Fake bylines

[KYSportsWriter]

I suppose I'd better make it clear: Johnny Dangerously is not my real name.

Well, shirt.

 

[J-School Blue]

This case is less about fake names to me than about a company resorting to odd and shady means to disguise where their content is being produced. It makes me wonder what else they're doing, and why supposedly reputable outfits like the Tribune want to be in business with them.

 

[BillyT]

This case is less about fake names to me than about a company resorting to odd and shady means to disguise where their content is being produced. It makes me wonder what else they're doing, and why supposedly reputable outfits like the Tribune want to be in business with them.

To save money?

 

[BillyT]

OK, this is going to be a case of "What Billy Meant To Say."

1. In this case, on minor, outsourced stories, I do not think bylines matter.

2. Personally, I think reporters worry too much about bylines. Of course, I am in a small shop, so I write almost everything anyway, and I do not have to worry about byline counts. I only use a byline if I have done a fair amount of research and interviewing.

3. Staff writers, absolutely. While it didn't come out that way, I completely agree that stable, consistent bylines are critical. There are writers I will always read, regardless of the topic.

It's important from season to season too, though it can be, "You're the guy who screwed us last year." It can also be very possitive.

 

[Riptide]

OK, this is going to be a case of "What Billy Meant To Say."

1. In this case, on minor, outsourced stories, I do not think bylines matter.

2. Personally, I think reporters worry too much about bylines. Of course, I am in a small shop, so I write almost everything anyway, and I do not have to worry about byline counts. I only use a byline if I have done a fair amount of research and interviewing.

3. Staff writers, absolutely. While it didn't come out that way, I completely agree that stable, consistent bylines are critical. There are writers I will always read, regardless of the topic.

It's important from season to season too, though it can be, "You're the guy who screwed us last year." It can also be very possitive.

4. Accountability. See: Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, etc.

 

[Joe Williams]

Thought it was rich that, in the version of the story I read w. some papers 'fessing up about this fraud, the blowhard editors quoted -- and the story -- never made it clear why they would have fake bylines in the first place.

Of course it's because a rash of Filipino names would be an obvious giveaway of what they were doing. Even the most PC-minded newspaper couldn't claim that its "diversity hiring" was going that well.

But for chrissakes, at least put a graf in the story saying this. It's as if the editors quoted and the folks who put together the story were scared to death of the R-card implications of these actions and chose to just ignore it.

To a casual reader, it reads as if they simply preferred the name "Jimmy Olson" on Joe Blow's story. The truth is a little more ethnic than that, and newspaper people pish themselves when they have to face something like that head-on and can't be the ones wagging a PC finger at somebody else.

 

[J-School Blue]

In the coverage I've read, the Journatic spokespeople didn't comment on that aspect because they didn't seem to want to comment on the story at all, and only did so in the most careful company-speak possible. On their end it seemed less about being PC than a typical corporate response when caught doing something they didn't terribly want to admit to doing.

 

[Joe Williams]

But JSB, the reason they're offering quotes at all is because they're allegedly admitting the practice and getting religion on the matter. Either they or the folks doing the story on this need to make clear why it was done and why Anglo names were so vital as bylines rather than Filipino names. Especially for an industry that craves as much ethnicity in its bylines as it can get and flaunt. Address the issue head-on, "truth-tellers."