Unjournalism

The folks over at the Social Media Club blog bring us the story of a man - a regular Joe - who defeated Superman. Or he outed Superman as a dirty YouTube cheater, at least.

The man in the YouTube video claims that some people working to promote “Superman Returns” threw some video footage up on the ‘Tube and then magically that YouTube channel had more than 7,000 subscribers. Strange, YouTube’s “oneparkave” points out, because it seems this channel has more subscribers than collective video views.

This guy’s video, his effort to contribute to the good side of social media, is great. It’s a little dull, and he could have used a light behind the camera, but it’s great. It shows the raw, sincere power of a simple digital video and a true message.

This guy didn’t edit out his couple of stutters. He didn’t reshoot after his wife/girlfriend/sister/mom (probably mom yelled in the background. He just did his thing and expressed his frustration with the sheer lame-itude of the Superman pushers.

This is sad, and just another item on a long list of corporate screw-ups in the social media realm. Fake blogging from Wal-Mart (via Edelman) and McDonald’s - and god knows what else - and now Superman is cheating on YouTube. What’s next? Bono faking a blog from a starving village in Africa while swimming in the bright blue waters of the Carribean?

Technorati Tags: Superman, cheating, YouTube, Time+Warner

Tags: YouTube, ethics, new media by Mike Keliher
No Comments »

Alan Mutter, some “CEO in Silicon Valley” who I’ve never heard of until Jim Romenesko linked to him, has a recent blog post that tries to be insightful - hell, he even did some primary research - but comes off as a little short-sighted.

Mutter seems bothered that many of the most-often e-mailed stories from newspapers’ Web sites - a commonly tracked piece of data on those sites - don’t deal with serious political issues such as the election and Donald Rumsfeld’s departure but rather “a no-knead bread recipe in the New
York Times [and...] a USA Today story about a naked man arrested for
carrying a concealed weapon.”

Mutter also suggests that this prominence of less-than-hard news in the “most e-mailed” lists “suggests there is a major disconnect between what editors want to print and what readers want to read.” Interesting, but…

How about applying some common sense to your research, Alan?

As Romenekso said, “I say this suggests that people know that their friends already have
read a million stories about the election and don’t want another one
e-mailed to them.” In fairness, Mutter gets close to this point on his own, but he still misses a big idea:

First, I’m sure my friends are capable of finding their own election- and Rumsfeld-related news. It can’t be missed, really. Plus, that shit’s boring. I gnaws at you after a while. More importantly, Mutter fails to understand the true nature of the “viral” spreading of news stories when people implement that little “e-mail this story” function on a news Web site. For the most part, anything someone sends is going to be useful (like, I don’t know, no-knead bread, maybe) or damn funny (like a naked guy finding a way to conceal a weapon - I don’t want to know…).

When I send a friend a news story, I don’t want to bog him down with another almost-profound piece about the election. I’m sending him stuff that will make him chuckle, and I hope he’ll return the favor.

Technorati Tags: Romenesko, Alan Mutter, most e-mailed, election, politics, news

Tags: Uncategorized by Mike Keliher
No Comments »