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PC World Editor Resigns When Ordered Not to Criticize Advertisers
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu May 03, 2007 01:46 PM
from the i-can-only-imagine dept.
from the i-can-only-imagine dept.
bricko noted a story of our modern journalism world gone so wrong it makes me sad. "Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken quit abruptly today because the company's new CEO, Colin Crawford, tried to kill a story about Apple and Steve Jobs." The link discusses that the CEO was the former head of MacWorld and would get calls from Jobs. Apparently he also told the staff that product reviews had to be nicer to vendors who advertise in the magazine. The sad thing is that given the economics of publishing in this day and age, I doubt anything even comes of this even tho it essentially confirms that PC World reviews should be thought of as no more than press releases. I know that's how I will consider links from them in the future. But congratulations to anyone willing to stick to their guns on such matters.
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Your Rights Online: PC World Editor Returns, CEO Demoted 118 comments
k1980pc writes "In a nice twist to the recent discussion on Slashdot, PC World editor Harry McCracken has returned to the magazine. In turn, Colin Crawford has been removed as PC World's CEO, where 'he will be responsible
for driving IDG's online strategy and initiatives in support of our web-centric business focus' ... safely out of the way of the magazine editors. McCracken was pleased to return to his position: 'I'm thrilled to be back with the PC World team. IDG is a company I've loved working for over the past 16 years, and one with a remarkable history of enabling editors to serve our customers--the millions of people who depend on our content online and in print.'"
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Good character (Score:4, Funny)
That's good, an editor or news outfit should never be swayed by an advertiser. Guess I'll go read Slashdot's Intel Opinion Center [slashdot.org] now...
Re:Good character (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good character (Score:4, Informative)
And for the record, I think the Opinion Center's a pile of sh*t.
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Funny)
MacWorld is such garbage that even now that I use a Mac for work five days a week - and I don't think a day has passed in the last two months that I haven't had to do something with it - I actually dropped the MacWorld subscription that my employer was paying for.
If you won't even allow the purchasing department to bring it to your desk so that you have reading material for when you're on the can... it's a message :P
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's too bad, because they used to be a GOOD magazine. These are some things that sent MacWorld down the tubes, and they are responsible for most of them.
So after being a Macworld purchaser and later subscriber for over 10 years, I let my sub end in May 2006.
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Re:Good character (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Free" Press (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that this has become the "norm", I'm not surprised to see it spreading to other parts of the computer industry. So much for having a free press - guess that they're not really "free" after all if all you have to do is buy a few ads.
2 cents,
Queen B.
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Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Funny)
Good point. 4/5
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Re:"Free" Press (Score:4, Insightful)
I tend to put more weight into reviews on GameFaqs than official reviews in the rags, for exactly this reason. You still get fanboyism, you get people who want to convince themselves they didn't waste $50, whatever. I think "I paid $50, so if I don't say the game is good I admit I'm a fool parted easily from their money" is a lesser influence on people than "If I don't say the game is good, I won't get paid".
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Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:"Free" Press (Score:5, Interesting)
What does happen then? Why do magazines end up publishing good reviews of fairly crappy titles? Because a lot of the time what they are reviewing isn't a finished game, for one thing. It is a 90% done beta because, remember, magazines have to hit the shelves on time, so they have to review what they can get, and they give the publisher the bennie of the doubt. Then there are the trips and tchokies. Want to go to Candlestick Park and take batting practice from Vita Blue? I got that junket for Electronic Games Magazine once. Want a $250 leather jacket for free? Well, you should see the ones we got for the last of the Harpoon series, they kicked ass. And so on. I had closets full of this stuff... Finally, there is simply workload. If you are working in the industry, you never finish a game. You never come close. When I was at the height of my work in that field, I was burning through 200 games or so a year to keep up. How many of them do you think I really *played*? The four or so a year I wrote strategy guides on got completely played, the others got a day, if that.
I really doubt much has changed in the last five years. The industry is very good at influencing the game mags and the game mags and everyone makes money off the gamer. It is a symbotic relationship, but not one where anyone ever actually threatens to "pull" review copies or anything so crass. Again, it might happen to the small fry websites, but not to any of the players.
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Good to know (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean the Slashvertisements will stop and you will actually start checking submissions? Never mind PC World, hooray for Slashdot!!
Traditional Media is dieing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Traditional Media is dieing (Score:4, Funny)
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Way of the world. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a testament to how evil the ad people are that they really see it that way. The time when ads were a necessary evil and and the actual content was the important part is long gone, and we're trending more and more toward the content being nothing more than a lure for ads.
I never thought much of PC World, but I have to respect an Executive Editor who is willing to put his principles ahead of his job. Of course, now I think less of PC World because their damn executive editor had to quit because they put their whoring for ads ahead of the needs of their readers.
I can't believe CmdrTaco ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Harry McCracken was editor-in-chief of a major tech mag supported by big advertisers. I find it hard to believe that Colin Crawford's suggestion was anything new. At most, maybe he was just more blunt about it than previous CEOs.
