Romenesko and Poynter

Hmm, so Poynter takes a giant dump on a guy who is leaving to start a competing project.

Well, who didn't see that one coming?

Now that he's left, I'll never look at poynter.org again.

 

For me, this remains the best thing the Poynter folks have done.

 

This connects to how "rule" breakage reporting now trumps "code of the schoolyard" violations, something playing out inversely now at Happy Valley. From perusing reports here, it's disappointing to see the CJR writer who pointed it out credited as some kind of do-gooder. Thanks for the snack. Count me as one who regarded Romenesko's attribution as industry standard. Thus, Rules Suck.

 

I remember a few weeks or months ago someone brought up the issue of journalism academics as being problematic as they assess working journalists with their high-and-mighty supreme codes. I didn't agree. I think it's important to have a check on integrity. But this case is a perfect example of that person's point.

Everyone I know in the industry loves Romanesko because he points directly toward their best efforts. Being linked on Romanesko is something to strive for. And I've never heard anyone suggest he stole work. But someone at Columbia, journalism's white knight, felt he didn't use quote marks enough.

Fuck this shit.

 

There's no reason to. Self-serving, back-scratching dribble.

 

RT @sepinwall
So Poynter, which is all about transparency in journalism, has just deleted their own story explaining the idiocy that drove away Romenesko?

 

Some interesting tweets here. Repeat: What a silly deal:

http://twitter.com/#!/romenesko

 

See, I think the CJR guy's question was valid, and was a good general point about aggregate sourcing policies that might've served as an interesting larger question in an academic setting. Letter of what's taught versus spirit of how things're done on the floor.

It's Poynter's flailing thing that seems full-stupid.

 

Bye, Poynter! Won't miss ya.

Validates Poynter as a journalism site, though, because this is how the worst of grandstanding editors occasionally come down on great reporters, reminding them who's boss and tsk-tsking them in public over minor in-house transgressions when the outside world sees that journalist as a star.

Julie Moos. Never heard of her, in relative terms. She brings nothing to the conversation that Romenesko dominated in his niche for so long.

Go teach a community college class, Julie, or accept some half-assed award for something-or-other. Leave reporting and Web entrepreneurship to those with talent and grit.

 

Seriously, I guess a non-profit doesn't covet page views for revenue, but man, their numbers are going to take a serious hit.

 

I think what he did was a big offense (although not unforgivable). Because he seemingly randomly mixed direct quotes and paraphrases, I can't buy a case that he merely didn't make clear enough what was quote and what wasn't. He wasn't concerned with differentiating his words from someone else's, and I have a problem with that.

 

Take two concurrent threads here and juxtapose them.

This thread about "crossing the line into plagiarism" and "transparancy in journalism" has lots of folks saying that standards exist but you can draw waaay too fine a line and damage things when you do that.

In the "Jim Armstrong leaves the Denver Post" thread, some folks assert that when a sportwriter wagers on sports that he has committed a violation of ethics worthy of termination.

For the record, I think the folks at Poynter and the editors at the Denver Post who tried to claim a moral high ground by saying that people had to trust that their reporting was done with no ulterior motives behind the reporting went too far.

To the editors at the Denver Post, would you apply that same standard of neutrality to your political reporting?

To the folks at Poynter, would even one of the alleged postings with "insufficient quotation marks" have been read any differently by anyone other than someone in academia?