Tuesday, February 15, 2005
One for the "What were they thinking" file: I just have to scratch my head at the actions of the Tulsa World and its letter demanding blogger and critic Michael Bates stop linking World content on his Web site.
Bates uses his blog to criticize the Tulsa City Council and Tulsa World newspaper, routinely linking its content as part of his posts. The newspaper sent him a letter recently telling him it was a copyright violation and to stop immediately.
This of course enraged the bloggers around the Internet, and my friend Kevin and his boys at Rathergate.com have released the dogs on the paper.
My (and many others') question to the paper is: Why would you lend legitimacy to Bates by doing this? Whether his rants are right or wrong, (I'll let you all decide that. I don't know enough about Tulsa or the newspaper to judge.) the paper automatically brought a whole new bunch of headaches and created a whole army of enemies.
In this day and age, the best way to deal with someone like Bates (especially if you don't like what he does) is to ignore him. By sending the letter, the newspaper has admitted a blog that gets about 1,000 hits a day (the equivalent of a weekly 2-page neighborhood newsletter for the more than 100,000-circulation daily) is equal to the threat of someone starting another daily newspaper in Tulsa.
But the damage is done now. The issue was mentioned on CNN today. And I suspect Bates' blog will get a few more than 1,000 hits now.
Bates uses his blog to criticize the Tulsa City Council and Tulsa World newspaper, routinely linking its content as part of his posts. The newspaper sent him a letter recently telling him it was a copyright violation and to stop immediately.
This of course enraged the bloggers around the Internet, and my friend Kevin and his boys at Rathergate.com have released the dogs on the paper.
My (and many others') question to the paper is: Why would you lend legitimacy to Bates by doing this? Whether his rants are right or wrong, (I'll let you all decide that. I don't know enough about Tulsa or the newspaper to judge.) the paper automatically brought a whole new bunch of headaches and created a whole army of enemies.
In this day and age, the best way to deal with someone like Bates (especially if you don't like what he does) is to ignore him. By sending the letter, the newspaper has admitted a blog that gets about 1,000 hits a day (the equivalent of a weekly 2-page neighborhood newsletter for the more than 100,000-circulation daily) is equal to the threat of someone starting another daily newspaper in Tulsa.
But the damage is done now. The issue was mentioned on CNN today. And I suspect Bates' blog will get a few more than 1,000 hits now.
