Saturday, August 1, 2009

Find... me... somebody to suuuuuub...

"'Clear ultimation' given to Fiji"


Also:

I'm not even sure what I mean anymore.

17 comments:

  1. Took a screenshot before this one fell down the memory hole...

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  2. What's worse is they've got it right in the actual article.

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  3. isn't an ultimation an ultimatum that is only to be taken as information?

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  4. i heard the website 'journalists' have now moved to a different floor to the herald 'journalists'.

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  5. Ultimation (n)

    A concatenation of the words Ultimate and Intimidation. An ultimatum delivered in a threatening manner.

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  6. But what is the threat? "If you continue to defy us you will leave us with no choice but to berate you again"?

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  7. I think you'll find it is the Ultimate Automaton, even better than a Transformer.

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  8. People! The Herald has featured an excellent opinion piece (an oxymoron, I know, but please read it)

    It's called "Sinister tones to referendum instigators" by John Roughan

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  9. Betty, I read it and all I'll say is I don't think Roughan would make a very good lawyer.

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  10. Gives you a bit too much credit, you think?

    Or too little?

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  11. OH GOD. I've seen this exact mistake before, but it was on 3 News (and, strangely, in a story also about NZ politicians giving Fiji the hard word). Come on, journos, if Livejournal's spellcheck thinks you're a moron you're in trouble.

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  12. Jimmy, a penny for your thoughts on http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/31/AR2009073102476.html?referrer=emailarticle

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  13. That's quite an interesting piece, JP. Of course, there's numerous disanalogies from that to what I do here:

    - I don't have ads, so I don't make a cent.
    - I don't write about articles I think are good, like what happened in that case.
    - If I thought that more effort than ringing up some rent-a-quote like Garth McVicar went into most articles I might feel bad. But probably not.

    As the article itself says:

    In a statement, Post general counsel Eric N. Lieberman said: "In general, we believe that there is a very important line between appropriate quoting and linking, which contributes to free expression, and inappropriate free-riding, which diminishes free expression."

    I'd like to think I'm very much in the former camp.

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  14. I concur, and wasnt accusing you of inappropriate free riding. And if you were, I would hope you would pick a better source of information for your parasitic demands.

    I was most interested by his comment that journalists and journalistic enterprises would continue to exist, but it was unclear who would pay them. News needs to be generated, and we need a source to filter this to suit our own needs. The world seems to be heading closer and closer to news coming directly from the source to the consumer (and in the case of the Herald effectively printing press releases, it may already be here), but this filter is vital for keeping the source honest and the consumer placated. While we all want the truth, we also want the version of the truth that suits us the best. As profitable as some of these websites are, they are only profitable at a 1 man-hour per story, rather a 1 man-week plus per story. Something has to give, because the level of news and reporting that will be available for those websites to base their content on will dry up significantly if the traditional print media continues on its current path.

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  15. Ultimation (n)

    A concatenation of the words Ultimate and Automation. An ultimatum delivered automatically upon the satisfaction of one or more pre-determined conditions.

    A bit like a form letter.

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  16. The WaPo piece is ridiculous. Gawker wrote an original post, which incorporated four quotes from the WaPo's profile subject as well as facts from the WaPo's reporting. Gawker gave attribution and linkbacks twice within its post. That's more than I've ever seen a newspaper or a magazine do when it takes and runs with a story that was originally broken by an online source. (You might, at best, hope for a mumbling mention of "online speculation" leading to the story, or some woefully generic statement about the issue "earning attention from bloggers" before dropping into the newspaper's lap.) And besides, it's not as if the WaPo wasn't earning ad dollars from the thousands upon thousands of readers referred to its website by Gawker. The reporter admits Gawker was his story's top referrer, aside from the WaPo-owned Slate.com.

    Sites like Gawker, and this one, aren't the enemy. They're merely trying to hold journalism to a higher standard -- sometimes that's picking up the dropped stitches, and sometimes that's raveling the loose thread, but done responsibly, blogging is just as much in the public interest as working for a newspaper.

    http://gawker.com/5328840/the-time-gawker-put-the-washington-post-out-of-business

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