Felix Salmon reveals the stark truths about Henry Blodget’s online news machine:

[T]here’s reason to be concerned about what Blodget’s team has sacrificed along the way. It’s worth noting that venture-backed media companies can very much be in a race against time for growth. Investors want a return on their money and, given the economics of web news, that almost always requires exponential growth in uniques and pageviews.

See also Marco Arment’s analysis of Business Insider’s copy-and-pasting of his material.

Update: And Business Insider responds to Arment (with aplomb)!

A new Tumblr of unnecessary journalism phrases. I’d like to see even some cursory explanation of WHY each one is unnecessary, but I suppose if you have to ask, you don’t deserve to know?

TechCrunch’s continuing disaster spilled over onto the site again this weekend, as columnist Paul Carr decided to engage in some scorched earth tactics on his way out the door (see TechCrunch editor Schonfield’s response).

Rex Hammock pointed me to this post by David Winer, which tells a story that really resonates with me:

When competitors make public and personal accusations, how are you going to respond, when customers are watching? It’s a very low-road way to compete. Not much you can but weather the storm, keep offering the best service you can, figuring the smart customers will ignore the personal stuff.

Anyway, there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that goes something like this. “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.” It works! As your competitors rise, eventually they have done to them what they did to you, and if you sit there a while, you don’t have to do a thing — nature takes care of it.

I was actually an admirer of the works of Johann Hari before I read his mea culpa today in the Independent:

When I recorded and typed up any conversation, I found something odd: points that sounded perfectly clear when you heard them being spoken often don’t translate to the page. They can be quite confusing and unclear. When this happened, if the interviewee had made a similar point in their writing (or, much more rarely, when they were speaking to somebody else), I would use those words instead. At the time, I justified this to myself by saying I was giving the clearest possible representation of what the interviewee thought, in their most considered and clear words.But I was wrong.

I didn’t have much background into the situation, but Jeff Bercovici provides it, along with some stinging commentary:

No, Johann, it’s arrogant and stupid of you to think anyone you’re not related to by blood is going to buy this. Journalism is filled with people who rose fast and/or received not formal training. Most of us (I’m in the latter category) never had to be told you can’t steal quotes. You’re smarter than most. You knew this. Until you admit it, you’ll never have a chance of regaining your credibility.