Alexis Madrigal:

Worse, readers may click through your slideshow, but they’ll hate you a liiitttle bit more than they did when they got to the site. And I bet they’ll feel the same way about whatever advertiser was unlucky enough to get stuck on the page with some stupid thing that a reporter did with a little bit of hate in his heart and fingertips. 

It’s a nice thought that readers will hate the sites that post slideshows and the advertisers that advertise on said slideshows, but come on, there’s a very simple reason so many sites use them. They do drive pageviews and fill ad inventory.

This isn’t rocket science or magic. Shit content works in a pageview-driven environment (which like it or not, we’re in). In fact, it often works better than great content.

Put another way: TL;DR.

When I started out as a tech blogger, I was pretty green but didn’t realize it. I thought that because I had been following tech news closely for a couple years, I was all set. I thought I knew what I was talking about. Five years later, I look back and many of my old posts and cringe. How could I not know this? And this? And that?

My single greatest asset as a tech blogger now is context. If something happens with Apple tomorrow, I’ll be able to weigh in in a compelling way because I know much of the history of the company. The same is true with a handful of other companies.

But big tech blogs want it all. They want writers to cover news that they’re in no way qualified to cover. That’s why there’s so much re-writing. It’s not so much laziness, it’s just the only way some people can quickly do homework on a story — “well this guy said this, so it must be true.” Unfortunately, it’s often this type of re-blogging all the way down. 

And no one stops it because the way the system currently works, speed and pageviews matter much more than accuracy.

Dash is dead-on here. It’s another way of framing the point I was trying to make here.

Nicholas Carlson didn’t like my latest post about Instagram. That’s cool. Different tastes, etc. But here’s what’s problematic with his post:

The problem is NOT that Siegler decided to hold a story after talking to a source. There are tons of good reasons to do that.

The issue is that Siegler had a bad reason to do that.

“When in doubt, defer to the entrepreneur.”

To be clear: At Business Insider, we do not view it as our responsibility to “defer to the entrepreneur.”

Simply put: that’s exactly why Business Insider will never be TechCrunch.

Maybe they don’t want to be — which is fine — but given the amount they write about TechCrunch and how often they try to poach TechCrunch writers, it sure seems like they want to be TechCrunch.

But there’s clearly a fundamental difference in thinking here. Carlson seems upset that we didn’t act more like “traditional” journalists. Setting aside how rich that is coming from someone whose previous career highlight was Valleywag, it’s a confusing stance. 

It never seems to occur to these people trying to emulate the success of TechCrunch that TechCrunch was successful because we didn’t do things the way they’re normally done. This disregard for the status quo didn’t hold us back. It set us free. 

Not sure why this is such a difficult concept to grasp. People stick to rules that aren’t actually real. Rules that no one gives a shit about. Do what you think is right to do. People will either read or they won’t.

Lots of questions about the PandoDaily situation. To be completely honest, I’m a bit surprised by how this went down. I think Michael’s response is appropriate. 

The problem seemed to be us participating in TechCrunch Disrupt (and I assume more Michael than myself since I’m still a TechCrunch contributor). But we both speak at a lot of conferences. And I view it as valuable that we speak at a lot of conferences — for both us as a brand and our portfolio companies.

I still think PandoDaily has an opportunity to evolve the tech blogging space. Unfortunately, it won’t be with myself or Michael involved in an editorial capacity. Oh well. Plenty of other places to write on the Internet. Like right here, for example.

Stunning work of technology journalism. This is two months old. And previously reported.

All good tips by Chris Dixon.