写作方法2013techcrunch.com
婚礼曾经神圣：互联网新闻写作的其他教训
Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism
导读
TechCrunch 作者讲述自己一场在红杉林里举办的奢华婚礼被网络媒体轮番报道、事实却被大量误传的经历，并由此反思互联网新闻的运作方式：抢速度而不做核实、改写代替采访、情绪盖过事实。对写作者而言，这是一份反面教材——它展示了当“转发”取代“报道”时，一篇稿子会怎样失真，也提醒写作者自己的内容在社交平台上有多容易被当成“公共素材”。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
发稿前先联系当事人：数百篇文章里只有一名记者打电话求证，说明转发和改写正在冒充报道，而原创采访是最低成本的差异化。
- 02
别用含糊措辞遮掩责任：作者被批评“把客观事实盖在 weasel words 之下”，读者一眼就能看出推诿，正面交代事实反而更有说服力。
- 03
警惕把社交媒体的情绪当民意：互联网把暴民数字化并给每个人发了扩音器，写作时迎合情绪，等于把评论区的蠢话放大成观点。
- 04
弄清楚“分享”与“授权”的边界：在社交平台发布自己的照片和文字，不等于放弃版权，写作者要主动守住自己的内容权利。
HN 评论精选
用含糊措辞推卸责任、回避事实，读者一眼看穿；写作应正面交代责任归属。
很多人在评判当事人的人品、事件本身和媒体行为，但少有客观事实被揭示。更令人担忧的是，客观事实似乎正被含糊其辞的措辞掩盖。首先，帕克先生把责任推给业主和其他人，我一点也不佩服。我确实在早期报道的评论里看到一些煽动性言论，人们以为那是公共土地；但即便是私有土地，由于位于海岸带，其用途仍受法规限制。私有土地不意味着业主和租户可以为所欲为——谢天谢地，加州承认海岸地区的脆弱性和生态价值并加以监管。我不在乎他是否知道这一点，他、他雇的人以及与他合作的业主，都该为不了解、不遵守法规负责。他还想回避营地和业主责任的问题，转而博取同情，说自己被业主胁迫付款否则活动取消。我只想说，他请得起律师；想要盛大的排场，就得处理所有问题，做不到不值得我同情。我还要质疑“这是对自然环境的致敬”的说法，因为他自己承认布景和服装全是假的——那简直就是对自然环境的“好莱坞化”。
205guy查看英文原文
A lot of people are judging the personalities involved, the event itself, and the media behavior, but few objective facts are revealed. More worrisome is that objective facts are seemingly being covered over with weasel words. First off, I am not at all impressed how Mr. Parker shifts the blame onto the property owners and others. I did see some of the inflammatory comments on early stories where people assumed it was public land. But even as private land, its use is still restricted by regulations because it is in the coastal zone. Just because it is private land doesn't mean owners and their renters can do anything they wan with it--thank goodness. California recognizes the fragility and ecological value of the coastal areas and regulates them. I don't care whether he knew about that or not, he, his hired staff, and the owners he worked with are all to blame for not knowing and following regulations. He also tries to dodge blame for the campground issues and the owners' responsibility, then get sympathy for being strong-armed by the owners into paying up or getting cancelled. All I can say is that he could afford the lawyers, and if you want grandiose, you have to deal with ALL of the issues. His failure to do that does not garner my sympathy. I would also take issue with "It was an homage to the natural environment," when he admitted the whole scenery and costumes were fake. In other words, it was quite literally the Hollywoodization of the natural environment, not an homage. What he fails to understand, ultimately, is that a an all-night costume party for 350+ people is not compatible with the natural environment--no matter how much he wants the reader to believe so or how much he has paid to make it so. A lot of HN commenter also seem bowled over by all these words, and just because someone says they didn't harm the redwoods, they believe him. I'm holding out for a scientific assessment of the situation. I do know redwoods (and sequoia) have shallow roots and can be harmed by trampling. So, were the root areas (usually within a 20-30 ft radius) of the trees properly protected during the decoration and the event? One of the first stories I saw about this had pictures of the fake walls right up to a tree. So, in the opinion of an arborist specialized in these trees, is that damaging or not? Same for the trout and other riparian species. Are they present or is this potential habitat? Did the setup or the event or the dissasembly impact the streams or drainages? One original article said they diverted streams; was that accurate or not? Mr. Parkers explanations about different kinds of trout and what's endangered or protected are not very clear--in fact they seem intentionally confusing. He does say that biologists inspected the streams and found no sedimentation. OK, what about immediately before the event (since decorations weren't finished until the last minute) and after the event, and again during the tear-down. I'm totally willing to believe the environmental damage was minimal. The campground had been recently repaved and bulldozed in places. The set-up crew was at least aware of environmental concerns, regulatory agencies were keeping watch, etc. And yes the media reaction was totally overblown, but doesn't that go with the territory of being rich and somewhat famous, especially when pulling off high-profile events? But I'd still like to see the official report about the damage before believing this one-sided argument.
