Archive for February, 2007

As a web publisher, you come to expect spam. My company’s websites are constantly bombarded by comment spam — but fortunately our spam filter catches most of it, and it’s the rare one that we have to delete to get it out of public view.

In just the last few days, we’ve started to get hit with a new form of spam. And this one I just don’t understand why the spammers are doing it, and what they get out of it.

All of a sudden I start to get “Copyright violation” e-mails in my inbox. These are generated and sent to me when someone on one of our sites has clicked the “Report misconduct” link, to alert us to when someone has posted something bad so we can check it out. The messages — I’ve gotten dozens in the last couple days — compliment us on our sites. (“A fantastic site, and brilliant effort. A great piece of work.”) Each message is a bit different, and links to some oddball website.

Now, I’m the only person who sees these; they are not published anywhere on the site. So what is this spammer’s motivation? What is the spammer gaining from sending me a bunch of faux complimentary messages?

My latest Editor & Publisher Online column, published earlier this week, is Where News Consumption Is Heading. This column is one of those that’s getting a lot of feedback (which is always good, even if I’m being criticized — which I’m mostly not on this one). One of the more brazen statements in the column is that newspaper publishers have close to zero chance of getting the younger generation to read print editions in the years ahead. Modernizing the printed paper isn’t going to help you survive.

I quote a bunch of smart people, and a couple pointed out how the dedicated news experience is going away. I mean sitting down to read the newspaper or watching a TV news program to get your fill in one dose. To replace that will be a swirl of news coming at you in bits and pieces throughout your day, on multiple devices that you may encounter as you move around and that you carry in your pocket or purse.

One pushback on the column is that what I and the experts I quote say is the future looks bad for in-depth, watchdog journalism. If newspaper print editions die and news companies adopt the swirl-of-news future reality, society will be badly served because of the lack of paid investigative journalists who formerly were paid by newspapers, which had the room to publish lengthy reporting. I noted that only in passing in the column, and will add here that that’s absolutely the vexing issue about the media shift we find ourselves in.

It’s becoming common for users of our Enthusiast Group websites to tell us how positively they feel about what we’re doing. I’m feeling really good about this quote from YourClimbing.com member MeganM:

“I think reading about our sport’s superstars in the climbing magazines is OK, but YourClimbing.com provides more of an interactive and rewarding experience.”

That’s a really interesting comment. For years, sports enthusiasts have read about their sports in magazines, mostly — with advice and celebrity profiles written by professional journalists and freelancers, and the occasional athlete. But what we’re seeing with the EG sites (which are primarily about climbers/bikers/runners/et al sharing their own stories and images) is that people like being the writers and photographers themselves, and viewing the amateur musings of fellow enthusiasts who they can interact with easily and directly.

That’s not to say that I expect our sites to replace climbing magazines, et al. But I do think we provide an alternative media and that those magazines and our sites will share the audience attention (and the advertising) in the years ahead. The magazines can of course do what we do, but it’s a big cultural stretch for them to be as open as we are to publishing whatever comes in over the transom, no questions asked.

From the Center for Media Research e-mail blast this morning:

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