Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator (50 page)

McLuhan, Marshall, 106

MacRumors.com
, 169

Making It in the Political Blogosphere
(Yglesias), 140

Malcolm, Andrew, 92

Malik, Om, 108

Malone, Noreen, 61–62

manipulating bloggers

angle-hunting/made-up stories, 114–19

author’s experience with, 1–6

bribes, indirect, 42–47

format/length of stories, 106–12

headlines, deceptive, 88–93

information, handing to, 50–58

One-Off Problem, exploiting, 82–85

pageview journalism, 96–104

to trick readers, 70–74

virality, creating, 60–68

Marginal Revolution
, 57–58

Marlowe, Philip, 82

Mashable
, 42, 103, 190–91

mass media

bloggers, getting jobs at, 45–46

blogs bought by, 35–37

reputation, importance to, 35

types of, 21

See also
newsmaking; newspapers; trading up the chain

Max, Tucker, 201

movie, outrage campaign for, 1–2, 23–24, 44

Mediabistro
, 23, 25, 115

Media Decoder
, 192

MediaElites
, 208

Media manipulation, and blogs/bloggers.
See
blog toxicity; manipulating bloggers; stories/information

Mendelson, Brandon, 100

Merton, Robert, 144

metrics, 96–104

and buying traffic, 99–100

pageview statistics, 96–98

pseudo-metrics, types of, 99

Mill, John Stuart, 41

modern press (by subscription), 80–82

Montaigne, 207

Morozov, Evgeny, 173

Moss, Randy, 174

Most E-mailed list, 68, 96

Most Popular Articles, 69, 96

Motolese, Fernando, 159

Moylan, Brian, 70

Munsterberg, Hugo, 113

narcotizing dysfunction, 144

national media.
See
mass media

negative information, and virality, 64, 66–68

Net Delusion, The
(Morozov), 173

New Orleans Times-Picayune
, 82

News aggregators, 21

NewsGator, 83

newsmaking, 18–29

entry point, 21, 24

legacy media in, 21–22, 24–25

mass media in, 22–26

newswires, blogs as, 12

See also
stories/information; trading up the chain

newspapers

blogs, influence on, 20–23, 25n

Modern Press (by subscription), 80–82

One-Off Problem, 78–80

Party Press, 76–77

Yellow Press, 77–80

newswires, 12

New York Evening Journal
, 88

New York Herald
, 78, 79

New York Sun
, 77

New York Times

and angle of story, 114–15

blogs purchased by, 36

Michigan Central Station slideshow, 62n

Most E-mailed list, 68, 96–97

Most Popular Articles, 69, 96–97

pay wall, 233

Pentagon Papers leak, 91

subscription model, history of, 80–81

Nielsen, Jakob, 110

Nolan, Hamilton, 47

Nyhan, Brendan, 183

Obama, Barack, 160n, 163, 171, 198

Ochs, Adolph S., 80–81, 233

O’Donnell, Christine, 116

O’Keefe, James, 136–38

One-Off Problem

and blogs, 82–85

and Yellow Press, 78–80

Orlean, Susan, 97–98

Orlin, John, 165, 177

Outbrain, 99

outrage

campaign, for Tucker film, 1–2, 23–24

relationship to virality, 63–68

Overstock.com
, 162–63

Owyang, Jeremiah, 157

Page, Larry, 153

pageviews

blogger compensation based on, 42–44

as blogger’s goal, 108

increasing with user engagement, 71–73

and revenues, 32–33

traffic-generating scoops, 33–35

pageview statistics, 96–104

as determiner of content, 97–98, 100, 142–43

Gawker
method, 97

paid verus unpaid articles, comments for, 102–3

silence, problem of, 101–3, 144

Warnock’s Dilemma, 101–2

paid articles, and comments generation, 102–3

PandoDaily
, 115

Pariser, Eli, 82

Park, Robert E., 183, 217

Parr, Ben, 42

Party Press, 76–77

Paterson, David, 168–70

Pawlenty, Tim,
Politico
coverage, 12, 14–16

Pentagon Papers, 91

Peretti, Jonah, 62, 102

Pierce, Tony, 46

Pitchfork
, 203

political blogs

campaign coverage, cycle of, 15

candidates, creating and destroying, 14–16

election cycle, manufacturing of, 14–15

negative impact of.
see
blog toxicity

political newspapers, 76–77

Politico
, Tim Pawlenty coverage, 12, 14–16

Postman, Neil, 230–31

press releases, 51–52

PRWeb, 52

pseudo-exclusive, 34

Pulitzer, Joseph, 78, 80

Quickish
, 27n

quotes out of context, 26–27

Racked NY
, 110, 151

Rao, Venkatesh, 73

reality, unreality, perpetuation by blogs, 216–21

Reddit, 19, 22

Reifler, Jason, 183

Religion News Service, 28

reputation

blackmail tactics by blogs, 159–64

blogs, name-building process, 35–36

as mass media concern, 35

and subscription model, 80–82

reputation-management services, 161–62

Reuters, 184n

revenues

from advertisements, 32–33

conflicts of interest, profiting from, 37–38

metrics, use to boost, 96–104

no reader response problem, 101–2

paid versus unpaid article comments, 102–3

from sale of blog, 36–37

from traffic, 32–35

YouTube Partner Program, 141

Richards, Michael, 33

Rihanna, 33

Roberts, Roxanne, 177

Robertson, Lindsay, 19

Rojas, Pete, 35

Rosenberg, Scott, 107

RSS readers, decline of, 82–85

rumors

as fake news, 26–27

and iterative journalism, 169–75, 182

Rutten, Tim, 31

Salon.com
, 96, 132

Samsung, blogger, perks to, 45

Santelli, Rick, 66–68

Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters
(Rosenberg), 107

Schmidt, Eric, 92

Schulberg, Budd, 6

Schulz, Kathryn, 155

Scoble, Robert, 53

scoops, blog money-making from, 33–35

Seeking Alpha
, 43, 167