>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadcasting networks and most of the major newspapers including the New York Times. Are the writers saying nice things or are they paid to say nice things?
I think we quickly need changes in the way we handle native advertising. It is hugely problematic and basically predatory.
I believe that there are ways to genuinely advertise if the advertisement is openly disclosed and the ad is informative, but native advertising is essentially just a sophisticated and insidious form of manipulation. It turns readers into non-consenting consumers and the purpose of journalism from informing truthfully to a sales pitch. I have trouble imagining that many people think this is tolerable if we'd be debating it openly and brought it to the forefront of the news (which ironically is not going to happen).
"The power of advertisers over television programming stems from the simple fact that they buy and pay for the programs-they are the "patrons" who provide the media subsidy. As such, the media compete for their patronage, developing specialized staff to solicit advertisers and necessarily having to explain how their programs serve advertisers’ needs. The choices of these patrons greatly affect the welfare of the media, and the patrons become what William Evan calls "normative reference organizations," whose requirements and demands the media must accommodate if they are to succeed." - Noam Chomsky , Manufacture of Consent.
This sort of problem became more or less inevitable once people stopped paying for content.
With a traditional newspaper your readers are footing at least part of the bill for the articles, so you are beholden to them to keep them informed. At least in theory. These days however the only payment is coming from advertisers, so they are the only ones you need to keep happy.
This is the same problem that TV and Radio news has always had, and why they were considered inferior to newspapers for factual reporting. Of course there are a few outlets that are listener/viewer funded, and they tend to be more highly regarded than their counterparts. Outlets like the BBC, NPR, and PBS.
Theoretically cable news shouldn't have this problem since part of the cost comes from people's cable bills, but other forces have conspired to poison that well.
For those who are not familiar with them term "native advertising", it means integrating the ad into the page content in such a way that it doesn't appear to be an ad at first glance.
In other words, using the same style as the adjacent content, and removing any boxes or rules that separate an ad.
It's pretty far down the slope into dishonesty territory w.r.t. separating content from editorial or advertising, and the FTC should investigate and regulate native ads.
Native ads should be clearly labeled and disclosed, as with any other ads. This isn’t controversial and is what all serious journalism organizations are already doing.
I don’t buy that the format is inherently any more dangerous than anything else. All ads need to be respectful of the reader regardless of form.
I have a more radical approach to that : I discard any opinion I see in a press article (that is, most of it, usually), and only focus on new facts the article brings.
I don't mean any disrespect for journalists and I'm deeply thankful for their work (I even considered becoming one, as a kid), but I don't care for their opinion. I did once, before the internet, because opinions were valuable, as the only ones you were exposed to were family's and friends'.
But today, the internet is a massive opinion building/sharing machine. The last thing we need is the press to do it as well, instead it must be the place where we can expect to find facts and fact checking. I don't have any problem with random people sharing their opinion either - it's cool we can do it - but now I expect more from the press.
Now, I'm well aware solving the native ad problem does not solve the real problem : press has hard time keeping afloat. My usual suggestion about that is for browsers to include means for micro-payment (be it using google pay, cryptocurrencies, apple pay, whatever pay, a new standard, I don't care). The main problem with paywalls to me is that they expect users to subscribe for monthly subscriptions, renewed until they're manually cancelled. This is not how people consume news anymore. They come to an article because of its content, they wish to see that content, they don't want to see other articles. We need to allow people to quickly pay a small fee to see a single article, without all the hassle of using a credit card.
Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened?
So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the head?
Having run a newspaper, I can confirm that advertisers do contact management and say "I didn't like that article, do something about it or we won't be advertising with you again". And the financial pressure is intense. You have many, many staff to pay, and the commercial pressure to keep advertisers happy is real and difficult to manage.
I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story. It happens every day. Luckily I never had to do it, but there were times I was very tempted.
I totally agree with his comment that the only way journalism is going to survive is if readers start paying for it. What we have now is mostly not-journalism.
A person who's been writing the same type of inflammatory articles for 30 years is suddenly fired, while an article he wrote recently blasting 5G is completely replaced by a new article favorable to 5G... I think you're using Hanlan's Razor to cut in the wrong direction this time.
It's entirely possible that this not very good column was some sort of final straw and there's some history we don't know leading up to it. The story as told still seems very odd but, of course, we're only hearing one side of it.
That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.
<I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves (30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs serious research.
Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military
CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the sorry state of so many long-established tech pubs.
Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating, two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows the old article. Nice one.
