
AOL Asks Us If We Can Tone It Down - boh
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/15/snarketing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Techcrunch+(TechCrunch)
======
thesethings
I know TechCrunch has a bad rap around here. But one needn't like TechCrunch
or believe in its integrity to appreciate a little dent in the armor of old
school gatekeepers.

Hollywood publicists have traditional entertainment media in a tough spot,
able to withhold access to "talent" without some sort wink + nod about what
the story will be.

Of course many outlets do _not_ kiss ass and still get courted by Hollywood
creatives. But they need to establish that voice early on (Perez Hilton, Pink
is the New Blog), not do a crazy 180 (What if Entertainment Tonight all of a
sudden asked Tom Cruise a truly tough question?).

I think it's important that "big" tech media establish some boundaries early
on. Sure TechCrunch gets some easy traffic for this. But that doesn't mean
it's not also cool.

~~~
cookiecaper
It's the same kind of overdramatic reaction that TechCrunch is known for. The
email even said that TechCrunch had no obligation to comply. Probably some guy
called Moviefone and said, "I see you guys own TechCrunch now, can you ask
them to change their story?" and the guy said, "Uh, I guess I can ask for you,
but no promises...", and then wrote that email, and now TechCrunch, in typical
fashion, is blowing something way out of proportion, which in turn generates
more publicity for itself, AOL, _The Source Code_ , and Moviefone anyway.

I don't see much to praise here. The intentions _might_ have been good, but
otherwise it's a waste of space and time for everyone that isn't getting
publicity out of the deal.

~~~
notahacker
The original email is pretty much relationship management 101. Client Y asks
for X, you observe that X is well outside your area of responsibility and not
likely to happen, they ask you to make enquiries, so you email the relevant
person and then diplomatically reword their response. _We passed your feedback
on to TechCrunch. TechCrunch were grateful for their invitation to your event
and noted they had not been advised of any publishing restrictions. They
observed the abrasive, sceptical tone of the article is their house
journalistic style and that far from damaging readers' perceptions of your
film, it is likely to have raised awareness of your film in a key target
market. The editorial freedom of TechCrunch is very important to AOL._

I've sent emails along the lines of _"X enquired whether their press release
sent yesterday was newsworthy"_ and even _"X has asked for [something] because
[reason] and I am sure the answer will be no. Please confirm that that is the
case"_ before.

I can perfectly understand TechCrunch's motivations for publishing: "Hey,
we're standing up against AOL like we said we would. Now give us more
pageviews", but only assume the rest of the chorus of hostility directed
towards the carefully worded email emanates from people who don't have to deal
with corporate customers on a daily basis, or can afford to tell them to jump
off a bridge.

~~~
eli
You're right, and that makes sense from a client services standpoint. But it's
totally unacceptable for a news organization.

And maybe I'm splitting hairs, but there's a difference between "the client
wants to know why you didn't cover this event" and "the client doesn't like
the editorial voice used in your coverage please try to change it in the
future"

~~~
cookiecaper
Moviefone is not a news organization. They emailed TechCrunch and they sounded
skeptical that TechCrunch would oblige. TechCrunch received email and utilized
it to create an instance of classic attention/pageview whoring.

------
brown9-2
This headline seems incredibly overblown and designed to get more attention
than it really deserves.

One email from "a Moviefone/AOL Television representative" asking you to tone
it down is not the same as "AOL" asking you to tone it down.

~~~
spydertennis
I completely agree with this. I don't understand how an email from a Moviefone
employee (just trying to do his/her job the way it works in their industry)
asking for help from a sister site gets blown into AOL censoring TC.

It seems like a more appropriate response would have been to email the
Moviefone person back with a, "sorry, that's not how we do things here."

~~~
PakG1
Under the new AOL Way, linkbaiting seems to be a good thing. :)

~~~
pavs
No. This is exactly how TC has always worked. They are a nothing more than
linkbaiting, content firm dressed as a legitimate news outlet.

------
waterlesscloud
Critic Scott Weinberg announced on Twitter he will no longer write for
Moviefone due to this. Kudos to him.

<http://twitter.com/scottEweinberg/status/47766848476946432>

------
btilly
The points that I took away from this.

\- The movie industry is used to getting random articles changed when they
don't like them.

\- Moviefone doesn't even fact verify these requests before passing them on to
journalists. But does word them innocuously enough that they have plausible
deniability.

\- TechCrunch had many choices of how to handle this. Their chosen strategy is
apparently to blow any sign of manipulation public to let the rest of AOL know
that they don't want to play these games with TechCrunch.

\- I read an article (<http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/12/the-source-code/>)
about a movie that I otherwise wouldn't have read, and found that Hollywood
still appears to believe that Microsoft runs tech. As is evidenced by their
using Microsoft Tags in their game rather than the industry standard QR codes.

~~~
sixtofour
I'd say the tags were more likely paid product placement, and not at all a
judgment, much less an understanding, of who runs tech.

