Old Vs. New Media Mindsets

May 17, 2010 Author Adam Singer In Digital Marketing and PR

Last week an interesting situation erupted between TechCrunch and Fortune Magazine.  And, it perfectly highlights the old vs. new media mindsets.  I suggest you click the previous link and read Mike Arrington’s version of the story, (including emails from Fortune) but in case you’re busy here’s a summarized version of what happened:

  1. Fortune columnist David Kirkpatrick is releasing his new book – The Facebook Effect.
  2. Fortune’s PR department called Mike Arrington at TechCrunch and offered excerpts to reprint on TechCrunch to promote the book.
  3. TechCrunch being a fan of Kirkpatrick said yes.
  4. TechCrunch gave the book a glowing endorsement and linked back to not just a Fortune piece on the book but also links to purchase, providing a direct endorsement to their 4 million + subscribers.
  5. 22 minutes after the story was published, author Kirkpatrick emailed Arrington thanking him for the great exposure, 48 minutes after Fortune did the same.
  6. 54 minutes after publishing the story, Fortune then emailed Arrington again telling him that in fact they had only wanted him to post excerpts of the excerpts, not the whole excerpts (however that was never clarified in the original agreement).  They also asked for the article to be pulled off TechCrunch and/or edited noting that what they had done was copyright infringement.
  7. Arrington was sleeping at this point – but Fortune proceeded to call him 5 times and leave additional emails freaking out, asking the story be pulled/modified.
  8. Arrington eventually called them back, and got into a heated debate with Fortune’s managing editor, Dan Roth, who felt that it should have been obvious to TechCrunch they were only to post “excerpts of excerpts” and demanded editing of the story.
  9. Arrington declined to do so.
  10. Roth called Arrington unprofessional and unethical.
  11. The book publisher then sent TechCrunch a note threatening legal action if the excerpts weren’t removed.
  12. As it stands, the excerpts remain up.

Really Fortune?  Because, as I read this situation all it does is make me not want to purchase this book.  Or even read your publication.  How does threatening another publisher  (who promoted your employee and his book) to change their story (due to your own team’s poor clarity in arranging the placement) position you as a good media citizen?  All it does is invoke the Streisand Effect.  Your team had to realize this is what TechCrunch would do in response to the situation.  They live for this stuff.

It’s a perfect example of old vs new media.  Old media wants control of situations, invokes legal when it doesn’t get its way, and has obvious (and highly public) disconnects between marketing and management teams.  New media is unafraid to leverage such events (internal or public) to gain additional exposure for themselves and their content.  Instead of freaking out about things such as legal threats, they turn them into opportunities to create buzz and establish an “us vs them” mindset.

But it’s just sad.  It’s sad in 2010 a publication like Fortune is this backwards and throws away a great piece of PR (and valuable strategic relationship) over a few paragraphs of text they didn’t want used.  It’s sad book publisher Simon & Schuster positions themselves as Draconion by having lawyers tell a blogger to stop promoting them.  What does it make you think of these brands?