He raises many good points about the potential downsides of 5G. US telecom corporations are rushing to beat China Telecom companies & South Korean companies to the punch. The US is definitely not going to have the same dominance in 5G that they had with 4G, especially if they take hazardous paths to a nationwide rollout
There are no US based mobile infrastructure companies competing for 4G or 5G installations. Qualcomm is lower level supplier providing components and competing with MediaTek, Samsung and Chinese.
There is only 5 major players left: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung. Two Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and South Korean.
Dvorak is a troll. I could go show the reasons, but he's all about saying inflammatory things (mostly at apple fans) and getting them to buy magazines / click things. This is a continuation in that trend, but may or may not be true.
Dvorak has been known to troll but when you write a typical Dvorak-tier skeptical piece on 5G then new management fires you and suddenly your 5G-skeptical piece has been replaced by a pro-5G piece, I don't see how you can reach any conclusion other than the same one he did in this post. Did you even read the post?
I did post about this in the other thread and folks piled on calling me a conspiracy theorist, but in the letter JCD received from his editor, they said they were shutting down all outside columns.
This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while continuing to have articles published.
In my personal experience though, ending these sorts of outside contracts with a half-truth in the vein of "the organization has decided to make a change" isn't remotely unusual. It's entirely possible that PC Mag decided to prune their outside contributors to a core group and perhaps change their relationship somewhat with the remaining ones.
Is it disingenuous, especially with someone who has been working for you in some form for a very long time? Sure. But I've seen a number of online pubs that go through changes with their outside contributors and communication is mostly pretty poor.
As far as I can tell, it's almost as if the vast majority of articles on the web are native ads. When the regular article writers have to compete against the native ads to get views on their content... they really don't have a choice.
Native ads are presented as stock market news, the NYT publishes it regularly, really what's the point... Figured I'd even start doing it on my blog (mostly a joke):
Fact is, it's the new world we live in. Just like I may pay for cable and I get ads; I can pay for the NYT and their content is nothing more than an ad.
John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong.
He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one.
Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple.
He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc. etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date).
There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech.
Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to go.
He may be a troll but that doesn't discount the point he's addressing that in the absence of subscription model, content will be driven by who pays for it (ie. other than the readers).
You know that saying controversial things about Apple has basically always been his schtick. It drives pages views when people get all upset and flood into the site to read the article so that can go back to Hacker News/SlashDot/Reddit/Digg/Fark/Facebook/Twitter/whatever to argue about it.
> he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources")
I thought something like that was on the table in NT days (remember it used to support PowerPC). That would have been pre Jobs return and pre OS X though.
It's mostly nonsense though. Itanium ended up being a bad bet for Intel and HP but both companies mostly just moved on with Xeon. Intel's worse bet was on x86 in mobile.
This was my first encounter with the term "native advertising", and it's a perfect term for describing the bulk of YouTube content. A welcome addition to my vocabulary.
There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans widely.
Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject. Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.
[+] [-] Barrin92|7 years ago|reply
I think we quickly need changes in the way we handle native advertising. It is hugely problematic and basically predatory.
I believe that there are ways to genuinely advertise if the advertisement is openly disclosed and the ad is informative, but native advertising is essentially just a sophisticated and insidious form of manipulation. It turns readers into non-consenting consumers and the purpose of journalism from informing truthfully to a sales pitch. I have trouble imagining that many people think this is tolerable if we'd be debating it openly and brought it to the forefront of the news (which ironically is not going to happen).
[+] [-] petermcneeley|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrese|7 years ago|reply
With a traditional newspaper your readers are footing at least part of the bill for the articles, so you are beholden to them to keep them informed. At least in theory. These days however the only payment is coming from advertisers, so they are the only ones you need to keep happy.
This is the same problem that TV and Radio news has always had, and why they were considered inferior to newspapers for factual reporting. Of course there are a few outlets that are listener/viewer funded, and they tend to be more highly regarded than their counterparts. Outlets like the BBC, NPR, and PBS.
Theoretically cable news shouldn't have this problem since part of the cost comes from people's cable bills, but other forces have conspired to poison that well.
[+] [-] captain_perl|7 years ago|reply
In other words, using the same style as the adjacent content, and removing any boxes or rules that separate an ad.
It's pretty far down the slope into dishonesty territory w.r.t. separating content from editorial or advertising, and the FTC should investigate and regulate native ads.
[+] [-] eli|7 years ago|reply
I don’t buy that the format is inherently any more dangerous than anything else. All ads need to be respectful of the reader regardless of form.
