It’s About Audience

From ragingthunderbolt:

Ben Brooks:

Marco Arment on the use of the term ‘fanboy’ and writing opinions:

This is one reason why so many big publishers are so opinionless and seem to like everything. Saying you don’t like something, or that any choice is clearly the best for most people, will cause enough people to stop listening that the precious metrics that pay the bills might decrease.

It always comes back to money doesn’t it?

Yes, it really does.

I know if I write an extremely pro-Apple blog I’ll have a better chance of my posts getting picked up by Gruber, Siegler, and the rest of the echo chamber. In turn, that might lead to an increase in the precious metric of subscribers and pageviews. In turn, that might give me RSS sponsorships from The Syndicate, ads from The Deck or Fusion, and so on. Hey, it might even make it easier for me to sell a few T-shirts. And maybe, just maybe, I might even get a show with Dan Benjamin.

It’s lucrative to write a “fanboy” blog. It always comes back to money doesn’t it?

I will ignore your quip about fanboys. It’s a stupid word with unwelcome connotations that does not promote discussion.

I agree with Max Jacobson, whom you quoted and replied to here (him, then you):

Max Jacobson at stuparker:

Does money necessarily compromise integrity? Writing a personal site full-time means things like courting advertisers and selling t-shirts (or some other business plan) are necessary.

And that’s not an inherently bad thing so much as a fact of life.

So what’s your point?

No, I don’t think that. But I also don’t think, as Marco Arment and Ben Brooks do, that money compromises big publishers’ integrity and causes them to be “opinionless”. Moreover, I don’t think, as John Gruber and many others do, that advertising is inherently bad (at least when Google’s involved). In fact, I agree with you that it’s a fact of life.

I agree with Arment and Brooks to an extent. There are a number of documented cases of companies pulling ads or threatening to pull ads due to the opinions of where the ads appear. There’s a certain sway that advertisers can have, and a potential conflict of interest can arise for the publisher. However, it’s worth noting that those who advertise on Arment’s (et. al.) site do so knowing it’s a very specific, niche audience. Advertising on Engadget or The Verge has a less-niche audience, and television even less so.

Also, Gruber has ads on his site. I don’t think he views ads as inherently bad. Rather, I think it’s a case of unease over targeted advertising which mines your content.

The point? It is easiest to show Marco Arment’s and Ben Brooks’s glibness in this case by parroting their reasoning.

Okay.

(Sigh. I just can’t resist reblogging myself.)

How modest.

You and Stu should start a podcast.

Edit: if Tumblr is going to allow Markdown for formatting, they should at least implement it properly. Specifically, reference-style linking doesn’t work, hence the large number of edits to this post.

Source: ragingthunderbolt