Thursday, April 21, 2011

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Recently a certain columnist at a certain Pittsburgh online newspaper wrote a sexist, misogynistic screed about women and the NRA. It was picked up by the blogosphere, driving lots of new traffic to that paper's website.

Online newspapers make their money from advertising, and in order to sell advertising their sites need lots of hits. They will be more than happy to hold their noses and keep the most disgusting so-called writers on staff if those writers' vile blatherings generate said hits.

Complaining to the authors of offensive articles, who are attention-whores anyway, accomplishes nothing. Like the dog who soils the carpet because being beaten is preferable to being ignored, any attention is better than none. And complaining to their bosses only confirms the "value" of the hit-generator.

So rather than link back to the crap itself, thus proving its value to the publisher, make one short visit to the newspaper's website. Take note of the biggest advertisers, and contact them. Explain exactly why you will never spend another dime with them if they continue to support such garbage. Copy the so-called writer and his bosses on that message so they understand precisely why their revenues are likely to decrease.

And just for the record, in case this so-called writer should blunder in here, "it's satire and you're too stupid to see that" isn't working for Scott Adams and it won't work for you.

4 comments:

Linoge said...

Yeah... I forgot to TinyURL the link, though that might not necessarily cut down on the traffic.

Still, contacting the advertisers is the way to go, thoough the last time I did that, the response was less than useful...

Hecate said...

I meant nothing against your post. It was really a great synopsis of everything that was wrong with the whole steaming pile.

Since Righthaven (spit) it's really hard to avoid linking to original content. Newspapers are much more sensitive to potential loss of advertising revenue now than in the past, when they had a lock on information distribution. What they make on subscriptions and paid online content doesn't even begin to pay the bills.

Anonymous said...

I can't say that the article offended me. I don't understand the point of the article, but maybe I'm not reading it from the right perspective.

I have to tell you that I know women who think like this. I also know women who don't. There are all kinds of people in the world, and as long as people have the freedom to choose their path through life, I'm willing to listen to all points of view. There's room in this world for high-heeled, makeup-wearing, girly girls, and flannel shirt, hay hauling farm women who stack hay better than I can. There's also room for he-man, football linebacker types who are as masculine as they come, as well as men who like to mess around with houseplants, horses, and animal rescue.

Lunette de soleil Dolce & Gabbana said...

ok.trop cool et je reviendrai la prochaine fois.