A Quick Thought About The Web - June 12, 2009
I was talking with a incredibly smart lawyer yesterday, trying to draft a statement about what I'll lightly call a potential shitstorm. I wrote something and he sent back what I've found to be the standard legal response to these issues - the it's our policy not to comment on these matters but we dispute their validity. It was the only way to play it, he said, because a different response would encourage tabloid press. The more we give the more it will turn it into a feeding frenzy.
A tabloid cycle is propelled by news organizations scrambling for facts. The New York Post has this, the Times has that and they go back and forth battling for exclusives. To keep going they need someone's cooperation, be it with quotes or facts or accusations. They are stuck in this box, in other words, and the best response makes that box as small as possible. You kill the story by depriving it of air.
That ends with the internet because the web works on a different set of economic assumptions. The main one being that information scarcity is not longer a limiting factor. What a Gawker reporter writes is in no way boxed in by what he doesn't know. In fact, its in precisely in those grey areas that he is free to write and speculate as he pleases and where the best material comes from.
Obama understood this the way I am starting to understand this. We're coming upon a world where the feeding frenzy is no longer over bits of information but over the lack of it. The worst thing that can happen in this model is that you leave things open to speculation.
What I think this means is that you won't be able to kill a story the old way anymore. "No comment" gives the story life instead of taking it away. The new way will be to flood the market with facts and information, to root out grey areas and get the target off your back by taking the fun out of it.
Posted by ryanholiday at 12:39 PM
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But is it just because of the web? A lot of policies like this that are supposed to protect you from what you don't want others to know are becoming counterproductive because people have learned that the coverup is a sign of what's being hidden. Anything that's designed to hide something can only have a limited time before people start to figure out what's happening.
Posted by: Richard at June 12, 2009 11:50 AM
This is exactly what Tucker was trying to do in this thread, right? Tackle any rumours or speculation etc by saying exactly what happened and how. Radical transparency and all that.
Posted by: Andrew Lynch at June 12, 2009 02:19 PM
Hiding in the open isn't a new stategy it's one of those chinese stratagems.
Obama wasn't the only politician in the race who mastered it.
McCain was also pretty good at it and it's the reason that he had the image of being a straight talker.
Matt Welch about McCain:
He learned early on, answer every question (from the media) till they run out of it. And low and behold you are going to get some good press.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XsrU6Prgjo
Posted by: ChristianK at June 12, 2009 03:24 PM
This is a little bit different than just being open. You have to understand that underlying incentives that "reporters" (in this case, blogs now break most news) face have changed.
Blogs don't need your side of the story to write about a topic. Newspapers, for the most part, do.
Make sense?
Posted by: Ryan Holiday at June 12, 2009 04:12 PM
Blogs now break most news? Could you please cite your sources for this statement ?
Posted by: m at June 13, 2009 02:51 AM
My speculation is because now it's not just journalists and reporters covering stories, with the internet more "normal" people can cover stories.
Posted by: Tony at June 13, 2009 05:38 AM
@m
How about waking up every morning? It's not a statement, it's just the way things happen to be.
Posted by: Ryan Holiday at June 13, 2009 09:20 AM
Doesn't the AP still break lots of news? They aren't considered bloggers.
Posted by: G_Man at June 13, 2009 09:36 AM
Of course. And they also pick up things that have been bouncing around online days or even weeks after the fact.
In my experience, the stories we read in print or from big organizations tend to reflect whatever the general tone or feeling about that issue is online. So if the buzz about a movie is bad the mainstream reporting will be bad. If the sentiment on blogs is that someone is a sleazebag, then that's the angle journalists will take.
We're in a state of flux, but more or less, the web is where the 'decisions' are made which makes it the only model that matters.
Posted by: Ryan Holiday at June 13, 2009 11:56 AM
You'd like Michael Sitrick's work
Posted by: jonathan at June 13, 2009 02:28 PM
So, what was this PR shitstorm about? Divulging this would certainly help your argument.
Posted by: W at June 16, 2009 08:41 AM
If you thought I was arguing then you missed the point. But please, let me know what else I can do you to help you.
Posted by: Ryan Holiday at June 16, 2009 11:06 AM
Isn't one of the reasons why "no comment" became the standard that the facts they were hiding were bad things?
Taking your example, if the incredibly smart lawyer is trying to hide something dishonest or reprehensible, and it's something he wants to continue to be able to do, then being upfront about the facts doesn't benefit him. Thus, "no comment."
And isn't that why "no comment" came in vogue?
If rumors were flying for years about Madoff being a criminal, Madoff couldn't have quelled those rumors with the facts.
Am I way off base?
Posted by: morethandork at July 4, 2009 10:20 AM