------
chc
Also on TechCrunch, Paul Carr has written a really good rebuttal to Alexia's
piece, pointing out that TechCrunch and Moviefone are two independent AOL
properties, and it's no more fair to call some Moviefone flack "AOL" than it
would be to refer to Alexia herself that way.

Then he demands the head of the Moviefone editor-in-chief on a platter for her
response to Alexia's article.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/actually-aol-didnt-ask-
us-t...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/16/actually-aol-didnt-ask-us-to-tone-
it-down-moviefone-did-and-their-editor-in-chief-should-be-fired-2/)

------
zakj
Moviefone's response: [http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/03/15/moviefones-
response-to-...](http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/03/15/moviefones-response-to-
the-techcrunch-post/)

~~~
radicaldreamer
No response would've been better than that response.

~~~
latch
I dunno. I read the tech crunch piece, and felt like Moviefone/AOL were in the
wrong. Now that I've read Moviefone's response, the whole thing seems
overblown.

They didn't threaten them with respect to future access. They didn't demand
anything. They weren't rude or antagonizing. They just _asked_ for a change.
To me, it now seems like they did exactly what they ought to given how they
probably felt.

~~~
Devilboy
You don't ask journalists to change their articles to make the subject look
good. That's just NOT ok, even without the explicit threat.

~~~
latch
On the one hand, you're right (and I appreciate the response rather than the
downvote!).

On the other hand...

I'm an amateur writer (I admit, this is far from a journalist). Sometimes I'm
just wrong, or I write something that ends up coming across differently than I
expected. I always welcome feedback, even if I disagree with it, or I think it
might be driven by some bias. It doesn't mean that I'm going to change it. But
without such feedback, I'm not sure I'd ever get better. I guess I'm worried
that in your world, journalist would be living in an ivory tower.

This constantly happens. People submit editorials with their opinion about
what others wrote. People write-in to journalist all the time - to agree or
disagree.

A movie review isn't an objective piece of pure journalism. It's much more of
a subjective editorial, and as such, should be open to far more feedback.

~~~
Devilboy
There's a difference between feedback and 'change your article'.

~~~
randall
Not to mention the feedback was "we don't like that you didn't absolutely love
our movie."

------
bgentry
I love seeing stuff like this published..

Even though this one release may not be representative of the company as a
whole, at least it gives us some reason to believe in TechCrunch's
journalistic integrity.

~~~
wheels
I'll play devil's advocate here (though I don't think this is actually what
happened):

• TechCrunch knows that they're going to have to throw their readers and anti-
AOL bone at some point. There _had_ to be a post like this eventually; they
hyped it and everyone expected it. If so this would be a really easy sacrifice
to make on that alter. It's so removed from the core AOL that there's very
little damage to be done. In fact, a few of these could cover up more serious
editorial jiggering, which would probably be done through more discreet
channels.

• The Streisand effect is working as a marketing tool. They just created
dialog about several of their properties that I'd never heard of (The Source
Code, Moviephone). There's nothing sufficiently damning here that I'd not use
those services on that basis, thus, I suspect, this is a win-win scenario.

~~~
nikcub
you are reading for too much into this. most bloggers barely have time to get
stories out, let alone sit around and think up conspiracies

each writer at TC has independence to say what they want, and it is ingrained
in the writers there to say whatever you want, so in this case Alexia though
'no this doesn't seem right' and instead of keeping quiet like 95% of other
sites, she published it

arrington is famous for this, he has published lawsuits, internal emails after
being asked not to, the emails where he is being asked not to - so I don't
know why it is now a surprise or conspiracy when TC keeps doing it

tbf, most people at techcrunch couldn't give a fuck if the other AOL blogs or
properties are getting traffic

(disc: i worked at tc for 4 years)

------
davej
Why did they post this? This just looks really unprofessional in my opinion.
The appropriate response would be to just say 'no' and if
Moviefone/AOL/whoever wouldn't accept a no, then sure go public with it.

The company behind the film obviously got in touch with Moviefone and whinged
about the interview. Moviefone were the people who made the connection in the
first place so they then relayed the feedback to TechCrunch. Moviefone never
played the AOL card, they were acting as the middleman because they were the
guys who set up the connection. They just wanted to get 'some sort of
information' from TechCrunch, so they could get back to Summit (the film
company) and say "TechCrunch said x".

Uncalled for but also unsurprising given its TechCrunch.

~~~
gabrielroth
You're taking an interesting position, advocating for less transparency. Is
there a pressing reason why you think I shouldn't know about this?

~~~
dholowiski
The same reason you don't need to know about an argument I had with a co-
worker. Why exactly is it your business?

~~~
chime
If you're giving me news, if I'm investing in your company or vice versa, if
you're passing laws that affect me, if you manage my money, or if you can
influence my career or means of livelihood in any significant way, I would
most certainly want to know everything I can about you and the argument you
had with your coworker. In most cases I may have no right to demand such
information but it would definitely be in my interest to find as much as I can
about it.

Posts like these strengthen my trust in TC. If the article had been silently
edited or redacted without anyone noticing, it would not affect my level of
trust. But if someone else pointed out the redaction or edits, my level of
trust in TC would certainly fall. So an article like this does more benefit
than harm as far as my level of trust is concerned.

