As an ex-journo I find this interesting and/or disturbing.
[...]
The question for me is, evidenced by the type of actions such as CNet's described above, where are the journalistic ethics that I have seen played out in the past and what can be done to restore them? We had our ethics because we felt it was our job to serve the readers and they were largely self-policed as part of our own journo culture and ethos. Thus they were largely invisible to outsiders except in the quality of the work we produced. The quality of the work produced by CNet and others who have uncritically endorsed Batteroo, Triton et al indicates that there is a fundamental problem with the ethics and ethos of, at least some, online tech news outlets.
Hello there. I actually registered here to answer this.
Me, I'm a journalist, too. I have run some IT magazines here in Russia, most of them pretty local, but you may know the likes of Official Playstation and Official Windows/PC Plus Magazines Russian Edition (licensed from the British Future plc). I was an editor-in-chief and I did have to deal with advertising department a lot. You are perfectly right: yes, in those times we did manage to find an acceptable solution with the advertising people all the time. Because they were able to understand that we can not sale our reputation.
The reason for the printed media is pretty simple: you publish bullshit, everyone will remember and will shove it in your face later. I'm an editor-in-chief, I'm responsible for this. That is why in my magazines at least two people read every article before it was published - an editor and a proof-reafer. Even if it was written by me. I can make mistakes, no one is mistake proof.
Nowadays in all this online media - fact-checking? Proof-reading? You kidding? We must publish it NOW! We can always edit or delete it later. That's why people who can write a wall of text in an hour are in demand now. Sure, the text will be a total crap, but who cares? No one can afford normal journalists that need at least a week for a good article.
Same in advertising. Really, I didn't have to spend a lot of time explaining to my advertising people that we can not afford to take these money from this advertiser because we will lose our reputation as a result - and much more future money with it. They really understood it. Now? Who cares? We'll just delete it!
My conclusion: I'm sure that printed media will have it's renaissance once everyone is fed up with this online crap. I do like Dave and his blog, I actually watch all the videos and read a lot here, but for every Dave there's a thousand of crap artists just monetyzing their bullshit. Batterizer praise included. I'm sure this will end sooner or later. For now we have to have patience.
Sorry for my bad English and an off-topic, but I had to write it here : )
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