Professor Edward Wasserman used his column today in the Miami Herald to slam what he calls "popularity pay" and based his entire argument on inaccurate reporting. Consider this post my request for a correction. Here's Wasserman's lead:
Penelope Trunk delivered career advice on Yahoo Finance until two weeks ago, when Yahoo dropped her Brazen Careerist column. Trunk says Yahoo decided the column didn't draw enough traffic to warrant the premium rates advertisers pay to be in its financial news package. So out she went.
I've not read a single account of Trunk's reaction that backs this claim. What actually happened is much worse, and totally different.
Trunk was fired because the advertising department couldn't sell the page views generated by her very popular column. At least, that's what she said in a statement that anyone can go read for themselves right now.
. . . I asked why I was being fired. Maybe you are thinking it’s because every week, 400 people leave comments on Yahoo saying how stupid I am. (And surely today’s final column at Yahoo Finance will break records for she-is-so-stupid comments.) But that’s not the reason my column was cancelled; Yahoo is about traffic, and according to Wikipedia, my column has some of the highest traffic on all of Yahoo.It turns out that financial content gets a higher CPM (advertising rate) than career content. So while my column has a lot of traffic, Yahoo sells my career column to advertisers as part of the Yahoo Finance package, and I bring down the CPM of the whole package.
Remember what journalism professors say about getting the names wrong? If you can't spell a name right, then why should readers believe anything in the story. I wonder what they'd say about getting the entire lead wrong.
I think you can safely disregard anything after the first graph of the column. Instead read the truth about a page-view bonus system.
Comments (4)
One day later, still no correction. Here's the place to check.
Posted by Lucas | January 8, 2008 7:10 PM
Posted on January 8, 2008 19:10
Days later and still no correction from The Miami Herald. Today I sent an e-mail directly to Ed Wasserman with my request, and a link to this blog entry. We'll see what happens.
Want to avoid a repeat of the issues seen in Begala vs. Fox News.
Posted by Lucas | January 12, 2008 12:01 PM
Posted on January 12, 2008 12:01
Lucas,
I'm puzzled by the venom of your posting. I have no problem correcting an error, and have done so often in my career. The idea that my failing to notice your post constituted a deliberate refusal to fix a mistake is wrong. Now that you (and Penelope Trunk) have finally e-mailed me, I'll take care of the error. The overall point of my column remains, I believe, valid and important. That is to deplore the precision with which online technologies permit editorial offerings to be calibrated to the wishes of advertisers. Print media have, to be sure, tried to do this for ever, but with nothing like the technical skill now available. Penelope is a victim of this, and her readers are the worse for it.
EW
Posted by Ed Wasserman | January 12, 2008 12:26 PM
Posted on January 12, 2008 12:26
With your response, I think you have single-handedly proven the need for a page view bonus system.
On the day the column came out, I posted a comment on the article requesting a correction. The comment was "recommended" by three users. And I wrote a post linking to your story, and posted comments on other postings about your story across the Web.
Anyone who pays attention to their own traffic online would have noticed these methods of contact. Actively reading comments posted in response to your stories and even participating are sure-fire ways of increasing page views.
I'd say you are a good example of someone whose paper would benefit from paying you a page-view bonus.
Looking forward to the correction.
Posted by Lucas | January 12, 2008 10:41 PM
Posted on January 12, 2008 22:41