Valleywag
Ziff-Davis senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a publicist's dream. As documented a dozen times here and here and just now here by Fake Steve Jobs blogger (and sharp-minded Forbes editor) Dan Lyons, Vaughan-Nichols copies large swatches of press releases from Novell and other tech vendors into his articles on eWeek's Linux-Watch site. You might think this amounts to blatant plagiarism and copyright infringement, but you'd be wrong.
This is Novell's prayers answered — a "reporter" who writes exactly what they tell him to. Vaughan-Nichols is a lazy genius: He's figured out a way to earn his salary by cutting and pasting content no one's going to complain about. In fact, he's probably the least headache for his own editor, since none of the companies he writes about ever call to complain that he got it wrong. Here's an idea for publicists: Stick a giant Creative Commons license atop all your press releases. See how many grateful bloggers take the hint and finally, finally run your talking points unsoiled by any of their error-prone original reporting.
Comments
This guy is a moron. For months (years?) e-Week has been pushing his opinion column in their newsletters where he unashamedly just takes whatever crap he can find that is anti-microsoft and throws it on the page - often making ridiculous leaps of "logic". He is the first linux idiot to scream "FUD! FUD! MICROSOFT IS EVIL!" and then turn around and do the exact same thing with no real sense of his own hypocrisy. E-week capitalizes on this by putting out newsletters with headlines like "Microsoft kills more puppies than Michael Vick!" and people suck it up like dogs drink anti-freeze.
Anyone who thinks they get real news or information from Eweek deserves the crap that they get. Probably the same sort of people who think that Fox News is fair and balanced - they are too short sighted and dimwitted to actually look around the 20 ton bus of misinformation in front of them.
Ziff-Davis produces crap and this is just more truth. Why they get any respect from anyone at this point is beyond me.
Dogs drink anti-freeze? Now I'm sad.
@vulgrin: Talk about a bloated, 20-ton bus of misinformation. Look in the mirror, buddy -- it's you. You obviously are not an eWEEK reader, because if you were, you'd know why most businesses don't understand virtualization and e-discovery; you'd know about the 10 new storage technologoies that will affect most -- if not all -- of us, and soon; and a ton of other good IT information not culled from press releases, such as objective product reviews from eWEEK Labs.
Publications like eWEEK don't set all-time page hit records (which it did in October) because they lack credibility.
Your credibility here: Zero.
@Derik: See Vulgar Vulgrin above. I thought most turkeys got taken out at Thanksgiving; what are YOU still doing here?
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