If you’ve ever read Internet statistics, you might wonder who’s the idiot that skews the average by spending sixty hours a week on the Internet? I plead guilty. What’s worse is that most of my time is spent jumping around various Mac web sites looking for something decent to read. Lately, it seems to me, there is precious little news or opinion pieces. All that’s left are sites full of press releases masquerading as stories of interest. This trend irks me quite a bit for two reasons: I really enjoyed some of the sites that have become little more than areas of press release regurgitation and some sites still have decent content that is pushed off the page by vendor composed copy passed off as new. I’ve brought a nice example with me:
Continuing its 16-year tradition, Asanté offers a complete line of network adapters and accessories for the Mac. New GigaNIX 10/100/1000 adapters deliver Gigabit Ethernet performance over ordinary Category 5 copper cables. AsantéFAST 10/100 Fast Ethernet adapters set the standard for Mac connectivity.
Nice writing, the source is http://www.asante.com/press/2003/10-06-03.html.
Compare and contrast that passage with the following:
Continuing its 16-year tradition, Asanté offers a complete line of network adapters and accessories for the Mac. New GigaNIX 10/100/1000 adapters deliver Gigabit Ethernet performance over ordinary Category 5 copper cables. AsantéFAST 10/100 Fast Ethernet adapters set the standard for Mac connectivity.
This came from a popular Mac site. A site that focuses on APPLE and, at one time, offered many interesting LINKS. I don’t know the proper way to cite a press release but no indication was given that it was not original work. The casual reader might actually think that the credited writer typed something more original on the keyboard than command c and command v (they would be wrong). Two people were paid for writing this bit of self-serving doggerel, the copywriter at Asanté, and then the person who c and p’d it. The difference betwixt the two is that Asanté actually deserved the dough. On second thought, perhaps I’m wrong, it could be the roundup guy writes all the press releases except for the bits he adds quotation marks around. He might be hacking out press releases for every Mac Company known to man. In any event, “articles” like this push actual reviews and opinions off the page, which is a shame because this site is home to one of the better Mac writers around.
Unfortunately, the recycling of press releases doesn’t begin and end with that one particular Mac site. Many others have fallen prey to the allure of the easy story. Formerly great sites that had press releases interspersed with links to actual thought provoking stuff now seem to be eschewing the links with the thought provoking stuff. It saddens me; how long does it take to provide a link to a decent story, maybe a MINUTE? Sites that once did actual reporting and investigative work have gone the way of regurginews. This is upsetting, isn’t getting the story CENTRAL to being a great news source?
Other sites have lost their focus. Imagine a site focusing on getting the most out of an older Mac that rarely runs any stories about getting anything out of an older Mac. Instead said fictional site has become a site that seems devoted to whining about OS X (strange since most LOW-END Macs use Mac OS 8 or 9) and occasionally passing the hat. These were all once great sites. I wonder what happened to them?
Still, I remain hopeful. I know there are great Mac sites out there, personal faves include: MacSurfer and As the Apple Turns. MacSurfer, of course, posts just about anything and you can rest assured that AtAT isn’t respawned press releases cause there’s only about three people in a billion as funny as that guy. Am I missing great Mac sites? Do people enjoy press release madness? Do I find all this depressing just because my Zoloft prescription expired? Drop me an email and let me know.
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