There was kind of a big event today. I’m a technologist by trade so naturally I was interested in hearing about the goings-on as they were happening. This meant pulling up a few live-blogging feeds from the event from the normal news sources.
I’ve been “reading” Gizmodo for years. Often I would see Gizmodo breaking news earlier than Engadget and there were a couple of really good writers on the site.
Recently however, in the last year or two and much more so in the last few months; the quality of writing on Gizmodo has been appalling. Grammar errors, even simple-to-correct ones, are laced throughout every single article. Unfortunately for me stumbling on one of these in something that is written “for money” can demolish my ability to process information for at least a few minutes.
Today on the other hand, I decided to also look at The Verge. Joshua Topolsky is doing some fantastic things with the new property and their focus just on products is fantastic. Unfortunately for them, there was a technical problem with their live-blogging service, so I also pulled up the Gizmodo life-feed.
What I saw there, frankly, was stunning. The commentators were talking less about the event and more about making crude in-jokes and puns. All of this of course with the now-customary lack of proper English. I was in a word, disgusted.
So in response, after spending some time thinking it over; I have just deleted Gizmodo from my Reeder feeds. I’ve replaced with with what I think is a more professional and exacting resource for the same kinds of news (sans the NSFW tags abundant in the Gawker family.)
One look at the home page of The Verge and you can tell immediately that these people really give a shit about their readership.
While I realize that my no longer reading Gizmodo is just a drop in the ocean in terms of traffic, I’m sure that others are coming to the same conclusion. Locker-room antics and a complete disrespect for the language have no business whatever in a professional journalists repertoire.
thanks for reading.