Or How to Stop Waving Maggie’s Old Red Flannel Drawers

Techcrunch is the second most popular blog in the world, according to Technorati, and it is in the top 1000 most popular websites according to Alexa. These statistics are enough testimony about the blog’s popularity, but not a measure of quality.

Generally speaking, the content at Techcrunch deserves all the glory it has received. There are fine writers there who treat their subjects with maturity and write stories worthy of our attention. But we all have our flaws, don’t we? Sadly sometimes these flaws may act in the detriment of a publication.

Techcrunch has the luck of the stars: popularity makes the fans forgive all wrongs. Or would it be safer to say that Techcrunch’s fans don’t have the maturity to see these wrongs?

It’s rarely said but the quality of a blog is also measured in the quality of its readers. Unfortunately we have no other measure for the quality of the readers than the comments they leave behind. At Techcrunch the balance between witty and obtuse leans towards obtuse. It’s hard to admit this – by now it is clear for you all that I am a Techcrunch reader. I do have, however, an excuse: I don’t leave comments.

I normally don’t go around criticizing sites I enjoy, unless their wrong is obvious enough to remind me of mediocrity. The writers at Techcrunch should be aware that the readers expect more from them than just putting together words without substance. It’s hard to be a Web writer, folks! If you don’t have something of value to say, if you are having a bad day or the common writer’s block, better take a decent walk in the forest and let a colleague cover the news. Techcrunch is not a personal site – it’s a business. Treat it as such and do not work in its detriment.

I recently read at Techcrunch the lousiest excuse of news coverage in months. Poor writing like this can only be encountered at Profy, once a tier 1 blog, today a simple traffic bait to lure users into testing a new blogging content management system.

I will always wonder why do people write about stuff they don’t understand? I’ve been a journalist for more than 15 years, but even in my first week of internship I didn’t go against one of the basic media rules so many journalists seem to ignore today: “Never relate the news without researching the subject and proofing the source.”

Mark Hendrickson, the author of “Diigo Revamps Social Bookmarking Service with v3.0” probably skipped creative writing class. Personally I doubt the author has ever step foot into a journalism school, but I’ve seen worse than his news coverage in my career, and heck, we see the phenomena each time we turn on our TVs.

Still this is not about turning on our TVs, it’s about killing a startup’s chances of fair media coverage out of laziness, inexperience and ignorance. The author himself testifies that he has not tested Diigo’s new applications:

I’m personally not a daily user of Diigo, even though going back and reading Marshall’s review makes me think I should be. I’ll just have to try v3.0 in full later today.

The logical question that comes to any intelligent life form when reading this is: “then why are you writing about it?”

As Hendrickson mentions Kirkpatrick, I followed the lead and read the Diigo coverage at ReadWriteWeb. Again an unenthusiastic story coverage, but at least Marshall knows what he is talking about. That’s the difference between men and boys, my friends.

Mark Hendrickson will probably try to defend his goofs by saying that he simply related the news. But when you just relate the news, your personal opinions should not interfere with the flow of the story. I can already see the scenario: he gets a press release late at night from Diigo - the press release is too long to even bother reading and it also has Diigo’s PR killer statement:

In the battle field of social bookmarking 2.0, we believe only delicious and Diigo are still strong players, with Diigo clearly the leader in terms of features and innovations…People who have seen both Diigo 3.0 and delicious 2.0 also think that we are far ahead of delicious 2.0.

Startled by this quote the author goes into a big inspirational abyss and he throws together a few lines that in the end cover the news, or at least the rumor of news and justify his paycheck.

Techcrunch is the most respected resource for news in the Web technology field. Who expects to read a pitiful rewording of a press release instead of a genuine review of a worthwhile Web application on this venue?

Diigo shot itself in the foot by comparing itself to an inferior but more popular competitor – and that in a press release. A big PR no-no and this is probably the only negative aspect of the Diigo v3.0 release. If a company with such potential lowers itself by comparing its services with an endangered species what can we expect from an author who was too lazy to do his homework?

In this comedy of errors, what we can say is that Diigo is worthwhile. As for Techcrunch, maybe Michael should start monitoring his authors’ performance before somebody marginalizes a truly great innovation.

Come on, Michael; keep waving the stars and stripes rather than Maggie’s old drawers!

Update: for those of you who don’t know what Maggie’s drawers stand for, here is a definition:

“A red flag raised at a military firing range to indicate that a shooter has missed the target. “

Translated? When reviewing Diigo, Techcrunch really missed the target.