I know TechCrunch has a bad rap around here. But one needn't like TechCrunch or believe in its integrity to appreciate a little dent in the armor of old school gatekeepers.
Hollywood publicists have traditional entertainment media in a tough spot, able to withhold access to "talent" without some sort wink + nod about what the story will be.
Of course many outlets do not kiss ass and still get courted by Hollywood creatives. But they need to establish that voice early on (Perez Hilton, Pink is the New Blog), not do a crazy 180 (What if Entertainment Tonight all of a sudden asked Tom Cruise a truly tough question?).
I think it's important that "big" tech media establish some boundaries early on. Sure TechCrunch gets some easy traffic for this. But that doesn't mean it's not also cool.
It's the same kind of overdramatic reaction that TechCrunch is known for. The email even said that TechCrunch had no obligation to comply. Probably some guy called Moviefone and said, "I see you guys own TechCrunch now, can you ask them to change their story?" and the guy said, "Uh, I guess I can ask for you, but no promises...", and then wrote that email, and now TechCrunch, in typical fashion, is blowing something way out of proportion, which in turn generates more publicity for itself, AOL, The Source Code, and Moviefone anyway.
I don't see much to praise here. The intentions might have been good, but otherwise it's a waste of space and time for everyone that isn't getting publicity out of the deal.
The original email is pretty much relationship management 101. Client Y asks for X, you observe that X is well outside your area of responsibility and not likely to happen, they ask you to make enquiries, so you email the relevant person and then diplomatically reword their response. We passed your feedback on to TechCrunch. TechCrunch were grateful for their invitation to your event and noted they had not been advised of any publishing restrictions. They observed the abrasive, sceptical tone of the article is their house journalistic style and that far from damaging readers' perceptions of your film, it is likely to have raised awareness of your film in a key target market. The editorial freedom of TechCrunch is very important to AOL.
I've sent emails along the lines of "X enquired whether their press release sent yesterday was newsworthy" and even "X has asked for [something] because [reason] and I am sure the answer will be no. Please confirm that that is the case" before.
I can perfectly understand TechCrunch's motivations for publishing: "Hey, we're standing up against AOL like we said we would. Now give us more pageviews", but only assume the rest of the chorus of hostility directed towards the carefully worded email emanates from people who don't have to deal with corporate customers on a daily basis, or can afford to tell them to jump off a bridge.
You're right, and that makes sense from a client services standpoint. But it's totally unacceptable for a news organization.
And maybe I'm splitting hairs, but there's a difference between "the client wants to know why you didn't cover this event" and "the client doesn't like the editorial voice used in your coverage please try to change it in the future"
Moviefone is not a news organization. They emailed TechCrunch and they sounded skeptical that TechCrunch would oblige. TechCrunch received email and utilized it to create an instance of classic attention/pageview whoring.
I hear ya. But I think maybe my main point didn't get through. I'm not praising TechCrunch, or speaking to their intention at all.
I'm delighting in the outing of a well-worn Hollywood practice that ideally will not work as well as they try to court the Internets. If any publicist, PR firm, or studio starts to feel even a little self-conscious about massaging a story, i think that's great. And regardless of TC's intention, I think that's a little more likely after today.
I completely agree with this. I don't understand how an email from a Moviefone employee (just trying to do his/her job the way it works in their industry) asking for help from a sister site gets blown into AOL censoring TC.
It seems like a more appropriate response would have been to email the Moviefone person back with a, "sorry, that's not how we do things here."
Yeah everyone wins, the guy at AOL can be like the the movie company, well I tried but I have no control there, and any attention to the link bait article helps the AOL bottom line.
I agree, especially when the request to tone it done is followed by "I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine..."
The reasoning does seem a bit odd though:
Good reasons should be provided to change something, it's not as if the normal is to change material just because a related entity requested it.
Even if it was AOL asking for them to tone it down, what's the problem? A rep asks nicely if the language used is appropriate and if perhaps some better wording could be used instead?
To pan a person or company over a request like that seems ridiculous.
- The movie industry is used to getting random articles changed when they don't like them.
- Moviefone doesn't even fact verify these requests before passing them on to journalists. But does word them innocuously enough that they have plausible deniability.
