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Taking a page out of the slacker handbook this week is apparently The Australian's Frank Devine, who finds that sources are much more easy to get quotes from when you just Google the topic you are looking for, make a few key changes to the exact quotations and information that someone else acquired, and print them in your own article. Some people say that journalists are getting information and topics to write about from blogs, and I don't doubt it, since it works most of the time in the other direction - but I think this is just a bit silly. What follows below comes to me via a colleague of mine, who figured it was right up my alley and thought it wise that more people are made aware of it.

Way back on January 19, Arabisto.com contributor Rima Abdelkader published this item entitled "FOX TV Show '24' Angers Arab/Muslim Fans in the United States and Abroad," featuring comments from New York-based law student and Arab-American Sawsan Zaky, who expressed horror towards FOX's hit show because of how it showed Muslims in America - and that's just part of the quality story that Abdelkader had put together. Here's where Devine fits in. Seems that he thought the same about the work from the Arabisto site, and used slightly altered quotes in this commentary, published on Feburary 2 under the hed of "There's no villainy in reflecting the truth about terrorists." It seems that Sawsan Zaky is either the most quoted person from the Arab-American community when it comes to 24, or his quote is just really really good and it's no big deal if we tweak a few words here and there. Devine also did a really good job of sourcing information about Dr. Jack Shaheen, who told Abdelkader about his research on film and television and its portrayal of Muslims - but never spoke with the Australian staffer.

As it turns out, Crikey's Jane Nethercote was able to get in touch with Devine, something that the folks at Arabisto unfortunately weren't able to do when they wrote about how this all went down, in an item by Nadia Gergis on Feburary 2. Devine apparently told Crikey that he found Abdelkader's item in Google, and used it "as a reference" because it was "among the more up to date." How quaint.

In my eyes, this is just as lazy as people who use Wikipedia as a flat out source, rather than a strong starting point that has excellent links to original, [we hope] reputable sources of information. I mean, if you read it on the Internet, it must be true, right? Frank Devine may be penning under the world of being a columnist, but after being editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and executive editor of the New York Post two decades ago, you'd think he would know better. It's not so hard to say "In fact, one outspoken blogger found out firsthand from Arab-Americans in the New York City area that..." in your column, now is it?

Another tsk, tsk is the least of Frank Devine's worries at this point, and I seriously hope that I've done my part to spread this story on this side of the globe.

Hey there, all. Just wanted to make a quick note to any of you who happened to show up here after reading about the demise of AdJab at Weblogs, Inc. / AOL. I'm sure I'll have more comments on this situation later on, but haven't digested the whole situation as of yet so I'd rather not get into it publicly at the moment, but let's just say that obviously Chris, myself, and the rest of the team weren't exactly psyched about it. I think that there are quite a few factors involved, and none of them, at least IMHO, have anything to do with the quality, quantity, or abilities of those involved from a writing perspective, based on how I know people reacted to the site as a whole.

In any case, I know I've been a big slacker on this blog and over at OTD, and really want to do something exciting with my original personal blog from back in the day, too, but have been *so* busy with work at MWW Group that time just hasn't been there like it used to, unfortunately. That said, what I think I'm going to make a conscious decision to do, though, is bring a lot of what I used to bring to the advertising table over here to TMD. That's not to say that I'm going to liveblog the Super Bowl advertisements, because frankly you completely miss the game if you try doing it as a duo, but you know the drill. At the same time, I think it's curious to have spent enough time blogging in a "professional" manner now as opposed to the personalness of it all that I had been a part of since 2000 in one way, shape, or form, and see how the business has evolved for a lot of people, and how some of the things I did three years ago are (or aren't) relevant anymore, and in a big way.

So, thanks for dropping by and I'll work on doing more than just keeping the lights on for you. In addition, keep your eyes on what's going on over at Baristanet, as there are some surprises that are coming your way that I'm involved with professionally, and more will come out soon on that note.

Over at the HuffPo, Rachel Sklar (shocker!) has the scoop on the new editors at Gawker.

[Thanks, Chris!]

Hey, props to Robert Cox and the other folks behind Olbermann Watch for getting picked up in an AP item by David Bauder on Sunday. Yet another great example of a blog - or its bloggers - being quoted from a blog in a news article.

A few years ago, before it was as easy as it is today to manage multiple domain names and such through hosts such as GoDaddy and others, I managed to let one domain slip through my renewal-ready fingers when I missed a renewal notice, and as luck would have it, by the time I got all caught up with what actually happened, another company had nabbed it and turned it into a domain forward to, well, an "adult content" site, let's just say. Normally, this wouldn't be such a horrible thing if it was a random domain of some strange compound words, but this one happened to be tombiro.com. Let's just say I wasn't so happy about that.

