“The Hooters of the Internet”

Bloomberg has a nice profile of Henry Blodget and The Business Insider, a website which has been generous enough to link to me many times. The profile runs over 4,000 words and, to coin a phrase, it’s both fair and balanced.
Due to Blodget’s past history, which I won’t go into here, he’s not terribly well-liked in many quarters. However, those feelings seem to carry over into an overly harsh reaction to his attempt to build a profitable website.

While time seems to have dispersed the mob of torch-wielding villagers seeking to barbecue Blodget over his perceived Wall Street sins, a new rabble of critics has gathered, furious about what his new media venture says about the future of the news business. The big knocks can be summed up by “WTF-Businessinsider.com,” a 31/2-minute videotaped rant posted online in June by a 37-year-old performance artist named Loren Feldman, whose site 1938 Media is known for skewering Internet personalities with online puppet shows. “When does embarrassment set in for any of you guys?” Feldman shouts in the video, apparently enraged by the fact that a senior-level TBI reporter had to consult Wikipedia to identify the legendary management expert Peter Drucker. Feldman sums up the criticisms, familiar to Blodget and all of his competitors: that TBI “scrapes” content, i.e., much of what the site posts is actually just repurposed news from other websites; that TBI uses gimmicks to generate Web traffic, including Web slide shows, which require viewers to click through several times. A typical recent example: “18 Awesome Wall Streeters and the Celebrities They (Apparently) Look Like.”
Blodget sees nothing to apologize for. Is there really value in creating stories like “15 Ways Justin Bieber Is Taking Over the World,” just because people will click on it, I ask him. “There’s no question about that,” says Blodget, who has a habit of listening to every question while flashing a megawatt smile. “Every minute, we’re watching the click rate of every story we have on the site. Part of the job of our editors is recognizing that what we’re trying to do is create content that people want to read….And I’m under personal pressure to build a self-sustaining business. Without that, we disappear.”

Blodget apparently believes he ought to try a different approach from the failing strategy currently employed by most traditional media. Critics say that TBI is far too superficial which doesn’t make much sense to me. I’ve never understood the sacredness which media professional attach to their profession,
News has always been raucous and entertaining. Blodget and TBI have a sense of the fun that major financial outlets sorely lack. (Don’t even get me started on the Economist.) Most of all, I think critics are upset that it’s working.

Posted by on July 9th, 2010 at 9:42 am


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