- TechCrunch had many choices of how to handle this. Their chosen strategy is apparently to blow any sign of manipulation public to let the rest of AOL know that they don't want to play these games with TechCrunch.
- I read an article (http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/12/the-source-code/) about a movie that I otherwise wouldn't have read, and found that Hollywood still appears to believe that Microsoft runs tech. As is evidenced by their using Microsoft Tags in their game rather than the industry standard QR codes.
Also on TechCrunch, Paul Carr has written a really good rebuttal to Alexia's piece, pointing out that TechCrunch and Moviefone are two independent AOL properties, and it's no more fair to call some Moviefone flack "AOL" than it would be to refer to Alexia herself that way.
Then he demands the head of the Moviefone editor-in-chief on a platter for her response to Alexia's article.
Yeah, this is common. Otherwise this moviefone rep gets grief for not even talking to the author. Now the moviefone rep can say, I talked to her and she's not making the edits.
What a classic strawman response. TechCrunch says Moviefone "asked us to change our post". Movefone responds "We never told TechCrunch to change the post in any way". But Moviefone very obviously did "ask", which was the original accusation.
No kidding. It started out okay but descended into "it was them not us", followed by "we need to keep the studios happy". Some serious talking out of both sides of your mouth.
I dunno. I read the tech crunch piece, and felt like Moviefone/AOL were in the wrong. Now that I've read Moviefone's response, the whole thing seems overblown.
They didn't threaten them with respect to future access. They didn't demand anything. They weren't rude or antagonizing. They just asked for a change. To me, it now seems like they did exactly what they ought to given how they probably felt.
were you expecting the moviefone/AOL email to say "CHANGE THE FUCKING ARTICLE"
off course they are subtle about it, it is so they can deny it later - but the recipient and the sender (and people reading it now) all know wtf is going on and what was being asked
On the one hand, you're right (and I appreciate the response rather than the downvote!).
On the other hand...
I'm an amateur writer (I admit, this is far from a journalist). Sometimes I'm just wrong, or I write something that ends up coming across differently than I expected. I always welcome feedback, even if I disagree with it, or I think it might be driven by some bias. It doesn't mean that I'm going to change it. But without such feedback, I'm not sure I'd ever get better. I guess I'm worried that in your world, journalist would be living in an ivory tower.
This constantly happens. People submit editorials with their opinion about what others wrote. People write-in to journalist all the time - to agree or disagree.
A movie review isn't an objective piece of pure journalism. It's much more of a subjective editorial, and as such, should be open to far more feedback.
"We never told..." "We would never force..." Much stronger language than Tsotsis used, most of whose post didn't even talk about Moviefone. Protesting too much.
Also, I'd love to know how the presence on staff of someone whose job it is to relay concerns from PR agents to journalists from a separate publication "is just one means we have of ensuring editorial integrity on Moviefone".
Yeah, that's a pretty awful defence. Passing it along and especially asking for a response is, if not tacit endorsement of the message ("Let me know if you're able to take another look at it and make any edits."), certainly implied pressure on the reviewer.
The ethical thing to do would be to say, with slightly nicer words, "sorry, we don't interfere with TechCrunch, we didn't publish the review, go tell them yourselves."
Even though this one release may not be representative of the company as a whole, at least it gives us some reason to believe in TechCrunch's journalistic integrity.
I'll play devil's advocate here (though I don't think this is actually what happened):
• TechCrunch knows that they're going to have to throw their readers and anti-AOL bone at some point. There had to be a post like this eventually; they hyped it and everyone expected it. If so this would be a really easy sacrifice to make on that alter. It's so removed from the core AOL that there's very little damage to be done. In fact, a few of these could cover up more serious editorial jiggering, which would probably be done through more discreet channels.
