Does the end justify the means?

Published on December 22, 2007 in Games and Geek. View Comments

Old question, but I’ve been asking myself that as I watch a particularly whiny blog entry shoot to over 500 Diggs. Short version: We called Sony for a loaner review unit of a Bravia HDTV and they said no purely out of PS3 solidarity. I thought that was short-sighted and ridiculous — especially as a happy Bravia owner myself! — so in a fit of pique I posted a petty article about Sony being petty and, for good measure, attached a sensational headline (“Sony Doesn’t Want Your Money”). The result was a good chunk of traffic and, as always with the internet, a ton of snap judgments (not that mine weren’t!) and assumptions. People seem to think we were trying to scam a free HDTV, but the truth is that we sign a loan agreement for hardware that we review and return it by a specific date. The more comments I read, the less understanding I see. The internet is nothing if not full of noise and the gap between reader and audience is not getting smaller, as I’d hoped it would.

The morning after, though, I regret posting the story the way I did. I wish I’d gone with a more accurate headline (“Sony to OXM: No TVs for You” didn’t occur to me at the time but would have been more accurate) and I wish I’d left off some of the nastier assumptions toward the end; commentary on the severity and depth of the console wars would have been better. I didn’t want to edit it today because, well, good or bad, what I wrote is what I wrote, and I have to stick with it. I’m chalking it up to a learning experience, but it’s been on my mind a lot today.

But here’s what bothers me: I sunk to a lower level here, going for the sensationalism angle, something I’ve always wanted to do to see what would happen. Now I can’t help but wonder whether we would have gotten the traffic/attention without the cheap shots. Would just opinion have been enough? I’m honestly not convinced. I look at the stories that get heat on other sites and the bulk of them — especially gaming related — are tilted or snarky or sensational. And the audience often says things like “that’s not professional,” yet they reward that unprofessional behavior with traffic and Diggs. Walking the line between what the audience clearly responds to and what I feel comfortable publishing is going to be a daily challenge.

I have much to learn as I get more involved in the web. This is just one early lesson.

  • Vidgames
    Yeah, I think you're putting too much of this on yourself. This is like when I started in magazines, and learned that red covers pop off the newsstand better, so you want high-profile issues to have a bright red cover to help it sell. (Though you don't want to back-to-back covers to look similar, lest you risk that a shopper will glance at it and think he already bought it.) You use the red cover to highlight and enhance what should be already strong contents.

    Yes, you went with a pithy headline as a red cover, and maybe went a bit "sarcastic" to spice up the entry. But the gist of it is sensational all by itself, no matter how you wrote it, that a separate division of Sony turned down the opportunity to let you showcase its wares *to an audience that the section is targeted toward* and **to an audience that asked for it**, which would have basically been an "advertisement" of sorts for the price of shipping a set to a legitimate media outlet in what they claim is some sort of solidarity. The real issue isn't that your write-up might have been cheeky (it wasn't overly so; it was on the mark, in my view), but that Sony turned down the chance to exchange $100 in shipping to expose its products to thousands of potential consumers simply because the main product you cover (which, as you noted, is compatible with its own) comes from a competing company.

    I'll say it again: You're taking too much of this on your shoulders. You're just the messenger of what is a pretty dumb marketing decision, despite whether you wrapped it in straight-up reporting or took a few spicy jabs at Sony's decision in the course of it.
  • I thought the headline was not only attention grabbing, but appropriate. It makes the point clear, but at the same time it begs for assumption. I still thought that the text, should anyone have read it, justified it entirely.

    I wonder if Sony will reconsider in the future if this bangs out enough attention.
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