Oct
3
2006
Today Drupal gets a Wired mention...but no hyperlink.
The makeshift gathering of technophiles gave hard-core hackers the chance to get crash courses in Ruby on Rails or Drupal.
I wonder if there's some sort of threshold where Wired will give a product or organization the courtesy of a hyperlink -- some threshold that Drupal apparently has not reached, in Wired's eyes, despite growing usage and recent high-profile attention.
The title of the article -- "At BarCamp, Form Trumps Substance" -- is also kind of dismissive of the whole BarCamp thing, which seems rather odd. What do they mean, "form trumps substance"? Are they suggesting that BarCamps have no substance because they don't revolve around IPOs and VC-backed ventures? Or is it simply that BarCamps are so disruptive that the absence of corporate restrictions and exclusive attendance constitutes "form" over, say, the "substance" of multi-million-dollar product campaigns and the punditry of multi-million-dollar executives?
To be fair, David Cohn's article, in its rather brief reportage on the recent BarCamp New York event, is more balanced than the headline might suggest, despite the lack of Drupal hyperlink. (Pssst! It's http://drupal.org.) Cohn makes me wish I could have attended.
Still, maybe it's time the Wired editors started paying some respect to the long tail that they so love to write about. Talking the talk but not walking the walk: expired.
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Comments
maphead writes:
There sure is a threshold for wired mag to do a link or even a profile.
One of our clients was approached several times by wired to meet with their stringer in Amsterdam. When client finally agreed to interview all was well and the moment arrived, interview got underway and so did the wired sales pitch. When client did not bite for 'opportunity' to advertise - the interview ended and an article on the cutting edge tech being developed never appeared.
Since open source like drupal has no single marketing dept and no marketing budget wired is not likely to link.
No clink-clink >> no wired link.
Laura writes:
It's totally unethical for what is ostensibly a journalistic magazine. I'm sorry to hear it. I hope it was an exception and not a rule.
Fortunately the future of Drupal does not depend upon the Wired hype, clink links or not.
Thanks for the comment.
Chris Anderson writes:
Maphead,
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. Needless to say, that's not the way we work and as far as I know we've never worked that way. If someone is representing themself as a Wired employee and attempting to trade coverage for advertising, they either aren't a Wired employee or won't be one for long.
Please contact me at the email address I've given here with the details of this unfortunate incident and we'll investigate. This is a serious charge and it's totally antethetical to our standards--I can promise you I'll get to the bottom of it.
Best,
Chris Anderson
Editor in Chief, Wired.