Mark Pincus Blog

the times acting like big dumb old media that they are

david chappell, the deputy managing editor, has been responding to all of your inquiries with the same email. (thanks to those who forwarded back to me).  while i'm happy they responded at all and did print a correction, it's sad to see a news organization take so little ownership and responsibility for their actions.

chappell's response is basically that this was just a matter a mere omission. see, they forgot to add the word 'blog' after 'mark pincus'. guess that would have made a world of difference to print a racist quote and attribute it to 'mark pincus blog'. sure their readers would have all just assumed that meant an idiot posted a comment to my blog which the times did me the favor of broadcasting to a larger audience. why would anyone think i said that?

my friend jason calcanis (not afraid to tell anyone what he thinks) pointed out to mr. chappell that this would be no different than a blog taking a quote from an oped piece in their paper and republishing it as simply 'the times'. in fact, we should all try that just for fun.

what would be the right response from the times? how about starting with 'wow, did we ever fuck up'? how about admitting that their process is broken? how about stating clearly that they dont believe it's ok to lift qoutes from blogs that create gross mis perceptions about the author's true intent?

no, it's not enough to just say that the journalist, mr. ayres (who btw seems like a nice guy), was not 'culpable'. hey chappell, you forgot the second half of that sentence...'and our paper WAS culpable'. some editor (probably chappell) had to review the article, decide to add the sidebar with quotes and WAS responsible for this totally wrong and maligning mis-presentation...and that guy should be fired.

folks, here's what's wrong with big media. they suck ass as much as the leaders they cover. the message is clear. the buck doesnt stop with anyone but us. the ants are always left holding the bag because it's nobody's fault.

when waste management calls my cell phone because 'you've been selected for a customer survey'. when the president admits that he has instructed the cia to illegally put US citizens under surveillance. when ceo's can make windfall profits selling stock in companies that are 'mis-stating' earnings and when major newspapers can malign someone's reputation. THEY ARE ALL JUST DOING THEIR JOBS! IT'S NOBODY'S FAULT.

this is why we need a revolution. newspapers used to be the power of the people but then they just became shitty fucking corporations that 'serve shareholders'. this is why we need a new form of capitalism. this is why craig newmark will be king and the newspapers will all die.

must be a tough new world for mr. chappell and his media counterparts. they'll have to learn new rules of engagement. like the leaders of governments and corporations they cover, they'll have to learn to answer to the people.

in honor of mr. chappell and the times i'm starting a new tag/category on my blog, "dumb media".

i encourage you all to continue letting mr. chappell know what you think of their practices.

Start page mania

fred wilson has a good roundup post on this new (old?) category of custom news aggregation/start page. comforting to see that after 10 years (20?) we're still working on the same issues. will we ever get to a final best solution or will this evolution keep going? seems like google is final for search. is it just that nobody has nailed this yet?

well that must be what a lot of vc's are thinking, backing all these new entrants.

here's my response...

ok. i can be a little slow but i'm missing the boat on most of these. tried diggit.us and it didnt seem to let me choose topics. am i supposed to just be interested in what's most popular on these services? is that the point - like technorati top 10? or am i an idiot and missed the UI?

i'll admit i still dont use delicious, have never used myyahoo, tried digg once and didnt get that either.

i'd like a service that a) has no work cause i'm lazy, b) based on a few clicks offers me topical/category news, c) gives it in very short bursts like bloglines that i can fire through fast. if it also showed me most popular in a category or which fred was reading, icing but not necessary.

Start page mania

fred wilson has a good roundup post on this new (old?) category of custom news aggregation/start page. comforting to see that after 10 years (20?) we're still working on the same issues. will we ever get to a final best solution or will this evolution keep going? seems like google is final for search. is it just that nobody has nailed this yet?

well that must be what a lot of vc's are thinking, backing all these new entrants.

here's my response...

ok. i can be a little slow but i'm missing the boat on most of these. tried diggit.us and it didnt seem to let me choose topics. am i supposed to just be interested in what's most popular on these services? is that the point - like technorati top 10? or am i an idiot and missed the UI?

i'll admit i still dont use delicious, have never used myyahoo, tried digg once and didnt get that either.

i'd like a service that a) has no work cause i'm lazy, b) based on a few clicks offers me topical/category news, c) gives it in very short bursts like bloglines that i can fire through fast. if it also showed me most popular in a category or which fred was reading, icing but not necessary.

more on the times fuck up - correction about who was actually responsible

i received an email and call from mr chris ayres, the journalist on the times piece that incluced the quote wrongly attributed to me. he was upset with me for wrongly blaming him for the slip shod journalism and was annoyed at all the emails from you guys (i do feel the support and love that we ants can fight back sometimes).

