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LinuxWorld Editorial Machinations
James Turner writes "The editors of LinuxWorld Magazine have been fighting a quiet war with the publishers (Sys-Con Media) for half a year, trying to get hack-journalist Maureen O'Gara purged from their site. Well, with O'Gara's recent vile attack on Pamela Jones (which I won't give any more free publicity by linking to), enough is finally enough.
In my latest blog, I've basically told Sys-Con that it's either her or me. I suspect, given the amount of page views O'Gara's tripe brings to the Sys-Con sites, that they'll choose her." James isn't the only one either.
Although journalism should be an unbiased thing, journalists are still part of a buisness whose incentive it is to make profit. Supply and demand. So do we blame the sensationalist writer, or the thousands of sheep reading the articles and demanding more. How are such articles from O'Gara tolerated in a trade mag like this. You would think the linux community would be more educated and less susceptible to this type of journalism, then again noting the anonymous cowards on slashdot, i take that back...
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
You do realize that the more people who view the offending article the more they are likely to publish stuff like this again.
They get paid by the viewer. The more viewers the better. This is why a lot of web news is no better than tabloid journalism, it brings in the page views.
Better that we all go cold turky on all sys-con links for a week or two.
Well, the fact that he says that the LinuxWorld staff have been calling for O'Gara to go for a while suggests that they already know his objections and, I assume, he has told them this in person by now.
I think he's just trying to protect his professional reputation by stating, openly and publically, that he is challenging LinuxWorld on this issue. That's quite brave, but if they do "call his bluff" and let him go, his reputation will be intact... he stated an ultimatum in public, they refused. Much better than giving the ultimatum in private, being pushed out and then loads of rubbish being wrote about why he'd left.
Why is it that common people always use the word hack in a negative sense? If you mean to say that she lacks ability, why not just say inept, unprofessional, clueless or some similar word?
It's been a popular term amongst journalists for quite a while now to refer to a talentless writer.
Don'y give them any unneccessary page hits.
Use the Google cache of the article instead.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
So I just read the article (thanks previous poster for the link). I can't believe that Sys-Con would publish this trash. What sort of lowlife reporter is O'Gara, that she would stoop to ripping up someone like that in an article? There isn't a single thing about linux in there, it's all about Pamela Jones' personal living arrangements (with her home address!) and her religious leanings. There is no story there at all.
I think if I read this article on the site without looking at the other articles I might have though I was reading some of the lowest form of tabloid.
Some people here appear to be assuming that there is some truth in the O'Gara article. It seems much more likely that everything in it originated in her imagination.
It's barely possible that she investigated a Pamela Jones: the wrong one.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
See, in a democracy (or even in a republic), when the government violates the law, the people need to know so they can decide whether it's time to change governments. When an individual criminal violates the law...well, it's still news, but it doesn't have the same level of import and urgency.
To be "employed" would require payment, and no LinuxWorld editor, senior or otherwise receives any money. That's right, they work for free. There is no office.
The big problem with the Maureen O'Gara articles is while she has no affiliation with LinuxWorld, all of the Sys-Con Linux subject articles from other publications show up on the LinuxWorld website, giving readers the impression she writes for LinuxWorld. Every time O'Gara writes an article, not only do the Linuxworld editors get all upset that her crap is showing up on their website, they receive a boatload of nasty email that assume they ok'd it!
Why don't the editors just do something about it? Well, in the new world of "journalism", Sys-con central decides what goes on the websites, and the magazine editors only have a say over what goes in the print version.
Technical magazines never used to pay much for articles-- when I was writing articles $750 was average, but I'd spend weeks working on it. Now there's so many people still out of work they'll work for free just to keep a foot in the tech. industry somehow.
Morally repugnant acts undertaken in front of the world by soldiers who are supposed to be carrying out the democratic will of the American people, in breach of international law - and the question of how and when they will be held account for those actions - seem like they add up to a pretty big news story to me. Bigger than the fact that there are individual evil people in the world who individually do evil things and they sometimes get caught and punished for doing so. Reporting on specific incidents of domestic crime should not generally be the stuff of frontpage NYT news, because it isn't world-changing.
