Cowards || November 17, 2006
Just one day after championing Cindy Chaffin's move to the Quick entertainment blog (blahblahblah.beloblog.com), I've been thrown off my rocker by a shocking Quick edit. Yesterday, Cindy reposted my Trees report and gave proper attribution, after which she told a personal Fat Daddy's story that involved her post-emo screamcore son. Fair enough--the new angle on the story and linking to my report seemed more than reasonable to me (and FrontBurner did the same thing).
This afternoon, the report was largely altered. My name and attribution were axed, replaced by quotes from Kenny Brattain's new MySpace page--quotes that didn't go online until a full day after my report was posted. Say what?
For a young site, I like to think I've done a good job keeping pace with other local music coverage outlets, and I've worked hard to provide exclusive content like interviews, reviews and investigations. For Quick to purposely remove its reference to my work ("Sam Machkovech's former employer must be kicking themselves in the shins" was a quote from the original post, for example) and think they could get away with it is irresponsible and downright cowardly--and I can't get Cindy Chaffin to answer damn phone, but I know full well that she didn't do this. We've known each other for years, and I'm fully confident that she'd have absolutely no personal or business reasons to go so far as to deliberately edit me out of a report. Until I receive clarification from the folks at Quick, I will lay the blame squarely on its editor-in-chief, Rob Clark (who I've CC'ed this post to).
Is Quick in the legal free-and-clear? Probably. Their revised report focuses on a publicly available MySpace post which puts the burden of factuality on Brattain's quote, etc. etc. But, again, I forced Brattain's hand by paying attention, reporting, investigating and interviewing. I'm not fond of blahblahblah lifting my effort for the sake of its for-profit blog (considering I don't make much money doing this as of yet).
Belo, Quick, blahblahblah--I would appreciate a correction, an explanation and an apology on your site. It's the decent thing to do. And to the rest of my readers, feel free to spread this story.
Thank you,
Sam Machkovech
[UPDATE: Amazing how quickly word spreads. A semi-correction has now been posted at Quick's blog, as one dutiful Dd reader pointed out in the comments section. Thanks, Rob Clark.]
This afternoon, the report was largely altered. My name and attribution were axed, replaced by quotes from Kenny Brattain's new MySpace page--quotes that didn't go online until a full day after my report was posted. Say what?
For a young site, I like to think I've done a good job keeping pace with other local music coverage outlets, and I've worked hard to provide exclusive content like interviews, reviews and investigations. For Quick to purposely remove its reference to my work ("Sam Machkovech's former employer must be kicking themselves in the shins" was a quote from the original post, for example) and think they could get away with it is irresponsible and downright cowardly--and I can't get Cindy Chaffin to answer damn phone, but I know full well that she didn't do this. We've known each other for years, and I'm fully confident that she'd have absolutely no personal or business reasons to go so far as to deliberately edit me out of a report. Until I receive clarification from the folks at Quick, I will lay the blame squarely on its editor-in-chief, Rob Clark (who I've CC'ed this post to).
Is Quick in the legal free-and-clear? Probably. Their revised report focuses on a publicly available MySpace post which puts the burden of factuality on Brattain's quote, etc. etc. But, again, I forced Brattain's hand by paying attention, reporting, investigating and interviewing. I'm not fond of blahblahblah lifting my effort for the sake of its for-profit blog (considering I don't make much money doing this as of yet).
Belo, Quick, blahblahblah--I would appreciate a correction, an explanation and an apology on your site. It's the decent thing to do. And to the rest of my readers, feel free to spread this story.
Thank you,
Sam Machkovech
[UPDATE: Amazing how quickly word spreads. A semi-correction has now been posted at Quick's blog, as one dutiful Dd reader pointed out in the comments section. Thanks, Rob Clark.]
2 Comments:
Looks like they heard you.
Um...for what it's worth, I credited you. :)
Glad they tried to make things right.
Post a Comment
<< Home