Technosailor - Latest Comments in Om Malik Blows it

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Brian Clark — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:31:04 -0000

Great conversation going on here Aaron, thanks. It's a perplexing topic.

I for one am certainly no journalist. But if I don't take care when stating things outside the scope of opinion, I know someone will certainly catch it.

So even if I wasn't naturally anal, the blogosphere is a pretty powerful fact checker in itself.

On the other hand, I see things slip by as fact on blogs all the time. For example, I've given up trying to correct people's inaccurate recitations of law in too many contexts to count. I feel like I should correct this stuff, but it's exhausting and certainly not a productive use of my time.

Credibility is important; in fact, more and more it's really all we have. Degrees don't guarantee accuracy, neither do institutions.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Zoe — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 03:17:30 -0000

Om doesn’t always communicate his thoughts as well as he could.

That's a shame for a blogger - but just plain unconvincing for a journalist.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Michael — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:04:48 -0000

Om doesn't always communicate his thoughts as well as he could. Not having been there, I won't speculate on what he meant to say. But it could be a simple communication issue.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:49:05 -0000

Oops. :) Corrected...

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Lauren — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:46:10 -0000

Haha...I am forever screwed with my screen name being hornline. My last name is hard enough to spell (Hoernlein) without the added complication of a alternate spelling as my alias. Aaron, you are not the first one to jumble the two, and I am sure you will not be the last!

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:36:10 -0000

Alot of differing opinions on that. For me, It was a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Then, I've never gone to an event like it so its hard to compare. I met some great people and am about to make the mistake of a lifetime - trying to remember all their names.

Lessee. Greg Narain, Prince Campbell (chartreuse), Neil Patel, Dave Krug, Mark Jaiquith, Andy Skelton, Matt Mullenweg, Ryan Boren, Niall Kennedy, Scott Beale, Podz, Jeffrey McManus, Loren Feldman, and Lauren <del datetime="2006-08-09T19:48:33+00:00">Hoernline</del> Hoernlein to name just some... So yeah, great networking opportunity. Some people I'll go on to call friends, I'm sure.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Darren McLaughlin — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:29:20 -0000

Let's face facts: a lot of conferences are designed to create social relationships and to move product for show sponsors.

What was the quality level of the show, Aaron?

Re: Om Malik Blows it

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:51:26 -0000

Aaron .. I've been reading all of your posts at the BlogHerald. I did tried to follow all the Flickr links that was posted. You took nice pictures of the city while you were biking .. I don't know the people in the ones from Wordcamp.

As for the Technorati links .. well, I guess I am guilty and do hide under a rock .. because I refuse to use technorati anymore - since they called me a spammer and banned all of my blogs in March 2006. If it wasn't for content thieves hacking my RSS feed but giving me source credit, nothing I do would show up in their site. Yes I'm very bitter about it. I pretty much rely on google search and Bloglines now.

What you did was a great effort for trying to describe what was going on down there .. I guess my expectations were quite different from what I was reading (by everybody as a whole, not just you). I might have to drive down there one year and see for myself - if my wife will let me.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:05:43 -0000

Hart, you must have been hiding under a rock then. I know I for one have posted that I was liveblogging the event at Blog Herald, plus I know I've given links to Technorati and Flickr searches on the tag "wordcamp" which was the tag chosen for all WordCamp related posts and photos...

Re: Om Malik Blows it

HART (1-800-HART) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:00:35 -0000

[sarcasm on]
The fact of the matter is .. that only those bloggers with the most traffic and readership numbers should be called the TRUE journalists of this world ....
[/sarcasm off]

[rant on]
Honestly .. I was curious to know what Wordcamp was all about .. I was quite aware that it was happening and where it was happening and pretty much either know or can find out who was there ... including the people who went drinking with other bloggers, trying to getting laid, taking pictures of chicks, and other aspects of a good convention holiday trip ... but - I have yet to read anything about what really happened out there on the West Coast - at Wordcamp itself.

You'd think with my 1048 RSS feeds that I'm following in my Bloglines that I would find SOMETHING about what happened .. about blogging - about Wordcamp .. but I don't think so.

Was it about Wordpress? was it about blogging?

I sure wish there were reporters there .. Maybe someone can find time to summarize the facts and explain it to me (to quote Denzel Washington character) .. Like I was a two-year old.

Before this Wordcamp, I personally thought it was some type of grass roots blogging convetions, like those early Star Trek conventions (from a handful auditorium to wide membership and shows around the world), that gets bloggers out behind the computer and meeting face to face to discuss the future of blogging .. Well, maybe that's true .. the elite bloggers will getting together and making the rest seem less elite and in years to come we will pay to shake hands with the elite bloggers and get their autographs and picture head shots or something.
[/rant off]

Besides this one terribly wrong statement that Om Malik said .. how was the rest of his presentation? How long did he present? Did he have slides? Visual presentations? Is this a summary of Wordcamp?