The fact that, to you, the immigration status of a murderer (or an accused murderer - I'm not familiar with the case, so have no idea if a verdict has been handed down) seems to be of greater import than their mental state, or possibly even guilt, leads me to suspect that you believe that this appalling individual act should have been reported more widely to draw attention to what you maybe perceive as a wider problem with illegal immigrants. Sadly, that simply suggests you have a fundamental problem figuring out what facts are relevant, and makes me glad that it's not you in charge of editorial policy on a major international newspaper.
Agreed, and it's definitely working. I don't even know him, but if I was running a company in his line of business I'd bump his resume' near the top based on that alone.
Taking a principled stand against O'Gara's over-the-top shill work and credibility that rivals only the Weekly World News, I've wondered just why the heck LinuxWorld hasn't dumped her years ago.
Number of hits, you say? That's eating your seed corn. Short term hits at the expense of long term credibility isn't a good survival strategy in today's flood of Web-based alternatives.
There is _nothing_ newsworthy about this story. It consists of personal and private information about a person who may, or may not, be the PJ of Groklaw. And, even if it is, who cares!?
Does it add anything about SCO vs. IBM? About how Groklaw works? About the relationship of Groklaw to the parties involved in the lawsuits? No, no, and no.
Those points might be newsworthy. This story doesn't touch though. This story is not news. It's an offensive invasion of privacy.
Steven
The article begins:
So, I wonder where she got the idea to "attack the person, not the argument".
A real gem is later:
Sentence fragments aside and obligatory "pot calling the kettle" comments aside, some "opinions" are back by evidence, at which point they become "arguments". Others remain merely the flatulence of mind.
Seriously guys, if someone's writing crap like that, she's clearly on a payroll. If you pretend to some sort of journalistic integrity, you don't work with them. The outcome of this can only be Mr. Turner's resignation; this is like the bouncer of a tittie bar writing the manager, threatening to quit because the girls are prostitutes. Who do you think is profiting from the arrangement?
If people really want to see O'Gara gone, they should contact the companies that advertise in Sys Con Media publications, and let them know that you will not read any Sys Con Media publications while O'Gara is writing for them. If you contact Sys Con Media directly, they'll be overjoyed at the amount of free publicity that's being generated. If enough people contact the advertisers and let them know that the situation is unacceptable, they'll pull their ads. It's pretty hard to run a magazine with no advertising revenue.
it appears that Maureen O'Gara would be more qualified; after all, PJ hasn't published MOG's home address and that of her mother. Perhaps MOG's miffed that PJ has torpedoed virtually every article she's written. So, now it's gotten personal.
I stopped looking at LW's web site long ago specifically because of MOG's poorly researched pieces and her bitter style. Why they allowed her to publish details of a journalist's personal life when it's entirely possible that there really were threats to that journalist's life is beyond me. Now, of course, if anything does happen to the woman (PJ or not) whose mother lives at that Connecticut address the cops there will certainly have something to say to MOG. And lawyers will be involved. What if publication of those addresses led to someone being killed?
PJ's articles stand on their own merit without regard to the age, gender, religion and lifestyle of the writer. MOG just can't stand it that she is constantly upstaged by someone who shows her to the world for the twit she is.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I am upset. If you write quite a bit, you learn a rule: you must never, ever write when you are upset. In such a state, clarity simply goes and what you thought was a masterpiece in truth was in fact... a pile of incomprehensible, misspelled crap.
I am going to do it anyway. I shall add a disclaimer: I am going to publish this article "as is" - no spell check, no Dave guard which turns my atrocious English into... well, English.
I am deeply upset and saddened by O'Gara's article on Pamela Jones at GrokLaw. To the point that I am absolutely speechless. I mean it. I don't know what to say.
I don't share O'Gara's ways nor approach. She seem to hate Groklaw, and the secrecy around this web site. Hatred is not a nice nor constructive feeling; it doesn't help anybody, and in fact it often goes against you (as it's going against Maureen right now); unfortunately, we all experience it and we all act out our anger sometimes.
This "pill" is here for two reason. The first one, is to ask you to... to forgive Maureen O'Gara. What she did was vile; but it was out of frustration and anger. She is a human being; she has made a great mistake; and she will pay for it. I ask you to forgive her because she is unforgivable, and it is right now that we all have to take out the best of ourselves and feel that even the unforgivable is... well, forgivable.
