Macgasm

A couple months back I wrote a well received post about what I love about the Mac community. It highlighted a bunch of things that I loved, the number of which far out weighed what I dislike about the community. Actually, there’s only really one thing I hate about the community, and it could be argued it’s more aimed at blogger/journalists, then it is the Mac community. But, this example clearly illustrates everything that’s rotten in the state of blogs and in this particular case mac blogs.

Lack of ethical source citation

“find |f?nd|
verb ( past found |found|) [ trans. ]
1 discover or perceive by chance or unexpectedly : Lindsey looked up to find Neil watching her | the remains of a headless body had been found.”

There’s only so much news that happens in a day, so overlap between the other Mac blogs is to be expected. Hopefully the commentaries on each of the articles are unique enough to provide valuable insights into what’s being talked about in an article. For the most part I’m okay with this. I enjoy the commentaries more than I do the news. But what I’m not okay with is pawning off information as if you came across it by chance, when two major blogs have reported on the issue before you.

I’ve been in this game a short while (since 2007), but I’ve been around long enough to know what’s going on, and it has to change. Trolling RSS feeds on a hourly basis is the norm for anyone who’s trying to write about the news, and when you’re focusing on a niche product, you tend to have an RSS feed geared heavily towards the news you’re trying to keep an eye on. If you’re writing about Apple and you’re not following every other major source commenting on your niche, you’re doing it wrong. I know what’s going on at most major “networks” in my niche and a lot of them provide inspirations for some of the posts that we write here. We try to always post sources, but never do we claim to “Find” something on the internet from anywhere but the source.

Taking news that’s been reported over at Unplggd first (pay attention to Date, Time, and Source links), then Gizmodo, and then pretending you just happened to stumble across the same flickr photo, making it a Flickr Find (see definition above) without tipping your hat at the source says a lot about the state of ethics in the blogging community. When you have a “source” section in your post footer, you should be citing your real source, not cutting out the middle man and claiming the “find” for yourself.  It’s called the Apple Echo Chamber for a reason.  It’s because we all watch each other, then report the same stuff.

Moving Forward here at Macgasm

We’re not all perfect, and it could be a simple mistake, lord knows I make my fair share of them. We’ve missed our source links in the past. I feel crappy about it when people point it out.  We know what it’s like to struggle to get traffic. But, it happens in the fast paced world we live in.  It’s no excuse, but it happens. That being said, I’m now on a mission. From this moment on, every single Macgasm article that sites any snippet of news is going to have a source section. We’ll leave a trail of information for you guys to track back through. It’s time to give credit where it’s due, and it’s time to stop falsely laying claim to article findings.

Did you hear that Macgasm Team? It’s time to bring some ethics back to the blogging community. You’re on notice.

For all the heat Gizmodo gets these days, it’s nice to see someone taking their source citations seriously.

Image Credit: Robert S. Donovan