In the last post I mentioned all the exciting hubub about Typewriter taking off, and how I was (incorrectly) quoted and mentioned in The Observer (part of The Guardian).
Well originally I thought the article was for one of their little online only blogs, some sort of ‘hot thing of the day’ to fill up web space.
No. It was actually in print, in the hard copy of the weekly Observer distributed internationally.
While that’s very exciting and surprising, it kind of makes me sad. I’m a big fan of newspapers, and of course their future is a big mystery, one that isn’t looking too bright. Will they survive or will the speed and free access of blogs be their end? Blogs are criticized for being too subjective and lack the time and budget to do hard, investigative journalism.
Well, this time, the newspaper is the one that got it wrong. All the blogs that wrote about Typewriter and the history behind it got the quote attribution correct while the international newspaper, the one that’s supposed to have all the facts straight and checked, was wrong.
I know the piece was tiny and shoved on the back page, but in a time when newspapers future’s are on the line, they can’t afford to get it wrong. They need to be more detailed, more thourough, and more in-depth than ever before to differentiate themselves from the instant but shallow news source of blogs.