Within about a year or so, the firm that had landed my name seemed to be done using it, and most of the "accidental" visitors it had gotten through people who were looking for me had gone elsewhere as I had started up a new site under one domain or another. Somewhere along the lines, the name ended up in another person's hands, also someone in Europe, and I had been sitting on backorder to grab the name should it expire, but no such luck.

A few weeks ago, however, I got it in my head that I was going to see what this individual wanted for the name, and sent an email asking what he'd like in return for the delivery of the domain, and I was surprised to receive a response not only in a few hours, but one stating that he completely understood, and would turn over the domain to me at no charge. Who'd have thunk it? In this day and age, when we're all enjoying some of the positives that come with the "Web 2.0" mentality, as it were, it's still surprising to see someone who has a chance for financial gain to do something nice. And at the end of the day, this becomes my "pay it forward" moment, so I'll definitely be on the lookout for how I can help out whoever is next in line for needing something worked out.

So, a word of advice - there's a reason your hosts and domain servicing companies offer you so many ways to get in touch with your account - because it's typically hard to fix any of your mistakes. Thankfully for me, this hadn't happened with anything too valuable.

If there has ever been a moment when I wished that two well-known personalities offline, who happen to have blogs online, would start corresponding back and forth, it's right now, when Malcolm Gladwell is talking about Kevin Garnett, who plays for the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves. It's just ripe for Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to jump on top of, even though he'd probably have to wait until his team's season is over, given that he might not want to get himself fined for commenting on another team's player right now.

It gives new meaning to the whole "which five people - living or dead - would you like to have dinner with?" thing. Except for the dead part, that is.

A few days ago, Anil Dash sorta-kinda called out some mainstream journalists he suggests penned pieces as link bait. Link bait, if you haven't heard it before, is a simple way of describing what someone else has written purely for the sake of getting others to link to it. Typically it's obnoxious, insulting, or totally off base and can't be left alone, but other examples surely occur.

IMHO, the funniest thing is that this particular blogpost is one of the better link bait things out there. Damn. No wonder Anil won that SEO contest a while back.

He'll never point it out because he's like that, but I'm going to. Check out Chris Thilk (he writes at AdJab and his own Movie Marketing Madness, among other places) in the Los Angeles Times this week, where he's provided his seven tips for marketing movies - because that's like...what he does.

And yes, while it's supposed to be funny, he's not really kidding. Props to Deborah Netburn for freeing up her spot on the pages for him.

This week, I've seen a few links to SCOUT's tips for corporate blogging, which was a nice addition to the usual rigamarole of things that we've seen of late. (Although Waltham is spelled w-a-l-t-h-a-m, you've got your "h" and "t" flipped - just joshin' with ya)

While those ten suggestions are very solid and I'd echo a lot of what was said there, I'd have to add some more thoughts to this, such as:

• Be consistent - which doesn't mean you can't retrace your steps if you own up


• Be a good blog citizen


• Transparency will bite you if you are all talk


• Add value

Back in November, I remember writing about how I thought it was a solid suggestion that if you're trying to get bloggers to link to you, perhaps those on the "A list" or whatever it is being called at the moment, that getting linked to by bloggers that those folks read is a good thing. I still agree with that. Taking that a step further, I'd have to say that most bloggers, especially those who have more than one gig, are working a full time job totally unrelated (or related, even) to his or her blog, are in the same scenario, getting too many "link to me" emails. I mean, most of us are beyond spam at this point, for the most part - I probably get 100-300 spams per day that Gmail takes care of nicely, for instance - but between the main blogs I write for on a regular basis, I'm probably getting anywhere from 15-30 pitches from PRfolk (on a good day), plus a ton of link emails from other bloggers, plus general correspondence. On top of that, I have godknowshowmany RSS feeds in FeedDemon (once it got beyond 500 I stopped counting), and my IM is on blast all the time. I still read all my emails, even if it takes me until midnight or beyond. It's not about anything except being interested in keeping up with what is going on, doing my job(s), attempting to keep up with the blogs I read (and write), and ensuring that various relationships built are able to grow. Multitasking in this sort of world is an obvious need as an ability. And yet, I just don't get why there's a need to talk about being on any particular "tier" or whatever. The *moment* any blogger thinks they're more important than any other one, irrelevant of how many links in that blogger may have is the moment the whole thing turns into a house of cards. Oh, wait, the whole important thing has already happened. My bad.

(Wondering what my point is yet? Keep reading, it's in here somewhere.)

