AND people like Felicia Day, Deepak Chopra and Kevin Smith, AND their entire film and production crews. (Tiny pie slices, ’cause we’re all on diets, right?)

Established YouTubers have complained about this injustice, this discrepancy in funding which they claim proves Google doesn’t take what they do seriously – (how can you compete with TV if you don’t invest properly in the content, Google!?) – and this additional $200 million figure (and slight) was cause for more complaint.

According to this executive, the funding his company received from Google allows it to spend about $1,000 a minute on each video production made for its channel.

“But $1,000 a finished minute is not enough,” he explained. “You need to get to around $2,100. At $1,000 a minute, you’re pulling favors every time you do a shoot. If you’re just pulling a location permit in L.A., it’s going to cost you $900.”

Long story short, Google told TNW they are not investing $400 million. The WSJ was confusing that time in May when Google pledged $200 towards marketing its premium content. Oops!!

Shortly after that WSJ article was posted, RWW founder Richard MacManus sends me a link to it on skype:

[7/31/2012 3:57:39 PM] Richard MacManus: Have you seen this Fruzsina? http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10000872396390444840104577549632241258356-lMyQjAxMTAyMDMwMDAzODA3Wj.html

[7/31/2012 3:58:14 PM] fruzsina.eordogh: no!

[7/31/2012 3:58:32 PM] fruzsina.eordogh: the wall street journal always publishes news that is years old, pretending it’s fresh

[7/31/2012 3:59:00 PM] fruzsina.eordogh: google already pledged 200 mil in advertising

[7/31/2012 4:04:03 PM] fruzsina.eordogh: I don’t find anything informative about this article…

[7/31/2012 4:04:15 PM] fruzsina.eordogh: it has a nice chart

So, you know that part in the skype chat where I said the WSJ likes to publish news that is “years old, pretending it’s fresh?” I was referring to this time in February 2012 when the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Ray William Johnson being YouTube’s first millionaire. (RWJ became YouTube’s first millionaire in April 2011.)

Please note the 49 comments on that RWJ article, many of which are from YouTubers pointing out various factual inaccuracies in the article.  RWJ even ranted about how horrible the article was in an episode of his show (a very rare move)… and it looks like the WSJ NEVER BOTHERED to correct all of those factual inaccuracies, nor did they apologize.

This post has been brought to you by this tumblr post. 

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