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Darren McLaughlin — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:52:03 -0000

Ya think? Maybe she's an agent provocateur from the A-list.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:23:00 -0000

I wouldn't bother, Darren. Michelle is a troll. :)

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Darren McLaughlin — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:19:37 -0000

Michelle, you seem like you need a hug. Aaron was just expressing his opinion. Aaron is intelligent enough to realize that most bloggers are crapola, and couldn't be classified as "journalists" in the smallest sense of the word.

But he also knows that certain cutting edge bloggers are blending the lines between old and new media. How can you look at someone like "conflict journalist" Kevin Sites and not be impressed? The man is blogging and risking his life to bring real and new info to people from the world's scariest hotspots. That's a lot tougher than taking potshots at someone in a comments section.

Aaron is entitled to his opinion that GigaOm was a blowhard. There's a lot of "big name" bloggers right now who just aren't that entertaining as conference speakers, I'm sure. Hell, a lot of them have really lousy blogs too.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:03:50 -0000

Thanks for stopping by, Michelle.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

michelle — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:59:57 -0000

Om Malik never blew anything up. You're just too ego booster on how big a "blogger" is. You're just a freaking blogger nothing more than that. And come to think of it, this post without the blah blah on Om is worthless piece of crap same as this site with all it's poor content.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

David Nick — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:57:50 -0000

Aaron,

Great article, wish I coulda sat next to you at the Conf.

Not surprisingly I also agree with you about the "obliqueness".

One on the verge of "pro-blogger-dom" doesn't and shouldn't be so obscure with his wording simply because he might lose his gig.

His usual matter-of factness is what landed him or her into that position and one shouldn't compromise because of it. Otherwise you are no better than any MSM journalist who compromises their story because they don't want to lose their 9-5 gig.

Blogging is all about saying what hasn't been said because some organization is obstructing the news or interpreting what should be news to the average Joe.

Plain and simple. Good work A

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:56:31 -0000

Heh, not to make this sounds like an exposé on Fox. ;)

I'm sorry, though, Jeffery. I don't think there has to be an obliqueness there. I think that fine line is one that is defined by the person. Perhaps I'm wrong. That's why there is conversation, but that's my opinion.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Jeffrey McManus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:16:13 -0000

Well, Fox News isn't journalism either. That's why they call it "Faux News".

Aaron, I think that Om had a good point although I agree he could have put it more clearly. If I were in his shoes (living on the cusp between pro-blogging and traditional journalism), I might be a tad oblique as well. You gotta give the guy a break for that reason -- it's not like Katie Couric even knows what a blog is.

Having reported the news myself back in the day, one thing that Om said that rang true to me is that real reporters, you know, do actual reporting -- they pick up the phone and talk to sources. There are "walls" that prevent sources from talking to bloggers, but guess what? These same walls exist for "real" reporters too. Part of the craft of reporting is to figure out how to break down those walls, and you can do it if you figure out how to build relationships, identify a source's self-interest, etc. People don't become good reporters because they work for the New York Times; they work for the New York Times because they (usually) are good reporters.

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Aaron — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:28:43 -0000

Hey Lauren,

I'm still up in the air on what Om meant but what he said was not what I said. And he did not clarify, to my dismay. I know he made it clear about journalists not requiring degrees, but that was just a side point.

It seemed to me (and I'm hoping Om steps in and defends himself), he was indicating that the two (bloggers and journalists) were in fact mutually exclusive. That if you wanted to be a journalist, you could not be a blogger (but you could use a blogging platform which further obfuscated the lines of delineation between the two sides).

If I were him, I would have said something along the lines of this:

There's far too much opinion in blogging to be a credible journalistic approach. Journalism requires a high degree of research, fact checking and compelling writing and while there are noted bloggers who do write in this way, most bloggers do not write at such a level and thus cannot be called journalists.

That is a suitably neutral and a highly valid point, but that's not what he said.

Aaron

Re: Om Malik Blows it

Lauren — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:16:05 -0000

I am not trying to defend Om or speak for Om here, but I think Om made the exact points that you did in this post. What I got out of it is that the difference between a journalistic post and a regular blog post is "the accuracy, research and a fair degree of networked people to figure out what’s a good story and what is not." One person can, and usually does, jump back and forth between journalism and regular blogging. You don't need to be separate people. Plus I thought that Om made it pretty clear that you don't need a degree in journalism to be a good journalist.

I think that since there can two purposes and goals of a blog, reader expectation is an issue. Does the reader expect a well-researched news story or an entertaining editorial?