• The Streisand effect is working as a marketing tool. They just created dialog about several of their properties that I'd never heard of (The Source Code, Moviephone). There's nothing sufficiently damning here that I'd not use those services on that basis, thus, I suspect, this is a win-win scenario.
you are reading for too much into this. most bloggers barely have time to get stories out, let alone sit around and think up conspiracies
each writer at TC has independence to say what they want, and it is ingrained in the writers there to say whatever you want, so in this case Alexia though 'no this doesn't seem right' and instead of keeping quiet like 95% of other sites, she published it
arrington is famous for this, he has published lawsuits, internal emails after being asked not to, the emails where he is being asked not to - so I don't know why it is now a surprise or conspiracy when TC keeps doing it
tbf, most people at techcrunch couldn't give a fuck if the other AOL blogs or properties are getting traffic
I don't see how this says anything about their integrity. Integrity is when you do something against your best interest because it's the right thing to do. Since AOL seems to have given them free reign to attack their sister sites there's no risk in this. In fact it's in their best interest because it drives page views.
I'm not saying it says something bad about their integrity I'm simply saying it's not really relevant to a discussion about their integrity.
Is it not a compromise of your journalistic integrity to alter your published opinions because a partner/parent company is afraid that the truth makes them look bad?
If TechCrunch had altered their published opinion because they were pressured by their parent company or their subject, then yes, you could take that information and infer they compromised their journalistic integrity.
But that doesn't imply that you can take an instance of them not altering their opinion in the face of pressure and infer that they have integrity, because it's possible that they could do the exact same thing out of pure self-interest.
Even though this one release may not be representative of the company as a whole, at least it gives us some reason to believe in TechCrunch's journalistic integrity.
I didn't mean to imply that this was a total affirmation of TechCrunch's journalistic integrity, only that this was a sign that they may have some of it.
It is if the parent company told you to alter your story. That's not what happened here. What happened was some low level employee whose job it was to be an advocate for the studio asked them to alter the story. They had every right to say no. But it doesn't mean it shows great integrity to say no to a polite request from a low level employee.
Why did they post this? This just looks really unprofessional in my opinion. The appropriate response would be to just say 'no' and if Moviefone/AOL/whoever wouldn't accept a no, then sure go public with it.
The company behind the film obviously got in touch with Moviefone and whinged about the interview. Moviefone were the people who made the connection in the first place so they then relayed the feedback to TechCrunch. Moviefone never played the AOL card, they were acting as the middleman because they were the guys who set up the connection. They just wanted to get 'some sort of information' from TechCrunch, so they could get back to Summit (the film company) and say "TechCrunch said x".
Uncalled for but also unsurprising given its TechCrunch.
Is there a pressing reason why you should know about this? This is a non-story. A minor spat that TechCrunch is trying to cash in on. Nothing happened here. Real journalists ensure that their stories have a certain level of newsworthiness before they post them.
This particular case is not the world's biggest deal, but in general I'd like as much information as possible about my sources of information. Even if you don't care about the story at all, I find it striking that you think it should be kept secret.
Only publishing articles that are deemed to be newsworthy is not the same as keeping it secret. You seem to think that I'm in favour of some sort of a cover-up, there's nothing to cover-up.
If you're giving me news, if I'm investing in your company or vice versa, if you're passing laws that affect me, if you manage my money, or if you can influence my career or means of livelihood in any significant way, I would most certainly want to know everything I can about you and the argument you had with your coworker. In most cases I may have no right to demand such information but it would definitely be in my interest to find as much as I can about it.
Posts like these strengthen my trust in TC. If the article had been silently edited or redacted without anyone noticing, it would not affect my level of trust. But if someone else pointed out the redaction or edits, my level of trust in TC would certainly fall. So an article like this does more benefit than harm as far as my level of trust is concerned.
I totally agree. A simple reply with the word "no" would have sufficed. If they push it, sure go public, but to make such a big issue of it at this point is just dis-respecting your employer (or owner, or whatever).
Agreed on your second point too... not surprising coming from TechCrunch.
I find it interesting, if a tad unrelated, that when you see the summary of the article on the front page of Techcrunch, this line reads, "Apparently, the post was not fawning enough for Summit..." whereas when you click through to the article it reads, "Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit."
I've known some sites to scrub naughty language from the front page, supposedly to avoid being blocked by parental-control type software. Anything goes on the rest of the site, though.
Just to put this in terms we all can understand, posting about maintaining your journalistic integrity is like posting about only using FOSS software, posting about not taking venture capital, posting anti-GPL rants, posting about veganism, or posting about never programming PHP again, for the rest of us.
