Muses Extra: If you’re only killing time, it’ll kill you right back

By Porruka (porruka@macedition.com), July 11, 2002

(Continued from Page 1)

How not to win friends and influence people

Apple is the company that many people (and sites) love to hate, while at the same time praising many of the company’s products (except for the Cube and the iPod – and many of us may have been wrong about the iPod). Apple, for its part, has fueled the flames ever since Steve Jobs’ return to the executive position. Yes, some of this relates to the efforts on the part of Apple to close off internal leaks. It also applies to the heavy hand Apple Legal advances when dealing with what might be loosely called “infringements of Apple intellectual property”, for example, use of logos or names which are or are similar to Apple trademarks, registered and otherwise.

There are numerous stories of Apple Legal sending “cease and desist” letters to sites who used graphics similar to the Aqua interface, or offered electronic greeting cards, or who had used some graphic or other property of Apple. The legal standing behind many of these actions was questioned at the time, but since the only apparent targets of the program were small sites and individuals without the means to fight a real court battle, Apple got its way.

One front that Apple is still battling is the “rumor” front. There have been high-profile cases of Apple determining who in the employee roster leaked certain information, and that person was summarily sacked. Apple has sent several letters, usually as an Expo approached, to sites that purported to have “spy shots” or other inside information. Now, to be clear, if the information came from inside Apple, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) was likely broken somewhere. But that is Apple’s responsibility to deal with, not that of any third-party who has not signed such an NDA.

I’ll say this one again: if Apple wants to keep information secret, it is Apple’s responsibility to see that it happens. A random person standing on a street corner has no more obligation to keep Apple’s secrets than someone who refused to sign an NDA, but gets the information anyway.

Now, I haven’t read a report of Apple Legal action in a while. Perhaps the anxious nature of that part of the company has been toned down slightly. Or, as many are wont to believe, the tactics have shifted to include the Expo and the press passes.

Going back to the question of “who controls the passes?”, if Mr. McCarty’s information is correct, Apple may be trying to get to the “rumor” sites by denying them passes. No press pass – so the theory might go – no early access to information. Their readership will suffer and migrate to sites that “play by the rules.” This is a plausible explanation and it fits nicely into the mindset that Apple itself created among the Mac Web with its zealous use of the legal team.

Adding to this situation is that the criteria being used to accept and deny Web media does not appear to be applied consistently. That is taken by some as an indicator of the nefarious “blacklist” coming from Apple, the banning of specific people and sites that “Apple doesn’t like.” Again, possible and plausible, but then, it could also be the result of a new policy being implemented poorly on the first or second try. The new refinements of what “commercial news” means to IDG for Web publications would support the conclusion that refinement was necessary.

Am I saying that Apple doesn’t have a “blacklist”? I do not say either way. To me, there’s quite a bit of speculation, innuendo, and even circumstantial evidence, but there’s also a history of difficult relations that may simply be clouding honest mistakes. However, I lay the blame for a significant amount of the bad blood between Apple and some of the Macintosh’s strongest supporters squarely on past Apple actions. Without that history, and the distrust that still remains from it, Apple might not be “guilty until proven innocent”.

No, the Mac Web isn’t blameless either

Just as Apple should be held accountable for much of this current strife, the Mac Web shouldn’t be free from scolding either. Even in the case where Apple is completely innocent of attendee tampering charges, compensated passes must be a finite resource. To assume otherwise would imply several things: the venue is too big for the event if there are an unlimited number of free seats (hence, the organizer is paying too much for renting said venue); attendance not projected to be very high compared to previous events; or whoever foots the bill for the comp passes is making up for it through the admission price charged to the people who go. Anyway you look at it, there is not and should not be an unlimited number of press passes available.

Now, how to select the recipients? I discussed in detail above some of the reasons why the events would even give the press passes. Let’s look at it from the other direction, from the perspective of the Web site.

How many Mac-oriented Web sites are there out there? It’s impossible to count, but a good start would be to peruse the bottom of MacSurfer’s page, all the way at the bottom. I don’t know how these sites were selected, but the list is impressive and it’s not the whole Mac Web, not by a long shot. So, should all these sites (and others, too) get to attend MacWorld on someone else’s dime even if only a handful of these sites might actually return some value to IDG and Apple through their coverage?

Yes, there’s that pesky reasoning again. The Expo gives out the passes to get the coverage in return. “But many of these sites would write about the Expo,” you claim. I don’t disagree. But how many of these sites would actually provide benefit to the Expo by doing so? There are some, but the number is much, much fewer. Why is that?

The “commercial” Mac Web?

When we move beyond the issue of “can Apple do this” or “should Apple do that”, what we’re left with is a rather unpleasant task of Mac Web self-evaluation, and the results aren’t going to be pretty. I had quite a difficult time getting a “generally accepted definition” of commercial news, so I made my own. Thumbing through my well-worn copy of dictionary.com I looked up commercial and news, selected the definitions that made the most sense to me for these purposes, and came up with the following:

commercial news: reports of recent occurrences or of something before unknown; fresh tidings; recent intelligence; provided in a forum having profit as a chief aim

Applying this to the Mac Web seems a bit tricky, but that’s exactly what I’m attempting to do.

It seems the number of sites denied a pass is high. I don’t have a list, and I wouldn’t name specific sites anyway, as pointing fingers is not the goal right now. However, some small percentage of the sites that were denied were probably just seeing if they could get something for free. The Macworld Expo is not unique in this regard – if there’s something free, people will try to get it. Those sites likely chalked the denial up to experience and moved on, generally unfazed by the whole thing. Subtract those from the list and you have the sites who consider themselves “commercial news” (or at least close enough to deserve a pass).

Some of these sites probably publish daily, some weekly, some even monthly. I’d wager that almost all these sites accept or solicit advertising, if only through some affiliate programs. Some pay their contributors – many do not. Much of the content comes from aggregation as opposed to generation.Are they commercial news?

Are you, or have you ever been, a content aggregator?

If anything good comes out of this row over press passes, I think it will be the focus on the question of “commercial news” and the legitimacy in the world of Web journalism that name confers. It would be enlightening to pick a couple of real-world sites and evaluate them based on the criteria, but that would indeed be too much finger-pointing. The results of the evaluation would take more attention than the more important aspect of the process itself. So, let’s make this rhetorical. Of all the Mac news sites you read on a regular basis, how many fit the refined Macworld Expo definition:

Contains original news content above and beyond links, forums, troubleshooting tips and reader/viewer contributions.

This question is a good one to ask, because how many of those regular sites can honestly claim the above? Tie into that the time requirement (which seems a bit arbitrary, but let’s use it anyway):

Publishes original news content at least once per week by employed staff

and reference back to my definition including the profit motive, which would imply that even if the “once a week” is not valid, more content more often would be a key element of generating a profit, whether it’s advertising by impression or subscription-based.

How many of your regular sites fit? How many of your regular sites use paid freelancers or local staff rather than reader-submissions? An interesting question in my mind revolves around the definition of employee, (just as it does in the Internal Revenue Service rule books, too), but that is a hair that can be split at another time. It may not be accurate, but I’ll lump contract work and true employees together for these purposes. How many sites, useful though they are, specialize in aggregation of information, not creation of content? How many of these sites try to get into Macworld as “commercial news”? Their reports might be well-written and well-anticipated, but distinct from the mission of the site as a whole.

Odd as it is, these days, most traditional media outlets do something similar. News and features are predominantly from a few sources: The Wall Street Journal, AP newswire, various column syndicates. As a percentage, staff bylines are fewer and fewer.

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