[+] [-] _pctq|7 years ago|reply
I don't mean any disrespect for journalists and I'm deeply thankful for their work (I even considered becoming one, as a kid), but I don't care for their opinion. I did once, before the internet, because opinions were valuable, as the only ones you were exposed to were family's and friends'.
But today, the internet is a massive opinion building/sharing machine. The last thing we need is the press to do it as well, instead it must be the place where we can expect to find facts and fact checking. I don't have any problem with random people sharing their opinion either - it's cool we can do it - but now I expect more from the press.
Now, I'm well aware solving the native ad problem does not solve the real problem : press has hard time keeping afloat. My usual suggestion about that is for browsers to include means for micro-payment (be it using google pay, cryptocurrencies, apple pay, whatever pay, a new standard, I don't care). The main problem with paywalls to me is that they expect users to subscribe for monthly subscriptions, renewed until they're manually cancelled. This is not how people consume news anymore. They come to an article because of its content, they wish to see that content, they don't want to see other articles. We need to allow people to quickly pay a small fee to see a single article, without all the hassle of using a credit card.
[+] [-] davidmr|7 years ago|reply
So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the head?
I don't buy it.
[+] [-] marcus_holmes|7 years ago|reply
I can totally believe that the magazine caved in to pressure from an advertiser to sack a journalist and pull a story. It happens every day. Luckily I never had to do it, but there were times I was very tempted.
I totally agree with his comment that the only way journalism is going to survive is if readers start paying for it. What we have now is mostly not-journalism.
[+] [-] Cpoll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HBlix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickg_zill|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.
[+] [-] pyre|7 years ago|reply
Dvorak's writing has always been about being contrarian and kicking up controversy.
[+] [-] matchagaucho|7 years ago|reply
https://patch.com/california/millvalley/mill-valley-parents-...
[+] [-] dwaltrip|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bArray|7 years ago|reply
Then the dreaded "403 Not allowed".
Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.c...
[+] [-] basicplus2|7 years ago|reply
Here's the critical bit...
<I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves (30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs serious research.
Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military
http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defe...
These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work.>
[+] [-] iofiiiiiiiii|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RichardCA|7 years ago|reply
https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/com...
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/com...
CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the sorry state of so many long-established tech pubs.
[+] [-] exikyut|7 years ago|reply
Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating, two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows the old article. Nice one.
Since this'll probably be "fixed", I fed the URL to archive.is: http://archive.is/KbsW8
[Also, for posterity, the view of the 403: http://archive.is/ggMat - thanks to whoever added this]
[+] [-] technologia|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nokinside|7 years ago|reply
There are no US based mobile infrastructure companies competing for 4G or 5G installations. Qualcomm is lower level supplier providing components and competing with MediaTek, Samsung and Chinese.
There is only 5 major players left: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung. Two Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and South Korean.
[+] [-] brokensegue|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randall|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamrezich|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shard972|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] busterarm|7 years ago|reply
This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while continuing to have articles published.
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
Is it disingenuous, especially with someone who has been working for you in some form for a very long time? Sure. But I've seen a number of online pubs that go through changes with their outside contributors and communication is mostly pretty poor.
[+] [-] SamWhited|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lettergram|7 years ago|reply
Native ads are presented as stock market news, the NYT publishes it regularly, really what's the point... Figured I'd even start doing it on my blog (mostly a joke):
https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/
Fact is, it's the new world we live in. Just like I may pay for cable and I get ads; I can pay for the NYT and their content is nothing more than an ad.
[+] [-] bunnycorn|7 years ago|reply
He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one.
Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple.
He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc. etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date).
There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech.
Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to go.
[+] [-] myth_buster|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandonmenc|7 years ago|reply
He was correct - there was no evidence, at the time, that people wanted to use a mouse.
Also, obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg
[+] [-] kolderman|7 years ago|reply
Ha! I hope he responds to that on No Agenda.
[+] [-] pyre|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asveikau|7 years ago|reply
I thought something like that was on the table in NT days (remember it used to support PowerPC). That would have been pre Jobs return and pre OS X though.
[+] [-] busterarm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghaff|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Volt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newnewpdro|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gukov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] desireco42|7 years ago|reply
I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer.
Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being branded as new 5G and being always connected.
[+] [-] dboreham|7 years ago|reply
Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject. Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.
[+] [-] cvs268|7 years ago|reply
Everything now needs to be neutered down without offending anyone, especially any groups with deep pockets.
[+] [-] DLA|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] wincseschwab|7 years ago|reply
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