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Bloggers Form Lynch Mobs, Prove Forbes Right

When I was younger, I loved the cheesy “When Animals Attack!” television shows that were the standard fare on FOX. Well, sometimes Bloggers can act like animals, attacking others when their young (the Blogs) are attacked.

Forbes journalist predicts own lynching

In the cover story of the latest Forbes magazine, Daniel Lyons goes on the assault against blogs, calling them “the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective”.
Things go downhill from …

Forbes Slams Bloggers, Om Doesn’t Like It

If you haven’t read Terry Heaton’s response to a recent Ad Age story slamming bloggers for wasting the time of America’s workforce, read it. Same goes for Om Malik’s broadsides attack on his former employer Forbes over the bidness magazine’s…

Daniel Lyons Suggests Harassing ISPs To Fight Back Against Blogs

… he advocates complaining to their ISPs about copyright violations, subpoenaing the ISPs to get information about bloggers, and even threatening to sue the ISPs even though he points out that the host isn’t liable for content posted on its systems….

[...] If Forbes magazine was looking for some attention from the Internet, they certainly got what they were asking for. Unfortunately, it isn’t coming because of some fine-quality, well-written journalism, but because of what bloggers are taking as a drive-by-shooting style rant about how bloggers are dirty, rotten, lying scumbags. The piece by Daniel Lyons is more or less about a battle between one man whose company and stock were hammered by a blogger who pretended to be someone else, but along the way Lyons casts some aspersions against bloggers as a whole. Reaction (not surprisingly) has come from far and wide, including Dan Gillmor at Bayosphere, Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion, the guys over at We Break Stuff and Paul Kedrosky at Infectious Greed. Is it a deliberate attempt by Forbes to get some coverage in the blog-o-sphere — even if it’s negative? Perhaps. Or it could just be that publisher Malcolm Forbes got a bee in his bonnet about blogs for some reason. Meanwhile, Chris Pirillo notes sarcastically that magazines also suffer from some of the same problems. But Om Malik (who used to work for the magazine before he moved to Business 2.0, says he is reserving judgment for the moment. [...]

[...] Want to get a bunch of coverage from bloggers while pissing them off at the same time? Just publish a cover story trashing blogs, calling bloggers “lynch mobs” and providing information on how to “fight back”. More on this from Doc Searls, Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, Dan Gillmor, Om Malik and Steve Rubel. Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent alliles in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo. [...]

The divide between “professional” journalists and bloggers will grow ever larger in the coming months and years.

With no barriers to entry, and no quality control, will blogs become as valuable as spam?

I blog for fun on moneyiyour pocket does being passionate about an issue make my opinion less valuable than that of someone who derives a paycheque from the advertisers of the paper or magazine they write for?

It is an old and silly discussion. Bloggers are moderated by their readers and by fellow bloggers (who are quick to pounce on any mistake, lie, omission, or perceived threat to themselves.) Nevertheless, this argument for a utopic Universal Content Filter still exists (as if the editors and advertisers have served this purpose well in traditional journalism.)

Journalists predicting the end of journalism and the dangers of said end have always been and will always be utter bores. (Especially at Forbes. No offense Om. :) )

I will be posting a podcast from Daniel’s boss Steve Forbes (his first podcast) on Monday on PodTech.net where Steve actually supports podcasting and blogs as the revolution that has changed and will change the economics of the world and of course it will be bloggers that will enact the flat tax :-)

Here’s the old media’s new business model. Attack, gain attention, profit form attention, rinse, denial, lather and repeat.

The bloggers are banding together to “bomb” Google with links in order to get higher rankings on names, stories and events. It works. BBC News reported,”If a few hundred blogs host the same link and describe it in the same way then, as far as Google is concerned, the page they refer to is likely to be a good resource on that subject.”

I had an interesting discussion recently with some of my ex colleagues at Gartner. If Google or Yahoo are becoming the universal search tools, us bloggers, followed by print media, followed by analyst firms are getting more hits and getting our perspectives read. The ratio from what I can tell is almost 7 to 2 to 1 for tech topics. So from the Google channel, many of us have more of a following than a Forbes journalist or an industry analyst. Of course, they have their own proprietary channels where their visibility is much much higher than the average blogger’s. But whose channel is growing quantum times quicker? If they are not worried, they should be. Of course, per written word the price paid is in reverse and they can afford to keep their journalists and analysts focused full time (though an analyst only spends 10-15% of his/her time writing) - most of us do it as a hobby, but with economics changing, who knows?

As for personal attacks, smear campaigns etc - let’s see now - how many times has that printed paper - the National Inquirer been sued? Sure we have plenty of idiots in blogsphere, but print, radio and TV have their own share…Om, nothing against you, though!

i think the story did the job it set out to do - create a lot of buzz, and created the controversy which basically gave a momentary lift to a fading brand.

Many get into the semantics of media, but I don’t think one is different from the other. the blogs and MSM are co-dependent in many ways which is good. I think in the end, if you write, you want to be read.

I just posted a podcast with Steve Forbes on (link)

This is Steve’s first ever podcast. Very timely

-John Furrier
john@podtech.net