blog.deanland.com

Well burble my Register, old chap!



I've been disssed.  Quoted and dissed, and out of context no
less.  And not even quoted with attribution -- sort of a drive-by
insult.  Or perhaps better stated, dissed by proxy.  An off-handed slur.



A stateside correspondent for The Register, Andrew Orlowski, based in San Francisco, penned an article (hmm, can you pen an article if it appears on the web?) headlined,

For ambulance-chasing bloggers, tragedy equals opportunity

That's the lede, as they say in certain journalism quarters.  The
gist of the item is this: bloggers used the London bombing to further
their own self-worth and to rally around their own self-referential and
reverential selves.  One could also draw the inference that
bloggers who wrote about the London attack were less interested or
concerned about the actual events, than, say, their own blogs,
readership thereof, and content thereabouts.



One might even think that a grain of truth is to be gleaned from this item. 
Sure, there are some bloggers who post topical stories as though they
are the very focus and core of the topic, the story, the subject, and
so forth.  No doubt, for sure, there are egobloggers who manage to
place themselves in the the center of every topic and discussion.



The Orlowski article opens with an alert rearding some virus malware
( a Trojan) capitalizing on the London Bombing.  Cheers and kudos
to Orlowski and The Register for exposing it and doing so with
such immediacy.



Then, however, Orlowski is off on a witch hunt sort of tangent, damning
bloggers (this is an oft-repeated theme of Orlowski's, and he can be
very entertaining with this stuff) for seizing this tragic event as an
opportunity to promote themselves and their blogs.  At that point
he quotes the DeanLand blog entry
posted in response to the events of the day, which also included links
to some other blogposts that I perceived as touching, well-written, or
informative.  Here's a screenshot of the paragraph that quotes me
out of context and without attribution:

So look at that one more time, then maybe read my prior post, and then tell me this: Where, exactly, in that post, do I refer to --or even make mention of-- the real significance of the attacks as per the way he frames that quote?



Some advice to Orlowski: 

• Next time use a more appropriate and in-context quote to frame your story, your argument, your thesis.
• Don't wuss out and quote unnamed sources, (i.e., "one blogger"), especially in so searchable and, indeed, self-referential and incestuous an environment.
• Re-read my piece and see if you still think that my quote fits
  what your quote asserts, given the content and context of my entry.
  
• Watch out who you call a burbler -- some of my neighbors in nearby Jersey might take offense to such an allegation.

Thanks to Shelley Powers for her blog post on all of the above, and also kudos to Seth Finklestein, whose excellent blog post on the topic is not only quoted by Orlowski, but seems to have been the catalyst or motivation for Orlowski's piece.  Seth quotes Shelley in his piece.  Attribution runs rampant, except in Orlowski's piece.

I wondered what exactly was meant by "burble," a word not known to me,
not even one I'd used or had used against me by a Scrabble
opponent.  So I looked it up.  You can see the dictionary.com
definitions by reading them in a comment I posted on Shelley's blog.



Your comments,of course, are welcomed and encouraged! 



But please, no burbling!!