媒体去中心化未兑现承诺，社交媒体更像“数字化的暴民加人手一个扩音器”。
这很有意思也很有启发；不过这个案例的教训似乎是“当心你结交的人”，因为他最终替活动所在旅馆糟糕的生态管理和贪婪背了锅。这段话让我印象深刻：“从经济上说，我从我们熟知的媒体的毁灭中获利丰厚。世界其他地方就没这么幸运了，社会显然吃了亏。媒体的去中心化起步时前景可观，但和许多半生不熟的革命一样，它从未兑现最初的承诺。以目前的形式，社交媒体造成的伤害可能大于好处。”我觉得这话相当正确。社交媒体出现之前早就有愚蠢的小报媒体，但它在互联网上越来越成为常态。我多少能体会他的感受：我多年来鼓吹报纸文章开放公众评论，现在我用 Stylebot 把它们屏蔽掉，因为新闻评论里99%的内容蠢得可怕。互联网和社交媒体并没有提升社会，而基本上是把暴民数字化，并给了每个人一个扩音器。
anigbrowl查看英文原文
That's quite interesting and enlightening; although the lesson this case seems to be 'beware of the company you keep' since he ended up getting the blame for the poor ecological stewardship and greed of the inn on whose land the event took place. I'm struck by this quote: Economically speaking, I profited handsomely from the destruction of the media as we knew it. The rest of the world did not make out so well, and society certainly got the worse end of the bargain. The decentralization of media got off to a promising start, but like so many other half-baked revolutions, it never fulfilled its early promise. In its present form, social media may be doing more harm than good. I think this is rather true. Although there was stupid tabloid media long before social media came along, it's increasingly become the norm on the internet. I know a little of how he feels as I spent years trumpeting the idea f public comments on newspaper articles and so on....and now I use Stylebot to hide them from me, because 99% of what's written in news article comments is hideously stupid. Rather than elevating society, the internet and social media has basically digitized the mob and given everyone a megaphone.
