Thoughts on Attribution in the Blogosphere

Over the weekend, Louis Gray published a fairly critical piece about the blog I help edit, entitled “Mashable Uses A-List Power to Steal B-List Buzz.”  Basically, Gray wasn’t happy with the way we provided attribution to sources on three stories we ran in recent weeks.   It’s important to note that it’s not the first time Gray has called out specific blogs in regards to a “best practices” issue – several months ago he criticized #1 tech blog Engadget (and us) in a post about internal linking (another issue for another day – Pete responded and explained it here). 

While I don’t necessarily agree with his tactics in making his point (it would’ve been nice if he’d emailed myself or Pete Cashmore prior to publishing, but perhaps it’s our fault for not making our contact info and roles more prominent), as Pete summed it up in a Twitter post, “perversely, I'm glad people are asking about our editorial policies: it shows we matter, & also reminds us of our growing responsibilities.”

“Growing responsibilities” is something I think the whole blogosphere is still coming to grips with, and a reason we need people like Louis Gray, as much as it might suck to become  the whipping boy for an industry-wide problem.  Blogging as a medium is only a decade old, and it’s only in the last few years it has become something that more than a few early adopters keep track of.  Thus, the standards are still being determined.  Print journalism has been around for hundreds of years, and while their standards are more established, they are still constantly evolving. 

Returning to the issue at hand – attribution – I think Gray makes some valid points, and we’re already putting in place measures at Mashable to make it clearer where a story comes from when we’re not the source.  For starters, we're going to phase out the “via” links that are commonly found on many, many blogs in the tech space.  For those of you not familiar with the intricacies of blogger-speak, a “via” link typically comes at the very bottom of a post, linking back to the original source where the facts came from.  So, for example, if we were to blog about something first reported in The New York Times, you might see a link at the bottom of the post “via new york times.”  Bottom line: these are a sucky way to link to an original source, especially when it’s a one-man shop like Louis Gray who could certainly benefit from a more prominent link on a blog that gets a few hundred thousand daily visitors. 

Second, Gray took issue with the way we attributed a quote he obtained via phone conversation with Robert Scoble regarding his move to Fast Company.  That story was written by Mark Hopkins, one of our talented bloggers who also edits part of the night shift.  As someone that majored in journalism, I agree that Mark did not attribute the quote properly (though, he did still link to Gray earlier in the article), and had I been made aware of the issue, I would have edited it.  However, I think Mark made an honest mistake.  Unlike myself, Mark actually comes from a hardcore technical background and is not a classically trained journalist.  This is a huge asset to Mashable and many other blogs, as people like Mark understand issues on a whole different level from folks that follow the industry at 30,000 feet.  It’s like the difference between Leslie Stahl’s profile of Facebook on “60 Minutes” and an in-depth look at the code behind the company’s application platform on Mashable or another tech blog.  Both are valuable, but you’re not going to find the latter on a national television broadcast.

As for Gray’s third main point about other blogs linking to Mashable as the source when he is clearly quoted, all I can say is “welcome to the club.”  We often report a story first and don’t get the credit from folks that report it later on.  While I think this is usually unintentional, the cold and hard truth of the matter is that for some, linking has become form of “sucking up” and getting on people’s radar.  That said, as we move to do a better job of attribution at Mashable, I think it’s also important that we look at a wider variety of sources and incorporate numerous interesting opinions into articles where we’re not a primary source.  When you’re not writing as a primary source, it’s up to you to add value, and one way to do this in the blog world is turn people on to new and innovative ideas.   I think people like Mathew Ingram and Steven Hodson do a terrific job of this, and while it will take time, I hope we can start to move in this direction with our secondary reporting at Mashable. 

Finally, as for the anonymous commenters who used Gray’s post as an opportunity to bash Mashable, our mailbox is open if you have specific incidents you’d like to discuss.  We’re not in the business of sharing your emails with the world, so if you contact us, rest assured it’s confidential.  Despite what some haters would like to have you believe, we don’t break embargoes (unless someone else does first) and correct materially wrong errors we make in our reporting.  In specific regards to embargoes, until recently (today in fact) we had an issue with our server that was making timestamps on our site inaccurate.  If you read Mashable via an RSS reader, you can see that any embargoed stories come out at the same time as those published by other sites that have been pre-briefed. 

In retrospect, I’m actually glad that Louis Gray called us out on the attribution issue, because it now allows us to take a leadership role in making changes for the good of the industry.  Along those lines, being able to react, respond, and implement policy adjustments within 48 hours of what some people might view as a PR disaster is one of the many reasons I love being in this space.   We can always do better, and hopefully this will help us do just that. 

Comments

[MG Siegler]

Good stuff Adam. A very insightful and fair look at the situation.

[Mathew Ingram]

Well said, Adam. It's nice to see someone admitting their mistakes (or the mistakes of the site they work for) and promising to do better, instead of trying to weasel out of it and make it someone else's fault. Good on ya.

[Steven Hodson]

Nicely put Adam - thanks