I'm sure there's a hell of a lot more to the story than an oh-so-noble stance by McCracken.
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Re:I can't believe CmdrTaco ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Way of the world. (Score:5, Interesting)
He sounds like a stand up guy. He certainly did the right thing...If your publication descends into newsvertisements there's really no way to get your credibility back. Look at PC Magazine...They gave Norton Antivirus a 4.5 out of 5 one year in a review, and the average customer response was a 1.5, where 1 was the lowest possible score. What a crock of crap.
People don't read things for the advertisements, hard as it may be for ad people to accept that, and if your content becomes one with your advertising, then you start hemorrhaging readers, and your days are numbered.
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Harry McCracken? (Score:4, Funny)
Sincerely, I. P. Freely
Re:Harry McCracken? (Score:5, Funny)
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Can we please refrain from... (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Hugh G. Rection
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Re:Harry McCracken? (Score:5, Funny)
Ignore these morons and their childish comments.
I'm so proud of you for standing up for what you believe in.
Your brother,
Phil
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Hey, it happens (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hey, it happens (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but that was a good thing. After all, it's John Dvorak we're talking about.
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Consumers are responsible too (Score:5, Insightful)
All the money that would be spent up front in buying magazines that are consumer, and not advertiser supported, would be saved when they bought equipment that was the best value for their money, instead of being overly hyped junk.
Re:Consumers are responsible too (Score:5, Interesting)
The issue then becomes the content in the magazine isn't good enough to warrant the price an advertising-free magazine would cost.
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British Mags (Score:5, Informative)
Borders and Barnes and Noble carry most of the popular ones.
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...and that's different than SlashDot how? (Score:4, Informative)
(Also, I can't believe someone here has a PAID subscription to PCWorld; what a mark!)
Who reads computer magazines anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who reads computer magazines, anyway?
Although I am not the most 31337 person in the world, I am pretty much surrounded by the world of computers, but I have never, in my life, put down money for a computer magazine. And no one I know, including many programmers, hardware people, or network administrators, seems to be a follower either.
But yet I see racks of these things at grocery stores. Who is buying these things? Middle management who want to keep up to date with the computer world?
Re:Who reads computer magazines anyway? (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, I travel by train, and I love to read the C'T magazine while traveling. It's available in Dutch and German only, unfortunately (for you). It's pretty geeky and pretty good, and has very interesting articles. I used to buy Dr Dobbs as well, but now I only buy the Java specific ones (too many articles that are not in my field). I used to buy the Byte as well, if only for the well written (but very common) articles by Jerry Pournelle. Alas, that time has gone.
It's definately still possible for a magazine to be better written, better informed than most grub on the internet. Of course, 50-70% of the magazines aren't worth a dime, and I won't buy them. I think most computer magazines from the UK are *horrible*, but that might be because we only get the really popular ones. I like the linux magazines very much as well, but they are too expensive over here.
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This has been going on for 15 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Even tho I am not normally a pedant... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's old hat to complain about the poor quality of editing at Slashdot, but seriously now, "tho"? This is how my 13 year old little sister types in chat sessions, not how the editors of a semi-respectable news site read by millions should write news stories.
In this case, they can't even hide behind the defense that these were the submitter's original words and as editors they can't be expected to catch every little mistake (even though the editors of other sites that have even higher posting volumes like Engadget don't seem to have this problem). In this case, though, this is actually the editor's own words. For shame...
Economics of Publishing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought that you got fired... (Score:4, Insightful)
We should applaud his integrity (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost the same thing happened to my local news paper [newspress.com] when many key people at the paper quit [blogspot.com] over bias which was being pushed down from above by the paper's owner. It's been a long messy trail since then.
Reminds me a bit of FOX news and Monsanto (Score:5, Informative)
This is really common (Score:5, Interesting)
A while back when it got particularly bad, I wrote this up:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
And if anything, things have gotten quite a bit worse. It isn't the names you might recognize as much as tge power brokers behind the scenes, usually with a good chunk of site ownership.
All of the accused will blather on about firewalls between advertising and editorial people, but it is all a crock, usually worth the recycling value of the pixels it is printed on.
I have been offered bribes, both cash and other from people, but I have _NEVER_ gotten any pressure to change a story for content, although I have had edits made so we wouldn't get our asses sued off for libel/slander/whatnot. I agreed with these in the long run.
To put things in perspective, when I was in the process of ripping HP up and down, starting here:
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=1
I was at the last Comdex in the press room. I was sitting beside Nathan Brookwood and a CNet guy, and had written a particularly biting piece about HP/Carly (I forget which one, there were many). and I got an email from Mike Magee saying "HP wants to.....".
Needless to say, that was an asshole pucker moment. I clicked on it ready to call my lawyer next, and it read:
"....advertise with us.". I wrote him back and asked if it meant that I had to tone down the stories. I forget the exact wording of the response, but summed up it was "not a chance".