Back to the consistency thing and favoritism. Lots of people like to talk about how they "don't care" who's on what list or whatever (I'm breaking a journalism rule here by not giving more background, but you can find it if you do a little basic searching), and how things like blogrolls are "on the way to extinction." But something I saw over at Steve Rubel's blog (and have discussed with others offline and on) kind of bothered me. A commenter on Rubel's site, Mike Driehorst, said something about the lack of blogroll that was responded to with the fact that the blogroll at Micro Persusasion had been removed some time ago. Then, when Technorati Favorites showed up on the scene, Steve added that. What I'm wondering here is - what's the difference? Is it some nifty functionality in that the Faves rotate based on update timing, etc.? It looks, smells, feels, and tastes like a blogroll to me.

In some ways, I don't mean to point one finger in general here, but it just seems to be working out this way based on where the conversations are "taking place" to some extent. Want to criticize me and say that I'm attempting to starfuck (Heh @ Lauren) by linking over there? Sorry, I've got better things to do, and will play Internet Famous with you anytime (Thanks, Irina & Co.). If anything feels like the obnoxiousness of what was Bubble 1.0, it's what is happening in today's world of blogging.

Clearly, people like Scott Baradell know what's up with this stuff. If anything, things like this are what disprove the value of a tool like Technorati's Faves (or Technorati in general - which I use all the time), because a blog like Engadget is 8th on the list at the moment, when it probably has more combined pageviews - sans Boing Boing - than most of the blogs on that list, combined.

If you want to be base about it, then it's kind of like this - there are two types of hot guys & girls in this world. Those who know they're hot - and tell you about it - and those who know, but it doesn't make them any different.

Congrats to West Coast pal Irina Slutsky for snagging a title (which comes with an editor gig) at Top 10 Sources. Good stuff!

In case you're looking for me, head on over to AdJab and see what Chris Thilk and I are doing with regard to the Super Bowl commercials. We'll have a ton of great coverage, links, and obnoxious commentary having to do with tonight's spots - and it's already started with the pregame show!

Additionally, the two of us will be on the Sports Bloggers Live show later on tonight, sometime after 10:30p.m. Eastern.

This morning, Dan Gillmor published an open letter to the community of Bayosphere users, along with the rest of us who are interested (and part of) the citizen journalism community. It's a must-read, IMHO, and can shed some light on the ins and outs of putting together a successful community of newsgatherers, interested readers, and others.

Well, one of the things I'm going to have to admit comes with getting a bit of success out of blogging (and having a lot of projects to work on) is that you're pulled all over the place, but it's important not to alienate what really got you where you are - which for me, is here at TMD. So outside of really making a point to be on top of things for you, the readers, I'm going to also put together a recap of stuff I've posted elsewhere, perhaps once a week, just so you can see what else I'm up to, if that's of interest to you. That's the beauty of the whole thing, you can just skip those posts in your RSS reader or whatever, and move on. But in any case, it's something I'm working on.

Thanks for your continued support. I really appreciate it. And thanks to David, for giving me an IM-slap.

Just wanted to congratulate Susan Mernit on her new gig at Yahoo!, where she'll be working on the company's Personals brand. Excellent stuff, looking forward to seeing what Yahoo! Personals does in the near term, Susan!

In case you were wondering, Ed Cone has moved You can now find him here, on TypePad.

Sorry for the lack of regular posting here at TMD, folks. Between the new job in the last few months, combined with a disastrous number of times that my trusty horse of a laptop has been into Best Buy for everything under the sun going wrong with it, I've been a bit behind and slow on the trigger. Expect better things to come shortly, as my back-to-normal hardware is expected back at TMD headquarters later this week, new hard drive and all.

The world of media has been a popular place for bloggers to hop into - whether it's industry talk and some criticism (kind of like some of TMD's topics) to media bias analysis - and now, we've got another entrant, this time on BusinessWeek Online's site. The magazine's Jon Fine is now writing Fine on Media, which covers advertising, media, and wherever the twain shall meet.

Check out Jon's "Hello, World" here.

Rafat Ali pointed out yesterday that PaidContent.org is now accepting comments and trackbacks on individual postings - that's great to hear, because that site has broken so many different stories and being able to follow the flow and evolution of those will be every enlightening.

If anyone's been wondering whether bloggers are being taken seriously by members of the media, then the answer is yes - well, sort of. At least one reporter from Money thought enough of a San Diego-area blogger's commentary about a real estate boom in that market to call him for background in a magazine article, the San Diego Union-Tribune's Mike Freeman reports. Now while this isn't chapter and verse that "bloggers are experts, consider them for your Rolodex," it does lend a bit of creedence to the opinion and research value that they bring to the table being important.