It's something people do when they have strong convictions.
Sigh. This is one of the reasons that I will miss newspapers when they are gone. Folks, one of the key tenets of traditional journalism is that advertising sales department is never, but never, allowed to ask anything of the editorial department. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it's easy to see how little requests to change content, "if you don't mind," could over time undermine the integrity of a news organization.
Refer to "Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media" [1] for an understanding how the editorial content of mainstream newspapers is almost universally influenced by advertising dollars.
They strive very hard to appear trustworthy which while admirable really proves nothing and everything they (and others) print should still be taken with a grain of salt. What they are trying to do is prove a negative to their readers i.e they don't ever take brides. It is in fact it is only practical to prove a positive i.e that they have in at least one instance taken a bribe.
As the old adage goes "Don't believe everything you read."
Can you imagine a less inflammatory "tone it down" e-mail from AOL? If I'm AOL here, and I want to make it clear to all the Techcrunch readers that TC is going to keep its own voice, I set up exactly this kind of scenario, or high-five the TC employee that does. Either that or this is just another horseshit TC post that has no business on HN.
Yet another example of when the person reporting the news becomes bigger than the news.. The S/N ratio at TC has gotten really really bad and its hard to find interesting/insightful stuff there anymore. It's a pity
(Note: I didn't finish this article, I skimmed it.)
Whenever I read something like the following:
> "Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit,"
The level of reporting drops to the floor. How is this professional at all? That phrase made me close the tab; TechCrunch has had its fair share of childness, but this is an all time low. Really guys? Really?
Are blowjobs really that offensive, to make you comment about it? I mean, on the scale of offensive horrors, blowjobs can't be too far up there, can they? I'm honestly asking because someone else made the same remark in the comments on the post, and I simply cannot comprehend how this is a big deal; am I too open-minded or young to see how the imagery was offensive?
My wife's very Mormon family has joked with me about far worse subjects, so I don't really have any perspective here. I know people get offended, but I've never really dug into why.
First of all, this is not an all-time low. A few years back when Arrington took a personal vendetta against Blaine Cook of Twitter was an all time low. This is peanuts compared to that.
Second of all, there are different sides to professionalism. In my opinion, exposing an attempt at perverting editorial integrity is highly professional, and using vulgar language while doing so is very minor peanuts. You have your priorities very skewed.
Just as an FYI (I am not arguing with you), I was in a relationship with a photojournalist for thirteen years. She regularly used the expression "blowjob" to describe the various ways in which advertisers and media climb into bed with each other.
My understanding is that this is the industry jargon covering things like an obscure radio reporter being invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to L.A. to screen an upcoming movie, or a magazine doing a story about a company in the exact issue where the same company buys a two-page advertising spread.
I'm not saying you are wrong to be offended, just pointing out that this seems to be the way "professionals" talk within the media industry.
Big difference between the sausage making and the sausage.
As a journalist who's spent several years in all kinds of newsrooms, I can assure you that "blowjob" is one of the more kid-friendly words you'll hear in a newsroom. But, that's just blowing off steam in a grinding job with long hours, little pay and a lot of cynicism.
Professionals don't normally take what they say in private to print. I'd argue that they're professionals precisely because they don't drop "blowjobs" in print lightly.
I think her language is inline with the style of her product. In her case it is professional. She's not working for the NYT and her audience doesn't include gramma.
Please explain. Does TC have a policy of not using language like that? It didn't surprise me to see it, although it would keep me from sending it to some people.
In my opinion, professional writing is crafting a good house stylebook and sticking to it. It's not necessary to write like a newspaper on the Internet, although I like that too.
Hollywood publicists have traditional entertainment media in a tough spot, able to withhold access to "talent" without some sort wink + nod about what the story will be.
Of course many outlets do not kiss ass and still get courted by Hollywood creatives. But they need to establish that voice early on (Perez Hilton, Pink is the New Blog), not do a crazy 180 (What if Entertainment Tonight all of a sudden asked Tom Cruise a truly tough question?).
I think it's important that "big" tech media establish some boundaries early on. Sure TechCrunch gets some easy traffic for this. But that doesn't mean it's not also cool.