“分享”不等于“授权公开使用”，创作者的版权是抵御媒体滥用的重要屏障。
一定要读到结尾，那是全文最好的部分：“我们越依赖社交网络和其他在线服务与亲友分享内容，内容就越可能无意中变成公开的。围绕用户生成内容——我们的照片、视频等——的知识产权法的可执行性，是我们最好的保护之一。媒体在很多情况下把通过这些网络分享的所有内容都宽泛地解释为‘公开’，而实际上其中许多是私密的，这些私密材料的版权属于创作者。在 Facebook 上分享照片不应等同于授予公开使用这些照片的许可，就像发邮件不应等同一样。在线服务迫使用户签订的无所不在的许可协议和隐私政策，应由法院按‘格式合同’原则加以审查；如果法院不愿重新审视现状，国会就应立法限制这些协议的范围和可执行性。我们还需要愿意承认，只有国会才能防止政府滥用权力，胁迫在线服务商大规模交出数据。”
timtadh查看英文原文
Make sure you read the end, it is the best part of the essay: ''' The more we depend on social networks and other online services to share content with friends and family, the more we risk that our content inadvertently becomes public. The enforceability of intellectual property laws around user-generated content — our photos, videos, and other content — is one of the best protections we have. The media has, in many cases, chosen to broadly construe all content shared via these networks as “public” when in fact much of it is private, and the copyright on that private material belongs to the creator. Sharing photos on Facebook should no more constitute a public license to use those photos than sending them over email. The ubiquitous license agreements and privacy policies that online services force their users to enter into should be scrutinized by the courts around the principle of adhesion, and if the courts are unwilling to reconsider the status quo then congress should intervene with legislation limiting the scope and enforceability of these agreements. We also need to be willing to consider that only Congress can prevent the abuse of governmental power that is used to coerce online services into to turning over data in a wholesale manner. I am certain that social networks, technology companies, and telecommunications companies would prefer not to kowtow to governments around the world, but operating a service on the scale of Facebook or Google puts these companies in the crosshairs of governmental agencies of all kinds. Once a company has reached this scale, only governments pose a meaningful existential threat. It is therefore incumbent upon the legislature to craft appropriate boundaries that strike a balance between the valid needs of governmental authorities and the equally valid privacy demands of Internet users. In the end, the lesson learned from my wedding was something much less obvious than the “parable of excess” that was claimed. Rather, the democratization of the media that I idealized in my youth when it was just a distant, blurry dream, suddenly seems much less worthy of idolatry now that it’s become a stark reality. The lesson for me, felt acutely over the past two weeks, ended up being a familiar moral to a familiar story: “Be careful what you wish for — you might just get it.” '''
数百篇报道无一采访核实——没有原创报道和事实核查的“新闻”只是互相抄袭。
又一个例子，说明不要轻信电视上看到的任何东西，除非有时间戳和佐证。要点总结：婚礼场地之所以选在那里，是因为它此前已被开发，所以没有环境影响；场地不是公共财产，而是私有的营利性营地，大部分是沥青铺地或已清除植被，开发只发生在已清理的泥地和沥青区域。自然环境并未受损，尽管有相反的广泛说法；红杉、其他植物和动物都没有受到伤害，场地内及附近没有濒危物种。我们很注意保护环境，在“拯救红杉联盟”的帮助下选址，并征求了如何避免破坏红杉栖息地的建议。婚礼后几天里出现了数百篇文章，却只有一名记者联系我们征求意见。这些文章里的大部分信息都是错的。没有原创报道，没有采访，没有事实核查。我们自愿承担与文塔纳缺乏开发许可和过往违规有关的100万美元罚款，还自愿为蒙特雷半岛沿海地区捐出150万美元慈善捐款。
mixmastamyk查看英文原文
Another example of why you should not trust anything you read or see on TV w/o time and/or corroborating evidence. TL;DR: Summary Points - The wedding site was chosen because it had been previously developed, so there was no environmental impact. The site was not public property, it was a private, for-profit, campground, which was mostly paved in asphalt and or cleared of all foliage. Development only occurred in cleared dirt and asphalt areas. - The natural environment was not harmed, despite widespread claims to the contrary. There was no harm done to redwood trees, other plants, or animals. There were no endangered species on or near the property. - We were conscientious about protecting the environment, locating the site with the help of Save the Redwoods League and soliciting advice about how to avoid harming the redwood habitat. - Hundreds of articles were written in the days following the wedding, yet only one reporter contacted us for comment. Most of the information contained in these articles was erroneous. No original reporting was done, no interviews were conducted, and no fact checking occurred. - We voluntarily agreed to cover $1 million in penalties related to the Ventana’s lack of development permits and past violations. We also volunteered to contribute $1.5 million in charitable contributions serving the coastal region of the Monterey Peninsula.
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