Online windmills and journalistic integrity
A recent thread on a message board I read daily debating the perceived biases and journalistic integrity of a major PC hardware review site got me thinking today at work about online journalism and the numerous horror stories I've either directly encountered or learned of indirectly. Personally, I've always tried to keep my head above the dirty water line but looking back I don't think I was always as successful as I would like.
The first example that comes to mind is my rather well self-documented preference for 3dfx and its products while the company still existed in the late '90s. I don't think I ever quite tipped into 100% zealot waters but I certainly argued with Herculean effort against anyone who would malign graphic boards with the characters of 3dfx stamped upon them on numerous forums and across Usenet. And this bias on my part is interesting in that it's something of an anomaly since I've always been rather agnostic toward companies. I loved my Honda CRX in the 80s but now drive a Saturn SUV, for example. And while I've traditionally built my home PCs using Intel CPUs, after becoming hardware reviewer for SimHQ I fell in love with AMD's Athlon 64 processors and went months at a time without booting up my Intel system. This situation, however, naturally reversed itself with Intel's launch of their Core 2 Duo CPUs last summer, and could change yet again if AMD's upcoming Barcelona parts live up to expectations. Yet 3dfx, having created and evangelized the 3D PC market, earned quite the warm spot in my heart for a solid four years, though it's doubtful I'll ever make such a mistake again.
Another area where I now feel that I fell down was during my involvement with a well known 3D website. I acted as board moderator and copy editor for the years between my stints at SimHQ and writing for 3dfxgamers.com, and this position seemed at the time to really fulfill my desire to be involved with an online community. But looking back I'm left with a slightly negative aftertaste over my role at this site. Firstly, there's a sense of having been unfairly taken advantage of, mostly because I was the only truly active moderator for the first year of the site's rebirth; this is a thankless job that requires a surprising number of hours each week for a popular site such as this one, for which the owner repeatedly promised to renumerate me by sending an occasional review sample to my doorstep. Not to mention hours spent proofing copy that would consist of paragraph-long run-ons. This promise went unfulfilled for the 2+ years of my involvement with the site, though toward the end I of course have no one but myself to blame for sticking around as long as I did.
Secondly, there was a growing sense in me that the site's owner was becoming more and more biased against one of the two major graphics vendors and that I defended his and the site's objectivity beyond the pale of. . .well. . . objective thought. This was undeniably manifested to me while editing the site's review of a new flagship graphics chip and its conclusion, which blasted the company for "wasting" die space for Shader Model 3.0 support. I was able to talk the owner into changing this conclusion's wording, but the bias continued to show in numerous forum posts. I left the site in the summer of '04, right after the above mentioned review was published, but remained an active forum participant until recently. The owner approached me in the fall of '05 with evidence of a secret marketing group that consisted of several forum members from his website. I've always despised dishonest marketing techniques, and while I have nothing against focus groups in particular, the secretive nature of this group's existence compelled me to greenlight another forum member's (now a staff member) request to take the info public. The result was quite a soap opera-ish episode in online drama, with fans of both major IHVs taking stands for or against the use of such 'viral' marketing efforts. And in the end, I'm not so certain any real change occurred since I believe the IHV's focus group still exists, though I'm of course far more comfortable with its existence falling within the domain of public awareness. Yet looking back I now wish I would've kept myself uninvolved from the entire sordid affair.
Fortunately this major 3D site is now under management that appears as objective as it is technical. Which I write as sincere high praise. In fact, I could tell a few horror stories about the owner prior to the one under whom I labored, so I feel it safe to say that this site has probably never been in better hands.
2 comments:
Gutsy. But it probably really shows your priorities IRL more than anything.
There will be some that would recognize me from that certain small part of your blog. There will be some that recognizes That Significant Other. Nobody would recognize nor understand the anguish I felt and still feel, back then, through the time I left that site and now, when I'm banned from that site.
Other than immdieate family members, I'm still surprised something like this (a website, for God's sake) can affect me the way it did (which I never realized until I sat down and thought about why I behaved the way I did that led to my recent ban at that site's forums).
Sorry for "stealing the thunder"; I'm just frustrated and exasperated, having lost hope anyone would understand my situation. Even though I had tried to explain to the new/current owner about my situation and that I view the site with a new perspective and respect that he depends on it for a living, I have failed to receive any acknowledgement. I do still try to help the site (or at least, its staff) as evidenced by my recent email to one of its staff members about what I have learned about the MegaTexture technology by John Carmack (as per what John told me) in response to what that site staff had asked but the fact that I received no acknowledgement nor thanks simply told me I should not expect anything in return anymore, no matter how sincere I am.
Again, gutsy blog John.
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