chris explained that he submits his stories from LA and has nothing to do with the sidebars that are added. he agreed that the times fucked up but pointed out that he was not responsible for the final product.

while i feel it was reasonable for me to blame the named author on the story, i told chris that i would edit my original post as well as publishing my own correction here.

this is all a big lesson about what's to come. we live in a world of rapid fire media, where newspapers and bloggers will quote each other and sometimes get it wrong. we all must be vigilant in our collective effort to get the true story out there, protect the innocents and admit when we're wrong. here is a case where, with further information, i too was wrong.

so to mr chris ayres, i am sorry you had to experience a similar injustice to that brought on my character last week.

last question to readers, does anyone know if there is a copyright one can post on their blog that forces commercial media to get our permission to use our content in quotes or other ways?

where's the long tail in music? searching for my sunday morning joy

as a not so closeted fan of black gospel music i find it frustrating to find podcasts and internet radio with any of this. here's why this is a perfect long tail consumer product.

1. few branded groups - other than a few famous church choirs like glide in sf, it's a totally fragmented category of music that an average listener like me cant navigate.
2. hard/impossible to find - i have tried googling gospel, podcast, radio and you get a mash of nothingness. also, it's so annoying that itunes doesnt show me any gospel in their radio or even music store sections. (other than two lame christian gospel stations). why can't i find glide?
3. small/fragmented audience - i'll be there's a lot of closet listeners like me that would love to find the love on a sunday morning but not enough to make a planned purchase. this is a product that lends itself to total serendipity.
4. perfect 'recommendation' product - given how hard it is to find and know any groups, this is a total word of mouth type of product where showing me 'people who liked this' would be the most useful way to navigate.

anyway, if any of you know where i can find good gospel - podcasts, radio or cd's to recommend let me know. till then i'm searching for my sunday morning joy.

is ceo greed good?

there's an interesting piece in today's nytimes on a ceo who asked his board not to pay him so much. this seems to be the new mantra for business press, that any ceo who asks not to be paid is somehow a better form of the species.

why is it that in a capitalist system we (includes me) shower praise on those who seem the least greedy? we admire bill gates for giving away the majority of his fortune, or the ceo who takes $1.00 in salary.

if you had an employee who asked you not to pay him or her so much, how would you react? at first, i'd be psyched and wish there were more like her. but i would also think she wasnt that bright and worry how much intelligence she'll apply on my behalf if she's not maximizing her own.

my problem with gigantic ceo pay is less that the person is asking for it and more that their hand picked boards are giving it to them without the shareholders having any real representation. i dont see the solution as finding people who dont want to make a lot of money. there's an amazingly direct relationship between brains and dollars which isnt going to change.

the answer is more companies run by major shareholders. this can come in two forms. one is the strong founder like a larry ellison or bill gates. the other is the strong owner like rupert murdoch or more recently carl icahn, who can represent shareholders with power in negotiating with equally strong ceo's.

Email the times - tell them how wrong this is

you can email the managing editor

david.chappell@thetimes.co.uk

this is soo wrong. after all the heat against bloggers for not being *real* journalists and doing our homework, this is agregious.

more background, the times lifted a quote from my post titled 'tookie brings out kookies' in which i reposted the worst comment to my blog. this quote was indented and in italics and clearly identified as from a reader. he simply reprinted this in the paper with my name.

London Times Commites Libel Aginst Me - case of mainstream media fucking up big

i was alerted this morning by my friend chris shipley that the london times had a story yesterday about tookie williams that quotes american blogs responding. they actually took a comment from one of my idiot readers and attributed it to me! and it was the worst comment of all posted.

“Any of you liberal t***s ever think of the murder, drugs and other crap that that gang put into society . . . I hope they really f**k up the execution job so that it lasts a while, slow and painful . . . When you get to the other side and meet God . . . chances are Tookie will meet up with folks like Pol Pot or Adolf Hitler . . . that’s where he belongs”

this is painful and must be illegal. does anyone know how i go about suing a newspaper for libel. if there ever was a clear case this must be it. it's so painful that after all the shit i've taken for defending tookie some idiot journalist named chris ayers actually has the nerve to attribute this horendous qoute to me!

here's the link. pls pls pls let the deputy managing editor, mr chappell, know what you think of his paper's slip shod journalism. i hope they take a lot of heat for this.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1927748,00.html

