What am I referring you to this flow diagram? Let me explain.
At the moment, it appears that swine flu seems to be affecting celebrities, where UK based sitcom actress Mollie Sugden died this week. In one tweet on Wossy’s Twitter account, Twitter was innundated with #MrsSlocombesPussy posts. Including a fair few from me as well.
In short, Mrs Slocombes Pussy was err….spread throughout the world, and certain areas of the blogosphere (Mashable, and to a greater extent Techcrunch) outcried. “Oh my goodness! How can this world live with such a horrible word in the trending topics!”. Even when they informed them of why this was a trending topic, the writer wrote a fairly insensitive comment in retaliation.
This is what I was talking about last week! Bloggers breaking stories without knowing the full facts. Techcrunch seems to have a reputation (reading the comments) of breaking news without finding out facts.Facts that if they spoke to one of their twitter followers (come on, they must have some from the UK) to explain it, it would avoid updates, explaining themselves, and a loss or reputation.
To conclue: news breaking is like sex. It’s always a great thing to come first. Sometimes it makes you look inconsiderate and insensitive, but at the very least shows a lack of preparation.
* Before I get shouted at, the story I used in comparison was Billy Mays death, and how I researched it. I’m well aware I’m just one person, likewise with the states, but it seems to be a trend of big websites. Probably I should’ve put that, but it does annoy me that US Centric websites don’t realise there’s nothing outside of their sites, that we’re all living in mud huts and carry around spears. But there we go.
Comments: 9 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
I instantly recognized this since I watched “Are you being served?” on PBS back in the day. I can’t believe she died! RIP
Yeah that’s the thing! It’s very sad, just wished that the journalists in question did some research before posting.
Why is it so difficult for poeple to google something?
I didn’t know what moonfruit was, so I googled it – it was the first result in google!!
Great post! I searched for Billy Mays too using that new-fangled Google thing. I think it could catch on!
But being serious, both posts hint at a degree of arrogance on the part of the writers, especially the guy from TC, whose ‘apology’ seemed to suggest only serious subjects that he approved of should be discussed on Twitter.
I’d love to know what the TC author thinks of that bloody #moonfruit is a trending topic. Is that important to him?
Great post.
It’s all well and good apologising after the fact (like Mashables Stan Schroeder) but that’s a bit like Michael Fish saying sorry in 1987 after the unforecasted hurricane beat the hell out of the South East. It doesn’t put the tiles back on the roof or replant the trees.
Sad to say but Mashable has gone down in my estimations and I will be reading there stories with a bit pinch of salt in future knowing they don’t research properly.
Career ending offence in journalism.
Definitely a hint of truth there.
Blogger in question is actually from Europe, he’s from Techcrunch Europe and writes from his home which is in Belguim. I think blogging is an inefficient, global cat fight.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/dzuiba_google_chrome_redux/
Give me El Reg any day over TC