~~~
davej
I'd trust them a bit more if they said 'no' and spent their time posting
newsworthy articles instead of feigning outrage to get a bit of attention.

------
joshes
I find it interesting, if a tad unrelated, that when you see the summary of
the article on the front page of Techcrunch, this line reads, "Apparently, the
post was not fawning enough for Summit..." whereas when you click through to
the article it reads, "Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for
Summit."

~~~
TillE
I've known some sites to scrub naughty language from the front page,
supposedly to avoid being blocked by parental-control type software. Anything
goes on the rest of the site, though.

Dunno if it actually works.

~~~
hartror
Any child that cannot get around parental control software shouldn't be trying
to read TechCrunch.

------
johnitsagal
string.indexOf() is O(n), whereas the object-property-lookup is O(1). I guess
indexOf is fast enough anyway given the size of the dictionary.

~~~
statictype
Is this a bug in HN? I guess this was meant to be posted to the
dictionary/javascript topic?

~~~
johnitsagal
More likely my mistake; yes it was intended for
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2329940> . Why are people upvoting my
comment?!

~~~
jeromec
Apparently discussing code on Hacker News is never off-topic ;)

------
dr_
Is this really even a story? Shouldn't this be something the TechCrunch staff
discusses amongst itself near the watercooler?

~~~
dillona
I think so. I think it is a good idea that they are being open and honest.

I think we can all agree that's not the typical policy of TechCrunch

------
jarin
Just to put this in terms we all can understand, posting about maintaining
your journalistic integrity is like posting about only using FOSS software,
posting about not taking venture capital, posting anti-GPL rants, posting
about veganism, or posting about never programming PHP again, for the rest of
us.

It's something people do when they have strong convictions.

------
nhangen
Meanwhile, TC posts another piece on Quora...

------
URSpider94
Sigh. This is one of the reasons that I will miss newspapers when they are
gone. Folks, one of the key tenets of traditional journalism is that
advertising sales department is never, but never, allowed to ask anything of
the editorial department. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good
intentions, and it's easy to see how little requests to change content, "if
you don't mind," could over time undermine the integrity of a news
organization.

~~~
webignition
Refer to "Guardians of Power: The Myth of the Liberal Media" [1] for an
understanding how the editorial content of mainstream newspapers is almost
universally influenced by advertising dollars.

[1] <http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php>

------
hartror
They strive very hard to appear trustworthy which while admirable really
proves nothing and everything they (and others) print should still be taken
with a grain of salt. What they are trying to do is prove a negative to their
readers i.e they don't ever take brides. It is in fact it is only practical to
prove a positive i.e that they have in at least one instance taken a bribe.

As the old adage goes _"Don't believe everything you read."_

------
argmaps
Can you imagine a less inflammatory "tone it down" e-mail from AOL? If I'm AOL
here, and I want to make it clear to all the Techcrunch readers that TC is
going to keep its own voice, I set up exactly this kind of scenario, or high-
five the TC employee that does. Either that or this is just another horseshit
TC post that has no business on HN.

------
mayukh
Yet another example of when the person reporting the news becomes bigger than
the news.. The S/N ratio at TC has gotten really really bad and its hard to
find interesting/insightful stuff there anymore. It's a pity

------
anigbrowl
La Tsotsis has clearly never read Variety. Hollywood folk are much nastier
than Techcrunch about films/people they dislike.

------
grandalf
This sort of post has to be the best thing (only good thing?) about the AOL
acquisition of TC.

------
adamdecaf
(Note: I didn't finish this article, I skimmed it.)

Whenever I read something like the following:

> "Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit,"

The level of reporting drops to the floor. How is this professional at all?
That phrase made me close the tab; TechCrunch has had its fair share of
childness, but this is an all time low. Really guys? Really?

~~~
jedsmith
Are blowjobs really that offensive, to make you comment about it? I mean, on
the scale of offensive horrors, blowjobs can't be too far up there, can they?
I'm honestly asking because someone else made the same remark in the comments
on the post, and I simply cannot comprehend how this is a big deal; am I too
open-minded or young to see how the imagery was offensive?

My wife's _very_ Mormon family has joked with me about far worse subjects, so
I don't really have any perspective here. I know people get offended, but I've
never really dug into _why_.

~~~
forensic
Dude.. Mormons are freaks when it comes to sex. Pick a different example.

~~~
shareme
SO might be the rest of the Religious right..and your point is?

~~~
forensic
My point is that Mormons are unique among religious people. When it comes to
sex they are in their own category.

You won't see a baptist joking about anal sex.

Anyway, joke is definitely ruined now :p

