in journalism, Uncategorized

“Enthusiast” Is Pejorative

John Gruber recently called out AllThingsD for failing to provide name attribution to an Apple-focused website. Today, he elaborates on that:

“Enthusiast site” is pejorative. Enthusiast implies that MacStories is produced by zealous hobbyists. Not naming the site at all implied that the site was not worthy of being named. To later attribute it to “macstories.net” rather than “MacStories” implies that it is something less than a fellow peer publication, and not even worth the effort of hitting the shift key to camelcase the M and S. MacStories is the name of the website; macstories.net is MacStories’s domain name. This is subtle, yes, but it is a disparagement nonetheless — the most begrudging form of attribution that could have been added.

As someone who writes for what many would describe as an “enthusiast” website, I can relate.