On Future Tense Today on MPR
My interview with Jon Gordon regarding my announcement that Technology Evangelist was going to be Don Imus’ replacement is now life:
When is it OK for a blogger to pull a fast one?
Blogger and podcaster Ed Kohler wrote on his Technology Evangelist site last week that he’d been named temporary replacement for radio host Don Imus, who was fired by CBS and MSNBC after a racial slur. Some people recognized the story as a joke, but others across the Internet bought it. Afterall, the Technology Evangelist blog and podcast present technology news and analysis in a straightforward manner — they’re not known for pranks. Kohler describes the hoax as a late April fool’s joke.
It played this morning a little after 8am on MPR. For Canadians in the audience, I believe it plays later today on As it Happens. Or, just click on the above link to get to an MP3 version could can listen to over and over again on your iPod.
Check tomorrow’s Pioneer Press for a story about Twitter. According to Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Ben of BenCredible.com and I are in it. He should know, since he wrote the piece.
April 16th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
My comment on this earlier…
You own. Scroble can go cry his face off.
April 16th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I personally don’t care what you do and I don’t read TE but I agree that if TE is truly “influential” you should be concerned with what you post there.
My site sucks and it’s only influential in pissing people off so it doesn’t matter what I do
April 16th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Bill, you’re an authority on South of the river restaurants. Don’t abuse that power.
April 16th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Yes sir
April 16th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Oh, Bill’s a crybaby too? Go in the corner with Scoble. Of course TE is concerned with what they post and if their readership can’t handle a joke they can go read something that’s more sanitized for people that don’t think. This is a story IMHO created not because TE pulled a prank but more because a couple other people were crybabies about it.
April 17th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
No Aaron, I’m not a crybaby. Please don’t think your shit doesn’t stink — it does — like garlic and cheese.
I was simply making the point that if a website is truly “influential” that it shouldn’t be making stuff up for no reason unless it wants to alter its status.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Bill, I think it comes down to how I measure success. If I manage to grow an audience by being myself, that’s ideal, since it’s easier to be myself than anyone else. If I use traditional journalism as my measure, I probably wouldn’t do things the way I do in many ways, including stunts like this and mixing commentary with reporting.
Had Scoble taken his own advice on credible journalism, he probably wouldn’t have written about the story, or would have covered it as a joke:
The irritant of the non-credible journalists « Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger
I don’t mean to beat up on Scoble. He took the bait, so perhaps lost some cred. with his audience short-term, just like I may have with others who perhaps took the bait.
Factual and influential don’t necessarily coincide. Just look at Bill O’Reilly.
April 17th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I though I might offer my thoughts on this–
Put me in the crybaby column. I’ve never been a fan of pranks, even calendar-approved April Fools ones. By their very definition, pranks are a bit of a power (knowledge) play over the less fortunate, often involving a position of playing (betraying) against a trust (gullibility). Not fun, especially if they are not explained seconds after being played.
In the online world, it is the whole reason smiley emoticons were invented, which is to help people to see the intent of the online writer when words alone were not cutting it.
Harking back to your prior teachers-should-blog posting–recall that several posters cautioned against mixing personal and professional postings into the same blog–the prank/situation you have perpetrated would have been better served for a few laughs on your personal blog and not done on your professional blog.
You probably got some extra hits with your prank, but cost yourself some credibility points on your existing audience in the process…and it is not quite the same as the ‘all publicity is good publicity’ that creates the paparazzi market for celebrities. You are selling more than your website, you are selling the information of your website, which you have now undercut.
I would recommend a simple mea culpa to your TE readers with a promise of the lesson learned. People are forgiving, as long as you admit you have learned from it.
Just my two cents and honest advice as a friend and reader, best wishes–TCBB, Mike
April 18th, 2007 at 6:00 am
Bill, I think it comes down to how I measure success. If I manage to grow an audience by being myself, that’s ideal, since it’s easier to be myself than anyone else. If I use traditional journalism as my measure, I probably wouldn’t do things the way I do in many ways, including stunts like this and mixing commentary with reporting.
Ed, good enough for me. Thanks
April 19th, 2007 at 11:27 am
[...] circuit to Mike and Bill, this is a [...]