Injustice for all - Dr. MacDonald falsely imprisoned

today's wsj has an amazing story about this guy jeffrey macdonald who has been serving life in prison for 30 years for allegedly murdering his wife and kids in 1970. based on new evidence it appears that a dirty (overzeoulous?) prosecutor suppressed testimony from a woman who was likely responsible for the murders.

this brings up tough questions. first, what happens if the federal judge rules it's too late to present new evidence? can we all live with the idea of an innocent man living his remaining days in prison? second, if the story does prove out, what should happen to the prosecutor? what should the penalty be for knowingly falsely imprisoning another man?  isnt it just as important to send a strong message to this nation's law enforcement officers that we wont accept injustice?

like many of you, i worry about the loss of moral backbone in this country. when it's a daily occurrence to see our leaders indicted on bribery and conspiracy, when bribing has become a legitimate business called 'lobbying', when we invade another country in the name of terrorism and WMD and then change the story, when the rich and powerful imprison the poor and weak for selling the same drugs they themselves partake in...what are we left with?

when we fight terror with torture and humiliation rather than honor and compassion, when we execute a man who has sought redemption, when we imprison a man for life while his corrupt prosecutor serves just 3 months for his own embezzlement and bribery, when that worthless pathetic fuckhead walks free and actually teaches ethics to lawyers...we have gone beyond injustice, we have moved past the point of the exception proving the rule...we have slipped into a new era - injustice for all.

as much as i'm opposed to capital punishment, i think i could live with it being carried out on mr. james blackburn of raleigh NC (the dirty prosecutor). mr. blackburn, i hope our paths never cross, and if they do that i am able to abide by the laws which you so clearly have not.

also scary is the fact that mr. blackburn's co-counsel, brian murtagh, is now deputy cheif of terrorism and violent crime at the justice department. murtagh declines to comment on the case. that's really fucking big of you murtagh when another man rots in prison. how fucking convenient, 'no comment'. wouldnt want to hurt your precious career. maybe you can climb even further up the ladder on the broken lives of innocent men.

the other prime example of american justice at its best, george anderson, who was the us attorney in raleigh 'says he may have been there but wont comment further'. why wont you mr anderson? afraid of incriminating yourself?

more background on the pathetic prosecutor, mr blackburn...went into private practice and in 1993 pleaded guilty to multiple felony counts, including forgery, embezzlement and obstruction of justice. admitted to stealing $234,000 from his law firm and to forging the signatures of judges on bogus legal rulings in cases he claimed he had tkae to court but hadnt. he was disbarred and spent 3.5 months in in prison. he is now a motivational speaker who gives ethics lectures to lawyers.

can you all hear the deafening silence that surrounds us? without a collective voice, we're helpless and alone. how much worse will have to get before YOU wake up? will it be when they take away your daughter's right to an abortion? will it be when they arrest your son for selling his friend an eighth bag of pot? maybe he's too clean for that. no, you can wait longer. till he gets drafted to invade another country on made up evidence to satisfy the emotions of an angry mob. oh, that wont happen to your son. you're too powerful. they're too smart to piss you off. just keep sending the poor guys who dont have other options, who need money to pay for school since their students loans got cut.

are we afraid or just too busy? who has time for politics? just give money to the next democrat and it'll get better. the media will expose injustice and it'll eventually all get right. what if it doesnt?

what if you could make a difference? isnt that a painful, scary thought? that would mean you actually could have helped but chose not to. isnt it safer to just feel helpless?

oh, and what the fuck am i doing about any of this besides a whole lot of whining? good question. i'm asking myself a lot of questions lately. i'm trying to wake up too. i'm searching, trying to find the collective voice, looking for the ant path that makes it across. as ants we're all too smart to waste our time on roads to nowhere.

Google showers this blog with tookie traffic

it's been very interesting watching my traffic jump the past few days around my tookie williams posts. for some reason a few of them have become top 3 results on google and other search engines, sending my daily average traffic from 129 visits to over 2,000 with comments going up too.

also interesting to see the audience i've attracted which is much more broad based than our little web 2.0/new media world. it's been fun (if a little scary) to see all kinds of different people with much different view points contribute. while a lot of the comments use offensive words like "nigger" and some make fairly personal attacks i'd rather see the other side honestly represented.

i should also point out that there have been a smattering of intelligent arguments in favor of capital punishment and specifically why people felt tookie's execution was justice served.

the whole experience has been an interesting lesson. our network has become the world's largest ocean. you throw a few lines out there and sometimes google sends a lot of random traffic back.

one ironic thought is that while my web 2.0 readers asked me to keep my political views to myself, the net effect of my political rants has been to increase my traffic.