If this post were a dinosaur, it’d be a linkalotapus
* Dave Winer has advice for one tech journalist which I think ALL journalists would do well to consider: [D]o research, the story is on the web, not the telephone. I never fail to be amazed at the number of journalists who ask me questions about myself which could be easily answered with even the most cursory amount of research. How old am I? What kind of work do I do? How many blogs do I have? Sometimes I humor these journos, sometimes I don’t reply to them at all. I think my stock response in the future will be: “Ask the internet.”
* Chris Yeh noted the other day that a lot of investors are bailing on their hedge funds. Superstar investor and money man Jeremy Grantham is now on record as saying “it’s bubble time!” (his words).
* [Arctic Monkeys] are expected to set a new chart record this weekend with 18 songs in the Top 200. [T]hey have been helped by new rules allowing downloads to count towards the chart. The release of their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, this week has also prompted more sales of their first album.
* I rarely laugh out loud at stuff I see online, but this picture of Hugh Grant made me cackle for a good three seconds.
* Jeremy Clarkson: “Apparently the main reason why Danes claim to be so happy is that they always expect life to be worse than it really is. They expect to be cold. They expect to pay 95% tax. They expect to be decapitated by a gang of youths who’ve found the little mermaid has already had its head kicked off and are now looking for another target. They are therefore delighted when they get home to find their family still have all their limbs, that the heating is working and that their tax bill’s been reduced to 94%. ”
* “Cupcake photostream.” There’s a phrase I bet you couldn’t have predicted ten years ago. These are, indeed, magnificent times in which we live. - Doppelganger, 50 Books
* Anil Dash gets all academic on LOLcats (one of my favorite online phenomena of the last several months). See above comment from Doppelganger about the magnificent times in which we live.
* Swedish “consumer advocates” (read: moral busybodies) are asking TV regulators to ban a commercial which they think promotes comfort shopping. If I were a Swedish consumer, I’d ask for these grown-up babies to be banned for promoting immaturity and assholery (and speaking on my behalf without permission).
* John Mayer asks people to go “light green” - for example, keep your SUV, but use mesh bags at the supermarket (or, if you’re a Democratic presidential candidate, hector everybody else about how much we need to “do our part,” then take private jets everywhere anyway). I don’t think the moral busybodies are going to like that one very much. I forgive his eager guzzling of Al Gore’s purple Kool-Aid. John is, after all, pretty cute. (I’m still glad I could only name two of his songs, one of which - Your Body is a Wonderland - I have not heard but has a very memorable title.)
* The Guardian has nabbed The Gossip frontwoman Beth Ditto as their new advice columnist. Her and Anne Widdecombe! What a pair. And what a great idea.
* This WordPress theme generator looks the business.
Filed under: Life
Sometimes you’re too cute for your own…or anyone else’s good!!
I love the dino reference.
Do you remember at the Junto, talking about humor in business, and Ben asked us to share the most offensive jokes we knew? One of the ones I told involved a punchline that is only one letter off from “linkalotapus”. Remember? I laughed so much that day, and you were hilarious, Tim. “Zoe, get the fire hose!” You probably don’t even remember that reference, but it still cracks me up often - especially remembering how hard Ben was laughing, too. Good times.
I never fail to be amazed at the number of journalists who ask me questions about myself which could be easily answered with even the most cursory amount of research.
I’d say “how many blogs do you have?” is a fair question, since it appears you start them at the rate of one or two a week.
As for doing research on the internet, it’s a fair point in general, but given the example of Eliot Stein, perhaps you can see why reporters might be hesitant to trust what they read on the web.
Kate, why should I do their jobs for them? A cursory search of the internet could answer their question. I actually have no idea how many blogs I have or contribute to - I don’t count them. But it’s not my job to know it, really; I’m not the one writing a story for money. My age? Where I was born? What I do for a living? All of this is easy to find on the web.
I also have no problem with a journalist asking me to confirm what he has found through his own research. But it is lazy and sloppy for him to expect me to do his job for him. (Most journalists who have interviewed me have gotten at least one easily verifiable fact wrong - despite what I told them directly - in the end story. Make of that what you will.)
I had a friend in business school who was unfailingly cheerful and happy, with a permanent grin emblazoned on his face. At first, I thought he was just medicated. It turns out, he comes from Sierra Leone, where the brutal regime and even more brutal guerillas make life a living hell for everyone.
One of their favorite practices is cutting off the hands of farmers so that they can’t work the fields and are forced to leave their lands or starve.
I figured that every day, Joe wakes up in the morning and says to himself, “I still have two hands! Yes!”
Sometimes we forget how much we have to be grateful for in most countries. Joe is now a wealthy and improbably happy investment banker.
I actually have no idea how many blogs I have or contribute to - I don’t count them.
Now that’s interesting, and something I wouldn’t have gotten from research on the web. My imaginary profile of you would now begin: Writer and consultant Jackie Danicki doesn’t even know how many blogs she has. She says she doesn’t count, because…. and we’re off.
But it’s not my job to know it, really; I’m not the one writing a story for money.
Your profile on this very page was inaccurate until recently, you wrote a post about changing it. Now if a reporter had relied on that and said you lived in London when you actually live in Ohio, I imagine you’d beat up on him for getting it wrong.
Reporters consider the best source of information about a person to be the person himself. The job of a reporter is to ask questions that the subject may find idiotic (Where were you born?) but which will add context and relevance for the reader. It’s not your job to do the reporting, but if you want the stories about you to be as accurate as possible, I’d suggest answering the stupid questions. Speaking for myself, I’ve usually done the research and already know the answer, so when I ask those questions the point is not just to confirm information but to see how you answer them and whether your answers prompt other follow-on questions.
Addressing another point of yours from earlier - the thing about answering questions via phone or in person rather than via email or any other form of writing is that answers can lead the interview in directions that the reporter may not have predicted, and lead to a better and more insightful article. Asking these follow-on questions in person is a hell of a lot easier in person than via email that may or may not ever get answered.
Where were you born?
So when did you move to the UK?
And why was that?…..
you can learn a lot more about people from a conversation than from a stilted written q&a.
Kate, I know it’s not ideal for the journalist, but the sad thing is that I’ve been burned too many times to take the risk.
As for my profile on this page not being updated until this week, I would have very low regard from any journalist who looked only at my About page and could not tell from skimming the front page of this blog that I am in Cincinnati. Indeed, I’d be extra-worried about such a journalist getting things wrong in the final cut.