Sounds like I need to get marshmallows for .xxx’s traction failure.

I first received contact from the PR people a few days before I ran my story. If there was a press release being circulated weeks ago, I didn’t see it. And it appears that it was circulated in pretty limited circles since there appear to be no news items about it before this week. Maybe everyone who got it was as holy as Violet and ignored it?

It also appears you’re making an assumption that this story had been in the news before. But, unlike the suggestiong from Violet, there was little to no coverage before this past week. Since my story was published, NBC, CBS, Fox News, the Huffington, Post Forbes, Businessweek, and several other media outlets have all run stories about the .xxx search engine.

Some of those guys may have written a better story than mine, I don’t know. But on news judgement, I’m gonna trust those guys over you, Nobody. Call it a personality flaw, but I’m not big into journalism ethics lecturers from anonymous posters.

I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with this story that would have pleased you and Violet, other than not run it. Sorry, it was news.

And we’re back where we started. That’s really unfortunate, but I suppose it’s to be expected. I hope at some point – maybe in the next 20 years of your career, I hope – you’ll understand what I’m driving at here. It seems, however, that the closer we get to the heart of it, the more defensive you’re getting. That’s fine, and I think we’re running out of ways to circle the drain here. But I will say this: If the only criticism you’re willing to take is criticism that meets your very specific and changeable guidelines, then you’re doing yourself – and your 20 year career – a true disservice.

The PR people caught my attention with it, and as I’ve said, there seems to have significant interest in the story, with all the me-too stories that followed mine. My story is not a shining example of great journalism, but I don’t think it quite deserves the criticism here, either.

You’ve said you turned down a recent pitch because you didn’t see the utility. You don’t see the utility of a porn search engine? Sure, it’s not the first, but .xxx does seem to be doing some things a bit differently. You’d get that if you’d read my story.

So first, you’re arguing that reader interest shouldn’t be a major reason we do stories, then you argue that utility is important. Which is it?

As for the “straw men,” I’m not sure you understand the concept. I haven’t represented either you or Violet in my comments. You are an anonymous poster; she is a porn blogger. While she may not have directly said my story was trolling for cheap page views, I think that’s implied by her and by the comments. Porn bloggers should be familiar with cheap page views.

As for your journalism advice, I’ve been doing this for 20-plus years. Advice from an anonymous poster who claims to be a journalist isn’t really worth the pixels it’s printed with. At least Violet had the guts to use her “real” name.

Case in point – a company approached me with their “disruptive and innovative” new method to accomplish function X. Sounded great, right? disruptive! innovative! Shiny and new! Even offering me an exclusive, with video and tons of data to help me with my story! I love that – when PR firms give me the tools to craft a well written and well rounded story, it’s great, and I love those guys. But before I fire up Word, I stopped and looked around at their industry. 10 minutes and I discovered that their “disruptive and innovative” solution was already something that highly established and entrenched companies A and B currently offered. If I wrote about it without comparing them or bringing that up, my readers would do it for me, and that’s just embarrassing. So I asked: “What does your company do, aside from X, that companies A and B, with high user engagement and broad userbases don’t already do? What makes the new company so innovative?” They relented, and pointed out they’re new, shiny, and want to play in the same space. I passed, because while there may be *interest*, there’s no *utility.* There’s nothing for my readers to walk away thinking “wow, I just learned something/got useful information for the time I spent reading that article/that website.” THAT, Grant, is what we should be doing – anything less diminishes our profession. The cream always rises, and the crap always sinks.

That said, and to your final point, you’re absolutely right, it is easier then doing this without the veil, but that doesn’t make the criticism invalid – that’s two strawmen you’ve hung up now, the first one being that passing shot at Violet’s blog. I completely agree, if you looked back at the stories I’ve covered, you’d definitely find some crappy work – it happens to all of us. The important thing though, is that we take those lessons, move forward, and realize where we screwed up. I sincerely hope that you can as well.

I do understand that .xxx had planned to offer search, and that other stories may have noted that. The story the other day was that the search was finally available, and I was the first to report the story this week. Everyone else followed my story.

If you look at my body of work, I think you’ll see that I’m not only concerned about page views. I generally cover a pretty dry area — technology policy in Washington, D.C. Many of those stories aren’t huge traffic drivers, but my company believes it’s important to keep readers up to date on those issues.

On the other hand, reader interest is one major criteria for judging what’s news. And this story had plenty of reader interest.

You should go read the full thing.

We can disagree whether it’s news or not. As the writer of one of the stories criticized by Violet, I feel like I’m getting ripped on a porn blog of whoring for cheap page views. That’s pretty funny.

First of all, this isn’t a press release, at least, not a good one (or one that should have been recognizable to any editor worth his or her salt). It’s really bad direct mail.

Also, there is nothing newsworthy about this, as has been previously stated. A common occurrence in many press releases these days unfortunately, but still horrible form. Even my alma mater’s rather lobotomized MassComm department would have frowned on this.

This is a really bad direct mail piece of garbage hoping the CTA will strike on a slow news day and get weak editors to schedule an interview to drive business.

(Full disclosure: I do work in PR, and if I ever did something this pathetic I hope my bosses would point it out to me, before suggesting I choose another field and firing me.)

A blogger at one of Violet’s own employers basically rewrote my story and stole the good quotes.

Now, maybe Violet doesn’t believe a new search engine at .xxx is worth a story. It’s true that the .xxx people pitched me the story. Sorry to bust any bubbles here, but how PR works. A heck of a lot of news comes from the PR machine.

It’s fair enough that Violet thinks this wasn’t worth a story, although it appears she has some kind of axe to grind with .xxx. But judging by the retweets, Slashdot link and copycat stories, a lot of people are interested in the story.

Looks like ReadWriteWeb fell for it (but then again, they usually do):
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/icm-debuts-first-own-xxx-search-engine.php

And TechCrunch did, but that’s no surprise – send TC a press release and they’ll cover it like it’s new:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/27/search-xxx-is-live-and-ready-to-help-you-search-the-xxx/

And hey, it’s getting a bunch of page views, including the link at Slashdot.

A number of publications/bloggers, including ones Violet writes for, simply rewrote the Network World/IDG News Service story, took the good quotes, and slapped a headline on it. Apparently, doing actual journalism is tough work.