I don't know how I managed to miss the fact that you could get your Google News alerts through RSS instead, but I did. Needless to say, I did it with the date-specific option on (relevance is fine and all, but dates are much more important when reading), and have since dropped them all from my email box. Life, as we know it, has since changed.

Alright, I think I'm up for a site redesign, and am welcoming all comers, bids, and ideas. My only requests up front is that I'd like to continue using Movable Type, like having PHP includes for each of the little sections of the site, and need to have some space for advertising, sort of like what I currently have.

I'm not averse to three column or two column, whatever is interesting, and I am not married to right or left side menus. One thing I'd like to be able to do is have a secondary blog to do remaindered links somewhere on the page, and perhaps move some of the main navigation to the top.

If you're like to take a crack at it, please drop me an email at themediadrop (at) gmail.com and let me know what kind of timing you would need and how much you're looking for, money-wise, to do the job. If you know someone who does great work on web design, please send them my way. Oh, and if there's a logo involved, that's cool too, as I like the one I have, but I'm in the mood to switch things up, I think.

Just wanted to pass along a note to any readers of TMD who also happen to follow Eric McErlain's Off Wing Opinion blog. Turns out, he's having another horrible day of being stuck on a server that is being pounded as part of a DDOS attack of another customer of the host, and he's unable to publish to his site.

In the meantime, you can find Off Wing at offwingbackup.blogspot.com.

Thanks!

Over at Blogspotting, Heather Green shows what some Bloglines users may have been seeing this morning when the service was down with a database problem.

Let's just hope that we don't start seeing the Bloglines Plumber very often.

As if it wasn't bad enough for Technorati when they had a few dissenters here and there and one or two big names calling them out. Now, Weblogs, Inc. boss Jason Calacanis has had it with the firm, calling the service "worthless" in his post title. How's that for Google Juice?

If you're looking for a few websites this morning that aren't resolving, it might be because there's a nasty DDOS going on that is affecting a few popular blogs. I briefly chatted with Eric McErlain from Off Wing Opinion this morning, and he informed me of what was going on. I'm pretty sure that Outside the Beltway and a few others are on the same servers. Periodically, some these blogs are appearing in my browser, but there are still problems that are being worked on - so if you are able to reach those sites, you might notice some issues with the code.

Dan Gillmor posts a call to action to those of us who are slammed with comment and trackback spam (mostly the latter) - I've got to say that since my hosts at Zubr Communications have installed James Seng's MT_TrackbackAntiSpam plugin I haven't received one trackback spam. Anyone else have luck with this solution?

Make sure and place your votes in BusinessWeekOnline's survey of the "Best of the Web" - including blogs, travel sites, podcasts, and much, much more.

In what has to be the prime example for dumb luck, I'm happy (sort of) to report that my traffic today is, well, a multiple - higher than two - more than it usually would be - all because I happened to use the name of Google's new IM/Voice chat client in the title of a post written about three weeks ago. Somehow or other, I managed to be the first result for this search through Google, hence the increased traffic.

Man, if this isn't a huge plug for a company like FeedBurner, then nothing is. In my eyes, I would have to say that a message like this shows that many people who use technologies like RSS - even those that know what they're doing - have become frustrated with the various flowcharts needed to use something that should be very simple.

As far as censorship goes, distributed tools are always more successful than centralized, but they're not always as easy to get set up and working properly. Unfortunately, the very popular blogrolling.com has been bit by the powers that be in Iran, informs Search Engine Journal's Loren Baker, and is now set to become inaccessible by anyone on an ISP within that country.

[update 8/28] Mamacita makes fun of this in a cartoon sorta way.

Sorry for the lack of posting here at TMD over the last few days and slowness the previous two weeks - been handling a lot of side projects and quite a bit of interviewing for full-time gigs, and it's been taking a lot of time. Needless to say, I'm back in action and all caught up, well, except for my email box.

Thanks for your patience and continued stopping by. Now, back to work!

Have you seen K. Paul Mallasch's Muncie Free Press yet? Mallasch has gone on his own to launch a citizens' journalism site to encompass the area of Muncie, Indiana - and looking to start fresh from the world of big media. You can learn more by reading his "Declaration of Independence," posted on July 4.

Doug Fisher makes an interesting comment, wondering if the "Declaration" is a dig at the local Gannett property, the Star Press.

Just a heads up, I haven't fallen off the planet or anything - am on vacation for the week, and had planned on having WiFi the whole time - turns out it's a little bit on the sketch side, but it's free, so I really can't complain. Hope to be back up and running a bit more later on in the week.

As for the comment/trackback spammers, you aren't doing any good - so get better jobs.