The second, more important reason why I am writing this (dangerously) unedited "pill", is to ask the question: why is Maureen's article unforgivable? I asked this to myself. In a way, you can even see where she is coming from: there is this wonderful site which is helping the demolition of SCO's absurd case, and it seems unlikely that a single individual could possibly run it all on her own. It is also true that if Groklaw were run by a bunch of IBM's lawyers, well, it would loose at least some of its credibility. I think I have reasons to believe that this is exactly what Maureen wanted to find out. Again, then: why is Maureen's article unforgivable?
Because there is a chance (and for a lot of us that's a fat chance) that Groklaw is run by a wonderful 40 or 60 year old woman or man who is a Christian or a Jehovah's Witness or a Buddhist, who believes in what she does to the point that she is willing to put herself in a dangerous position by doing so. Yes, I said dangerous, and I mean dangerous. There is a (big) chance that Pamela is in fact a woman who lives her everyday life, has a job, does what she has to do, and runs Groklaw thanks to the support of the whole Free Software and Open Source Community.
This paragraph is for you, Maureen: if that were the case, Maureen, you hurt somebody beyond belief. You hurt somebody so much, that I can only hope you will never, ever find out quite how mad the damage was. Because if you did find out, you would never be able to forgive yourself.
Well, that's a big weight out of my chest. But I am not quite finished yet. I want to talk about myself for a minute.
I am an ex-cracker born in Italy and living in Australia. When I was 18 and 19, I cracked quite a few computers and nearly went to jail for it. My phones were tapped, and only an amazing series of coincidences saved me. I didn't go through a trial, but a lot of people around me did. I never destroyed a system, but I did read files I should have read. If one day I made somebody very powerful really angry, I can see how they would be able to dig in my past and find all sorts of things that I would find "embarrassing" at least, compromising at worst. They could pick on my past as a cracker, on my religion (I am a Buddhist), on the way I live my life (I don't shop and yet I am not stingy), or on another million things.
Maureen, this is another paragraph for you. I am sure you haven't been a cracker, but if I were to look very, very thoroughly into your l
But that's ok. I'm not basing this off of anything in O'Gara's story, because I'm not going to read it, but PJ does enough to make herself look bad on her own website. Her tone is often just on the edge of snide and unprofessional. She is extremely partisan.
But she keeps publishing true shit. O'Gara can trash talk as long as she likes (I think Jehova's Witnesses are idiots too.) but that won't change whether PJ is providing timely factual information. Sure, she might be completely batty. Doesn't matter. She's batty and she's still more on top of it than Ms. O'Gara. Show us that she's a habitual liar (like... O'Gara) and then maybe she'll get less credit. Don't care if she's a religious nut.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Syscon has lots of advertisers. Call them, write them, and politely tell them that you find their support of Sys-Con so repugnant that you will not longer buy their products. Be polite and be firm, don't rant, don't threaten.
Make the connection that advertising on any Sys-Con related publication will lose your business. A hundred of these, and they will think twice.
I write for The Inq, and on a given story, I get ~5 letters out of 20K reads. If any advertisers get 100, they will sure as hell sit up and take notice. Spend the time, write up why you find MoG and Sys-Con so repulsive, and go from there. The more articulate you are, the more effect you will have.
Happy hunting, I have already pulled out the rolodex, and I have sent a few off to some choice individuals. If you know anyone, write them, if not, you can always look things up on the web site's contact or press info pages.
-Charlie
As I said below, there is a better way. Don't bitch at MoG or Sys-Con, that will only inflame their semi-masochistic sense of persecution. Instead, write their advertisers.
If 100 people write polite letters to the sys-con advertisers politely, and I do mean politely, informing them that their support of Sys-Con, MoG and others is costing them your business, it will hit Sys-Con where it hurts.
I write for The Inq, I know how the game is played. If you want attention, polite and cogent letters that hit them in the wallet are the only things that work.
Flaming them only hurts your cause, clicking on them brings them more money. It is pretty obvious that they are out for hits at any cost, that is how their bills are paid. Cut that out and you end the games, play into it, and it gets worse.
If you notice, there is nothing on Groklaw about it, that would be playing the game MoG wants you to play. Don't feed the trolls, cut off their food instead.
I personally wrote several people I know about it, and lets see what becomes of it. Do the same. If someone wants to make a list of Sys-Con advertisers and post it below, great. If you want to hunt down that and contact info, better still. You can find the contact info on most vendor's web pages under contact us or press links. Be polite and firm, and tell them their wallets are at risk. Have fun also.
-Charlie