ForbesOnTech

CES Producers Take Action Against Gawker/Gizmodo Prankstrer

The Consumer Electronics Association (producers of the Consumer Electronics Show) has responded to Cnet’s Rafe Needleman on his coverage of Gizmodo’s CES pranks here.

We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion…

What Gizmodo’s staffer did at CES is inexcusuable.  What remains to be seen is whether or not his superiors at Gawker Media had foreknowledge of his intent or aided him at CES.  I suspect that Gawker Media will pay a price for the prank, and for its extraordinary lapse in judgement in publicizing it on the web.—Jim Forbes 01/13/2008

Bloggers and Social Media Gone Terribly Wrong-- CNet's Rafe Needleman Shows how To Do News blogging Correctly

A series of pranks attributed to members of the Gizmodo technology news/blogging site who attended CES this week could shutdown future CES press accreditation to bloggers, predicts to CNET’s Rafe Needleman click here.

            Needleman claims Gizmodo’s staff wandering CES in

Las Vegas

this week were using custom remote control devices to turn off televisions and other display technology of exhibitor who paid CES to rent exhibit space at the giant show.

            Gizmodo’s staff apparently found it necessary to capture their infamy by making and releasing a video record of the prank. In the video Gizmodo folk are seen pointing a TV-b-gone infrared controller at televisions and other display devices and then reacting when the displays turned off.

            Needleman reports that he got Gizmodo’s uber executive, Nick Denton to admit Gizmodo’s responsibility for the pranks in an instant message from the show. Needleman then went on to speculate that the pranksters might be held financially responsible for their acts.

More important, I believe, is Needleman’s belief that as a result of Gizmodo’s prank, the Consumer Electronics Association could block bloggers’ accreditation at future CES confabs.

Maliciously interfering with a paid demonstrator’s technology at CES or any other event where companies invest thousands of dollars to show off their products and technologies goes way beyond the realm of “harmless pranks” and ventures very close to a criminal act.

Tip of my hat to Rafe Needleman and CNet for investigating and reporting this story.  Rafe’s quick work from the harried floor of CES (which included getting an getting an online text admission of the act from Neck Denton) proves the positive power of news blogging in near real time. The behavior of the Gizmodo staff proves the very real differences between professionals and rank amateurs.

What I really admire about Needleman’s piece on News.com is this: In addition to doing a superior job reporting and documenting the facts, he went an extra mile and told his readers how to defeat devices like TV-b-Gone.

If anyone did what Gizmodo during CES at any one of the technology showcase events I produced, I would do my best to see them escorted from the premises, arrested, and then see they were never issued press credentials again. Furthermore, as an event producer, I feel I would be obliged to bring a civil action against the pranksters and their employers.

Furthermore, that a “publishing executive” would allow his staff to pull such a prank and to document their guilt casts a cloud of doubt on all his enterprises. And with that I send my hair shirt out to the cleaners.—Jim Forbes, 01/10/2008.

Editors, Get Back to Basics: News Before Blogs

There’s a problem in technology journalism today. Editors and reporters seem to have forgotten that they’re supposed to be writing about companies, products and trends, not about what they’re doing after hours or in the pressroom of the LasVegas Convention Center at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

            I had to laugh yesterday when I read three separate reports about the CES pressroom running out of food at lunchtime. Oh the horror, no food. The old reporter in me wants to know why the reporters were gabbing in the press room when they should have been out on the showroom floor getting the information they needed to write stories about products, technologies and how they might effect me.

            Given a choice between Boopsie Gomez’s experiences partying at the bar of Hooters in Las Vegas and her breathless description of what some obscure computer luminary was wearing and a tight 250-word piece on how new notebooks with hybrid drives that boot from flash memory, the former is a waste of space and the latter will help my purchasing decisions in the coming six months.

            As a consumer of information I’ve begun to think editors have allowed their news gatherers to put basic newsgathering skills behind their abilities to write colorful event-themed blogs.

            It’s time to get back to basics: aligning the cart  (news and trends) behind the horse (reporters’ blog-like stories). Jim Forbes, 01/08/2008 wearing a neatly pressed hair shirt.

            

            

The Need to Take Time for Disclosure Questions by Reporters

Reading online reports of the acquisition of Gateway by Acer this morning left me somewhat uneasy. First, there was little meat to the stories that appeared on line, and second, there were glaring omissions in the stories. And by  the time I had read the second story on the acquisition  my slow burn bad become a full fledged wild fire.

            First off, Monday morning stories can be difficult for reporters (a trade at which I worked for more than 30 years). You roll into work, unload the stuff from your computer case that you thought you might have worked on over the weekend. Then you sit down at your desk and suck down your favorite alkaloid-based beverage and begin reading incoming news feeds. Suddenly an item jumps up at you from the feeds that form the basis of your workday. In this case it was the news from Taiwan that Acer had bought Gateway.

            News is by definition a 24-hour business, so you grab a few facts, frame a  lead, and make a few phone calls to flesh out your first take on the story. Monday morning breaking news can be taxing. Chances are, anybody you need to talk to about your story is in some damn staff meeting and can’t be disturbed.  But you try anyway and eventually you get down to second and third-tier sources (by which I mean analysts at market tracking and forecasting firms) one or more of which happen to answer your frantic call and give you some basic filler such as where a specific company may fit in a global or domestic market.

            If you’re really lucky you may have enough for the Monday morning big score, a salient “nut graph” that enhances the story enough to get it posted and the hell off your desk so you can finish your cup of coffee and move on to more important things.

            The problem with this type of work is that important disclosure questions don’t get asked of sources. And when quoting an analyst at a research firm, the most important question you can ask after receiving market data is: “Is company (“A” or “G”) one of your clients?”

            At the very least, the answer to that simple question adds another sentence to your story and hopefully increases its credibility.

            Virtually every story I read about the Acer Gateway merger today quoted IDG analysts. But not one of the stories disclosed whether Acer or Gateway was an IDG client. The reporters who wrote those stories this morning missed an important point that would have added a smidgen of credibility to their posts.

            Meanwhile, I have to press and hang my hair shirt so it will be ready tomorrow. —Jim Forbes, un reporterro viejo ( literally “an old reporter”) on 08/27/2007.

(Mandatory disclosure: I worked for IDC properties on two occasions in my career. The same company owns IDG and IDC.)