Basically, there are honest editors/owners/management and dishonest ones. The dishonest ones will lean on people to do things that they know better than to do. The honest ones will leave, the dishonest ones will stay, and you quickly get a dishonest organization. (As an aside, the same holds true for companies and PR)
Let me sum this up clearly, there are a LOT of rotten sites out there, and also a lot of good ones. The rotten ones are quite good at hiding/disguising their paid for status, you probably wouldn't recognize it if you saw it. Most people throw accusations of bias around as soon as they disagree with the conclusion a site makes, usually a fanboi-ish thing. This is wrong.
Where you get a lot of the bias is things like roundups of hardware that you can not get your product into if you do not have an advertising contract with the site. Hot samples that are not purchasable being overlooked if a banner ad is running prominently on the site, and other similar things. Things are bad out there. One great one is sites selling awards to companies, you know those logos gold/diamond/three thumbs up/whatever that you see on boxes, can be bought from a number of sites. Look for reviews where you see a mediocre review with a summation of 'Three Silver Starzzz!!!' at the end, and you can be pretty sure money changed hands.
There is also the good old fashioned sending of a review with a check, but that is less common now.
Basically, be skeptical. Read every review about a new release, and look for the one that stands out. Look for reviews that say 'kick-ass overclocking part' and the forum posts saying 'I can't get anywhere near that'. These are not 100% sure signs, but keep a tally, patterns will emerge.
In the end, things are bad. If you are moderately skeptical and have an IQ greater than a warm moist towelette, you will see the patterns. You are not imagining them.
-Charlie
A weird analogy - Gun Tests and other examples (Score:5, Interesting)
The odd thing was that I learned for sure something I had long suspected; gun writers are mostly liars. They love every new gun lent to them for testing. If a gun is a real loser, the mainstream magazines would just decline to publish anything.
Gun Tests was different. They bought popular guns and showed them for the junk they were. The test were wonderful, authentic, and informative. It was exactly the sort of information you'd get from a trusted friend. The problem was that a single black and white only, rough paper, stapled magazine (we're talking just one step above a nice 'zine) of 24 pages or so cost more than 10 bucks, iirc. (And that was a long time ago.)
Which leads me to ask - Is it possible for a testing magazine that doesn't accept ads to be priced affordably enough to actually sell? Is it possible for a magazine that accepts ads to be honest?
Gun Tests had no ads but the cover price was a killer. The Absolute Sound managed combine ads and *seemed* to be objective back when I used to read it, a couple of decades ago, but I was never completely confident in them. Nowadays, I dunno. Does integrity exist anywhere?
I had a VERY similar experience, but was fired: (Score:5, Interesting)
The Dallas Observer is part of the Village Voice Media chain of papers, and one of the men responsible for overseeing all 17 music sections in the nation, John Lomax, happened to be very good friends with the Dallas publisher (essentially, the city's chief of financial decisions), as they worked together at the VVM's Houston paper for years. Once I wrote about advertisers, my relationship with the publisher vanished, and criticisms from Lomax--which had previously been all but non-existent--jumped tremendously (though he chose to issue his decrees through my Dallas boss rather than send me a single request himself). A month later, the syndicate had a "clean sweep," firing arts and music staff members at a number of papers--particularly the Village Voice's Robert Christgau--in a two-week span. I was fired very abruptly--never EVER given a "do this or else" warning, because as I'd said, Lomax was too gutless to ever issue a directive, nor was I ever given a yearly review. The reason given was "performance issues addressed on a repeated basis," which, as I've redundantly stated, wasn't even true. The replacement editor has followed the "no criticism" rules steadfastly ever since her September 2006 hiring.
The print advertising world is staffed with people who are expected to deliver results on a quarterly basis. The notion of cycles doesn't exist for people who get fired if they have a down MONTH, let alone a down quarter--and the past few years' panic over circulation scandals hasn't helped sanity on that side of any newspaper or magazine's staff. Sadly, that sense of panic has won over most publications' responsibility to deliver trusted content, but any publication that loses its dignity and respect for readers will ultimately be seen for what it is by the target audience.
Or, better put, PC World will get theirs.
Re:YES! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's odd that places that do bad reviews tend to stop getting review hardware. If I see a product for the company, and a review site I trust has a review of their older product and says it sucks, I'll take this as an indication of their future products. If I see other reviews elsewhere that say both are goo, I will trust neither. If I see a review for the old one saying that it's rubbish, and a review for the new one saying that it's good, then I will trust that one a lot more, because I know that they are not afraid to say bad things when they are justified. It's odd that manufacturers can't figure that out.
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It wasn't the advertisers (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course they do (Score:5, Informative)
Piss off the White House? Staffers return your calls a bit late or your sources dry up.
Piss off the military? Well your reports get indented with the folks washing Hummers in the transport park instead of with a section on patrol. So you end up sending home pictures of wet vehicles instead of action shots.
These ae the unwritten rules of the game that keep the media in check. The editors understand this and will discipline staffers who don't play ball.
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