Secrets of the City

Also worth mentioning: This lovely illustration of roadside attractions, including Minnesota’s very own World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

This whole thing with Target is fairly similar to the people who get paid to hang out in bars, and strike up conversations about a certain product. That was going on in New York a couple years ago. Don’t know if it still is.

Whats missing is a mention of The Deets.

Unpardonable sin to yet another blogger craving attention.

The Rat, I’m not craving attention. Just expecting it when it’s deserved.

I didn’t pitch them story to the StarTribune. They found it on The Deets and ran with it without citation. To me, that’s a big difference.

Planting people in bars to hawk products worked before there were social networks with 40 million people on them just waiting to pounce on your brand.

Planting people in bars to hawk products worked before there were social networks with 40 million people on them just waiting to pounce on your brand.

And it works, too! Several years ago, I visited local bars and didn’t smoke. The rest is history….

Mr. B dosen’t care for snow as much as Shiba Inu does.

The guy named his dog Dr. Cornelius Gibson?

Good Grief!

I just want to make it known that my entire media empire would not have been possible without Ed Kohler’s inside information. There…I feel better about myself. Has anyone seen my daughter?

Thanks Bill.

Seems odd that Ed is looking for a citation for providing a link to a story.

I commented on Ed’s blog that I think the mainstream media needs to come up with some sort of shorthand that’s equal to “[via]“. Newspapers could do this easily. For TV it’s a little harder. A paper could put a line at the bottom of the story (it often says “The associated press contributed to this story”). Why not put: “TheDeets.com contributed to the story.” Or Minneapolis blogger Ed Kohler contributed to the story.

I often explain where I was tipped to stories on my blog. Perhaps on TV we could run an on-screen [via]. The rub is: most viewers/readers don’t care. They just want the story. However, in my mind, In this case: TheDeets is part of the story, part of how a scandal was exposed.

But stories get picked up all of the time without attribution. I’m sure it happens to smaller newspapers. And bloggers probably post without attribution too.
I agree that there has to be credit where credit is due but it has to go both ways. I’ve been interested in and following some of the debate over blogging etiquette and ethics and I’m not sure what direction any of that is headed. Anyone have any profound thoughts on that or are we better off contemplating large balls of twine?

If a blogger spoke with a source who authored a piece on a topic, and then wrote up their own piece about that topic without providing credit due for any information received, the folks here would be among the first to throw a few a bitch slaps their way. But turn it around and this is the reaction.

I just find it strange that there’s so much emphasis in journalism on care and feeding of sources, but that Ed got left out in this case. Sloppy editing at a minimum. For the reporter to just say “We’re still figuring this stuff out” is bull. Doesn’t matter that the source was a blog. It was a source.

Only Ed knows how much he said and how much of what he said made it into the story. From what I know of Ed, I trust him if he feels like he was wronged.

TheDeets is part of the story, part of how a scandal was exposed.

Isn’t scandal a little strong for this story?

One communication was made to the people that had signed up for this program to keep it a secret. When this came to light it was immediately rectified. I don’t think anything shows evidence of a conspiracy to keep this program secret. The enrollment form was there for anyone to see that describes the program and what you are asked to do.

Fair point, Simpleton. Print plays by different rules that online. Bloggers tend to be more polite and mention their sources for the story.

TV stations have been stealing stories from newspapers for 50 years. I’ve read about many of my stories on the front page two days after their air. To me: it’s validation. But I get paid to be a reporter. When a citizen does the work for you– to me, that may well become part of the story, and then becomes relevant. Especially if the citizen took the time to direct and aid the reporter.

I meant to put scandal in quotes. Sorry.

just for the record, his full name is dr. cornelius gibson, but he only responds to gibson. or gibs. or sometimes stinky.

If she said she would mention thedeets and didn’t that is unfair.

It is interesting that thedeets original post (Oct 29th) was mostly a rehash of another post (Oct 28th) that was a rehash of another post (Oct 10th) that was a rehash of the original post (Oct 9th).

It looks like Jackie tried to contact the actual source of the material for information.

1 comments:
jackie crosby said…
Rosie:

November 29, 2007 6:38 PM
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Here’s what I don’t understand:

Someone gets their briefs in a bind because they aren’t fairly recognized for the (whatever) work they did to bring this story to the public …

… but the other side of the coin rallies for the free flow of information without concern for copyright (i.e. pirated music, movies, etc.).

I’m not saying anyone at The Deets is an advocate of piracy. I would ask anyone, though, who does think The Deets were marginalized or left behind with attribution what their own opinion of music/movie piracy is. If you think downloading a song or movie torrent or two (or three or four) is not theft, then why squawk about something like this?

Jes’ wonderin’.

don’t quite see how someone making me aware of an issue and another person infringing on copyrights are the same?

I don’t think Ed is saying that she plagiarized his work or infringed on his copyrights, just that she neglected to mention how she was made aware of the information.

anyone else see that map of North Minnepolis foreclosures and think: how much longer till some corporation buys up an entire neighborhood.

Very few “bloggers” make “posts” that consist of nothing but their own authentic work. Deets appears to have done at least the bare minimum, but what he found wasn’t anything that anyone else couldn’t have found. He didn’t put two and two together to find four.

Compare this case to the ongoing Mark Ritchie saga. That first came to light via original reporting by MDE and early press stories cited MDE as such.

Verdict on the matter of Deets v Ridder:
Claimant has not met basic standard of journalistic authenticity in regards to posted information; Claim of deserved citation denied. Case dismissed.

(gavel)

Kevin, when I read your comment I think, “Maybe holding newspapers to the same standards bloggers hold each other is too high a bar?”

I’m just saying you don’t appear to have done anything particularly unique. Here’s the test I used.

Did the blogger report information not already readily available for the finding? No. You linked to a guy and posted the application captured from a website that anyone interested in the story would reasonably be assumed to know about. The only thing new you seemed to add was your commentary.

In the blogging world, that would be “via” worthy.

I’d like to think that I framed the story in a way that made is easily understandable, helped show the Facebook side of the story to non-Facebook users, and pulled out nuggets from the Rounder application that helped explain things. I also linked to all subjects so people could go deeper (as you appear to have done) than a prinet (or StarTribune.com) version of the story did. Is that worth something?

Like what?

Some beyond your “nothing particularly unique” comment.

Compare that to the work by the StarTribune. They rewrote a story that had been told before with a couple fresh quotes and no links to any citations or subjects mentioned in the article. That’s “nothing particularly unique.”

No argument there.

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Not to beat an ilrelevant horse but most of your “framing” and “pulling nuggets” was posted after the article ran in the Sunday paper. Are they supposed to retroactively pimp you for something you posted after the story ran.