How To Fail at New Media - A Case Study in Dinosaur Journalism

UPDATE: The idiots FINALLY just put it up.

Rolling Stone is at this very minute failing in a grand and sad way. While the whole world is talking about the article that could blow the Afghanistan War for Obama, Rolling Stone is too busy applying pressure to Politico to take the article down instead of bothering to put it up on their own website. I suppose Jan Wenner, with his ancient ideas of selling copies of a magazine, thinks he can drag us all back with him to the Stone Age. (Pun not intended, but left there because I'm cheesy that way.) The meat of the article isn't so much that General McChrystal is a renegade, that part is actually entertaining, but that he and his aides expose the fallacy of the counterinsurgency strategy.

Meanwhile, until they make him take it down as well, Mark Halperin of Time magazine has the article right here.

Way to screw it up, RS. You missed out on huge traffic numbers today and Time got them off of YOUR article.

By the time your stupid magazine hits the "newsstands" (how quaint) we all will have read the article somewhere else. Pure and utter fail.

Rolling Stone's political blog has been dormant for a month. UPDATE Their Twitter account failed to mention it until just 11 minutes ago. They say, get this: "Read the full Gen. McChrystal article that everyone is discussing now:" In today's journalism, when you waste an entire morning, you've lost.

And here is an up-to-the-minute screenshot of the RS homepage. Lady f-ing Gaga. 

Find a Real One on eBay for Less

"Some things just get cooler with age," reads the website. "They develop an unmistakable mojo over time that makes them look cooler and feel even more comfortable than when they were new," they go on to philosophize.

This is forgivable when it happens with jeans. Nothing screams "brand new pants" like some 501s that have never seen a washing machine. But I can't forgive this in a line of new guitars. From Fender no less.

These are not "road worn" instruments. They are new and designed to look road worn. Or as Fender puts it, they have "a killer aged design aesthetic." Smells like bullshit. But surely there is a market for these. No self-respecting wannabe rocker worth his rocks in rock would be caught rockin' a non-rock axe, right? A rocker's gotta look like a rocker, and when it comes to rockin', Fender knows how to make you look your rockin' best. Just ask Springsteen, toting around that stage prop he calls a guitar.

So now, young poseurs, you can look the part right down to your brand new "distressed" guitar from Fender. Make sure you aren't wearing brand new jeans.

Here's the Joe Strummer model.

So wrong.

Still You Need Some Graphic Seance

Thanks, "Andy". You make blogging fun. Let me guess: you are in Affiliate Marketing?

Spellcheck Next Time

This Houston protester...never mind.


via

Central Florida Doesn't Understand Social Media

A local police officer calls himself a "Super-Trained Killer Ninja Fighter of the Night" on his MySpace page and gets suspended.

After some MySpace trash-talking, local cheerleader mean girls lure a rival to a house and beat the crap out of her. They videotape the half-hour pummeling and post it on YouTube. Now they're in big trouble.


I'm Tom. I have 3,456,789,567,453,223,456 friends.

A Guide To Cruiseology

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has been the subject of many a blog these days. I finally got around to seeing the video that will officially kill his career (we can hope) on Gawker.

It's confusing, disturbing and should do more to drive people away from Scientology than anything else. MTV has a great glossary to help you decode many of Mapother's words.

Relevance: It's a Beautiful Thing

I know we can't control the idiots, but I'd encourage all bloggers to delete comments that have NOTHING to do with your post. These neo-spammers take the time to get past your word verification thingy, and yet they still give you their generic pasted bullshit like:

"Nice blog. I really like it. Please visit my blog."

I understand that one of the ways to drive traffic to your site is to comment on other blogs, but you can't treat other blogs as bulletin boards for your own blog or website. Say something that actually pertains to the post or contributes in some way to the conversation. Quit being stupid, please.