Just a heads up, I'm at the Assocation of National Advertisers' Print Forum in NYC today - blogging will probably be light. I'll have some good coverage a little later on over at AdJab and hope to get some good things for TMD as well, as there are quite a few publications here at the event.

Additionally, I'll be at a blogger meetup at Two Boots Pizza in Grand Central this evening at about 6 p.m. - maybe I'll see you there.

For some delusional reason, I've started another blog. You can find it at tombiro.info. It'll be full of really random links and commentary and such. Enjoy!

Over at the QandO Blog, Bruce McQuain writes about an experience he had this week with regard to FOX News, which had read an item written on that blog about the FEC's interest in political blogs. The network asked for some additional comments via email, and his response was published in an article on Friday.

McQuain complemented FOX News on "getting it right" with regard to this story, and that as much as some people get on the station, he felt they were spot on here.

I'm not the only one who thinks it's neat that the FlickrBlog uses FeedBurner for its RSS, am I?

K. Paul Mallasch put together supercool runthrough (he calls it a "quick rundown," but trust me, take your time) of "We Media," a piece by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis. Read the whole thing - he's added links to each section to help you digest (or ingest, as it were) as much info as possible through books and other content.

What I want to know is what took longer - me reading it all, or him putting it together.

To the reader who sent me an email today (or late last night) mentioning something about TMD with regard to non-news-related media items, would you please re-send your email? I'm sorry, but I got a little hasty when getting rid of about 100+ spams that Gmail didn't catch today, and accidentally threw it away, but saw it just as I hit "Delete Forever."

I apologize for the delay in getting back to you, and really enjoy reader comments and questions - thankfully, the blog format gives me the opportunity to try out things like this.

To the rest of TMD's readers, please pardon the interruption. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Thursday's Wall Street Journal has an article by Carl Bialik asking if the numbers quoted in various places about how many blogs there actually are are correct - or if they based on different perceptions of what a blog is, live blogs or not, or a number of other factors.

Remember that nifty blog article in BusinessWeek a few weeks back? Well, one of the authors, Stephen Baker, is now going to participate on the blog panel I'll be participating in on Thursday evening. Very cool.

Again, more details here if you're interested in attending!

On Thursday, May 19, a blog panel discussion about the effect blogging will have on business communication will take place at the Church Street Cafe in Montclair, New Jersey. I'll be taking part along with Debbie Galant of baristanet, PubSub CEO Salim Ismail, and Dean Landsman.

More details are available here at Montclair Concierges or here at the event blog.

Over the weekend, columnist Cal Thomas shared his thoughts about the Huffington Post and how it is promoted to those with similar political beliefs. Thomas' makes some good points about how blogs resonate well with a lot of readers, on both the right and left, and just hopes that readers don't miss the point and forget about actual journalism.

FindLaw's Julie Hilden says that bloggers should receive the same protections that traditional journalists do.

Looks like the Los Angeles Times has a new watcher, with the LA Cowboy blog written by Brady Westwater. Care for a taste?

When I started this blog, I had no intention of turning it into a LA Times bashing site; however... when the Los Angeles Times daily home delivers us fish-filled barrels and then passes out loaded shotguns with hair triggers -- well -- what are we poor bloggers supposed to do?

This could be interesting.

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the possibility that online newspapers may begin charging for content in some way, shape, or form on their websites, as the readership begins to shift from "paid" circulation for print editions to an online distribution. This is obviously something that is of concern for a lot of bloggers, as blogging for most is all about links - and if articles are behind paid walls, then most bloggers are going to have trouble getting their readers to follow links - though one would assume that many bloggers might have a subscription or seven to some online pubs, based on price.

There are a lot of factors in play here, the most important of which is the ability for a news organization to fund itself. While advertising online at publications these days may do a great job at bringing in plenty of revenue to cover the costs of staffing a website - technically - and paying bandwidth and development cost, it surely does not cover any and all costs of the manpower gathering the news itself. Conversely, the paid circulation of newspapers is also a small piece of what the monies needed to fund your daily paper on a regular basis - hence advertising, which "picks up the slack," we might say. All that said, if we were to take Newspaper X today, keep all the newsgathering, writing and editing bodies at desks, plus whatever administration and general costs that went into the business, and kicked the printing presses out to the curb - publishing exclusively online - we'd have a problem, based on today's advertising rates and volume.

The obvious solution seems to be smack dab in front of us - readership would be much higher for the online site (by design), sans any readers that don't use computers, but you would raise your CPM (cost per thousand) ad rates for the online presence - justifiably. It'd be shocking, but would probably eventually work out. But that doesn't mean you could still oper