How not to interact with the media - Hashable CEO

http://spiers.tumblr.com/post/3943409431/how-not-to-interact-with-the-media-101-courtesy

by minalecs • 15 years ago

54 22 15 years ago

spiers.tumblr.com

brown9-22• 15 years ago

The original article sounds quite juvenile, even if you think their idea is silly or not: http://www.betabeat.com/2011/03/17/hashable-is-worthless/

acgourley• 15 years ago

I like how it claims hashable is useless because it is useful to insecure people. As if that were a small market, or something people don't care deeply about.

plovs• 15 years ago

Compare that to this: http://bit.ly/gdmYw6 how 37signals responded to a complaint

FreshCode• 15 years ago

I like the part about how "“pivot” is start-up talk for “try to make something that’s at least a little less stupid than what you originally made”."

ramanujan• 15 years ago

The funny thing is that I've now heard of Hashable. It's also the kind of service where any publicity really is good publicity. Would not be surprised to now see them posting record hits.

Silhouette5• 15 years ago

Hang on a minute. This is about an "op-ed" article that included quotes (as in, contained in quotation marks) that don't appear to accurate, investment advice (allegedly comical or otherwise), and outright derogatory comments (without any justification given). Moreover, the follow-up article republished private correspondence without permission, and is trying to justify its trash article based on some sort of journalistic high ground argument.

Frankly, while I wouldn't have put things the same way, I think the guys from Hashable have every right to be upset, and the web site that upset them is lucky not to be discovering the hard way why serious newspapers have a full time legal department. Their posts have been, IMNSHO, about one step in maturity about the five-year-old in the playground who says something really hurtful to another child, and then tries to make things better by saying "But I was only joking!".

Oh, and the blog post about the whole sorry affair seems to think that communications with journalists are somehow exempt from the usual rules regarding privacy, IP rights and, frankly, common courtesy. I suspect this is not a position that either responsible journalists or lawyers would agree with (as the former would have checked if they were on the record in a case of doubt, and the latter wouldn't assume their personal view trumped what the law actually says).

Does the person who wrote the linked blogpost (on spiers.tumblr.com) have any connection to the betabeat.com site that started this whole mess?

brown9-22• 15 years ago

I agree about some of your points, but I don't believe that you have any reasonable expectation of privacy when emailing a person you have never communicated with before or that they won't republish your emails without first gaining your permission (IANAL).

Silhouette5• 15 years ago

IANAL either, but in light of casual conversations with those who are: you own copyright in any work you create by default, including any communications you send, and furthermore there are expectations of privacy attached to many professional communications by default, though this varies a lot by jurisdiction and the nature of the parties and relationship or potential relationship involved.

rboyd• 15 years ago

What constitutes "off the record"? Is it exactly and only those words? From Mr. Yavonditte's Twitter stream:

http://twitter.com/#!/mikeyavo/status/48902730730844160

"@EvilPRGuy the only part of email they didn't print was me saying that I was not willing to comment publicly - you live and learn"

It's also pretty obvious that his response was meant to convey some intent to sue and not a challenge to a gunfight at high noon.

Anything for some hits, I guess. Slap a custom wordpress theme on it and call it journalism.

ig12• 15 years ago

I don't know about in the US but in the UK it's certainly the case that there's a default expectation of privacy.

zaidf• 15 years ago

betabeat.com--the valleywag without the funny--is owned by the observer of which Elizabeth Spiers is the Editor in Chief.

JanezStupar• 15 years ago

Considering my current impression of Hashable, which is derived from this and the original article. The original article seems to be dead on.

An insecure founder formed a company that builds product for other insecure people who then gather and cherish their fears together.

I think thats awesome!

What better way is there than to market such a product than through Streisand effect?

On a side note, what do you think of possibility that the original manifestation Streisand effect, was in fact just a signal from Barbra to her fans, that she is still as insecure as any of them?

mayukh• 15 years ago

Just wasted five minutes : 1> Journalist trashes Hashable in satirically laced 'opinion' piece 2> Hashable CEO fails to see anything funny and calls journalist/s liar(s) 3> Journalist posts sections of CEO's emails in a follow-up article 4> CEO gets upset and ... the loop shall continue

noelsequeira• 15 years ago

From a comment at the end of the follow-up article put up by the blog in question.

I guess there will always be kids that want to build the sandcastles and the kids that just want to knock them over.

mef• 15 years ago

While it seems hard to believe anyone could take the quoted “Sorry bro, you’re not Hashable enough” as being an actual attributed quote, to avoid confusion the writer should probably have just italicized it.

How not to interact with the media - Hashable CEO

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