CNET vs. Engadget: Missing the Point
By Rob Enderle
May 4th, 2005
On Thursday of last week Molly Wood, senior editor of CNET complained about the "Cold War" practice of vendors who hold traditional publications under NDAs while blog sites like Engadget are able to get the news out more quickly. Jason Calacanis, the head of Weblog and Engadget, fired off a heated response using words like "borderline slanderous" and was clearly so upset that he is "starting an investigation" into the ethics at CNET.
In my reading of Molly's piece I see no attack what so ever on bloggers in general or Engadget in particular. In fact, after I read it I would have been more likely to look for breaking news on Engadget or Gizmodo, because that was where Molly said the breaking news was.
Now, she did talk about CNET's ethics, but she didn't make a direct connection to the ethics of bloggers. I can see how Jason might have felt one was implied, however. Were I to point out, in an argument, that my parents were married, the subtle implication (depending on how I did it) might be that the other party to the argument was a bastard. But I honestly don't see that as her intent in her comment; only that the practice they undertake is time consuming and should result in higher quality - though less timely - reviews and that it was hurting both them and their customers.
Her point was that the Internet has changed the rules surrounding how information is actually released and NDAs now only seem to hurt the traditional publications along with the customers of those publications and should be rethought. After watching Apple take some bloggers to court for doing what any news organization can do, I certainly agree we need to rethink a lot of the rules here.
Apple, which was the clear vendor target of her piece, does have a practice that favors those that write favorable reviews. The PR people at Apple are compensated based on those reviews and there is nothing unethical about that practice. It tends to backfire a lot - which may suggest it is stupid - but unethical it isn't.
In the end, the idiots she was calling out intentionally are folks like CNET. You see this was actually intended, based on my reading, to be a piece of self criticism about her aspect of the industry and not bloggers or Engadget. By making it a personal war between CNET and Engadget, Engadget does a disservice to what, to me, is a rather noble and risky course of action.
I believe that Jason was just having a bad night, was tired, or simply too sensitive. I'd hate to think that his letter to Molly was simply to drive traffic to his site opportunistically by damaging a dialog that has been too long in coming.
I volunteer for the American Press Institute which has been focused of late on teaching large media how to better address the threat that blogs represent by providing better products that more effectively engage their customers. Any company that does that, be it CNET or anyone else, deserves the credit for trying to do the right thing. Having gone down this path myself in the past, I know how painful, but eventually rewarding, it can be.
In the end I agree with CNET that we, as an industry, need to reevaluate our practices based on the web and bring them into the current decade. I also think Jason owes Molly an apology, but that is clearly up to him.