SF Chronicle Metafilter mention

February 27, 2008 8:41 AM

Metafilter mention in Feb 27 SF Chronicle column.

Chronicle columnist Mark Morford tosses (6th paragraph) off that his entire column today was sparked by the Dyatlov Pass metafilter thread.

posted by jasper411 to MetaFilter-Related at 8:41 AM (31 comments total)

My God! A journalist who admits which bit of the Internet they plagiarised their column from! :p
Top job, Hank.
posted by Abiezer at 9:06 AM on February 27, 2008

Hank? Who's Hank?
posted by jasper411 at 9:10 AM on February 27, 2008

Hank? Who's Hank?

The guy who posted the Dyatlov Pass thread.
posted by dersins at 9:12 AM on February 27, 2008

Sorry, that's his MoFi username. My bad.
posted by Abiezer at 9:14 AM on February 27, 2008

Is Morford (the columnist) a Mefite? If he is, he never posts - I'm certain I'd recognize his writing style, which I find so irritatingly breathless and headlong that I rarely read his columns all the way through, even if I like the subject he's writing about.
posted by rtha at 9:15 AM on February 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

A journalist who admits which bit of the Internet they plagiarised their column from!

No link love though. I missed that the first time around creeeeepy.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:29 AM on February 27, 2008

Weird, I can't get the sfgate site to load for me...
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:31 AM on February 27, 2008

No link love though.

That's okay by me - we're going to have to start renting Kezar stadium for meet-ups if more SFBayArea mefites appear. (The last one was delightfully intimate - it was on a school night, though.)
posted by rtha at 9:39 AM on February 27, 2008

Funny you should mention that.

Also funny that Morford dispenses with the extremely plausible avalanche theory in a single sentence. In all, a remarkably lame piece - sort of like parachute journalism, only this time he hovered over a thread, selected the juiciest bits, ignored the less OMG ones, and spun out a breathless gee-whiz column.
posted by googly at 9:41 AM on February 27, 2008

Ok, it loaded. Huh, he took every link from the post but didn't link to the thread. That's really odd and seems like an oversight.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:44 AM on February 27, 2008

Abiezer: "My God! A journalist who admits which bit of the Internet they plagiarised their column from!"

The bar for plagiarism sure is getting lower these days. It used to mean physically pulling phrases from a source, but now it just means getting an idea for subject matter from some website.

Shit, I just plagiarized all those snarks I read this morning.
posted by Plutor at 9:45 AM on February 27, 2008

Okay, maybe (maybe) linking to all of the same links qualifies.
posted by Plutor at 9:51 AM on February 27, 2008

I was being tongue-in-cheek, Plutor (I even used the appropriate smiley!), having hacked out a few columns on zero inspiration myself. I was thinking crediting any source at all was a remarkable show of standards in this day and age.
posted by Abiezer at 9:54 AM on February 27, 2008

Is Morford (the columnist) a Mefite? If he is, he never posts - I'm certain I'd recognize his writing style, which I find so irritatingly breathless and headlong that I rarely read his columns all the way through, even if I like the subject he's writing about.

I agree, except that I secretly admit that I like his writing style. Holdover from being a fan of his now-defunct e-mail column, The Morning Fix. It's a guilty pleasure.

Matt, if you sent him a friendly note, I bet he'd link to the thread.
posted by desuetude at 9:54 AM on February 27, 2008

Morford is part of the conspiracy of silence. You cannot trust a man who has seen those Things with his own eyes and remained sane.

I must be brief, for fear they will track me down, but I warn you: be afraid of the Pacific. Be very afraid.
posted by aramaic at 10:29 AM on February 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Is Morford (the columnist) a Mefite?

If he is, he's not being overly obvious about it. And agreed; a link to mefi seems kind of called for, though I'm inclined to read it as misstep/oversight as well, as much as anything.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:32 PM on February 27, 2008

What's so creepy about an encountering an avalanche while on a hiking trip?
posted by KokuRyu at 12:33 PM on February 27, 2008

They may have in fact been assaulted by literal Vikings.
posted by Abiezer at 12:49 PM on February 27, 2008

I just emailed Morford to ask him why he didn't link to the thread. I'll post updates if I get any.
posted by jasper411 at 12:54 PM on February 27, 2008

Here's Morford's reply:

hmm. good point. I suppose I could have, probably just rationalized that since the Mefi item merely linked out to the same stories/sources I do, there was no point in merely linking to a discussion thread about it. That is, I'd rather point my readers to actual content, not merely a chat thread.

No matter. I'm fine either way. I'll link to it now.

thanks for the note

mm

Hmmm, a Metafilter link is "merely a chat thread"?? FWIW, the article now has the link.
posted by jasper411 at 2:06 PM on February 27, 2008

One of my friends is completely crushed out on Mark Morford. Given Morford's tie-in with the Dyatlov incident, I'm expecting her hair to turn grey and her skin orange anytime now.
posted by ooga_booga at 2:08 PM on February 27, 2008

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, she still has her tongue.
posted by ooga_booga at 2:08 PM on February 27, 2008

merely a chat thread

Don't get too indignant. String of comments attached to item of interest on website you don't have a personal emotional investment in = merely a chat thread. Morford may be more of a Guy Who Looks at Metafilter (or Guy Who Followed Link to Metafilter) than an honest-to-goodness lurker.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2008

How dare you question my indignation? Indignation is like air, water, and food to me, sir! Without indignation, I'd be nothing but a puddle of grease on the floor! Grrrr...
posted by jasper411 at 2:31 PM on February 27, 2008

that is, I'd rather point my readers to actual content, not merely a chat thread.

Some people say that many newspapers and journalism schools subscribe (so to speak) to the Peak Link theory that states (amongst other things):

Links on the Internet are finite and that if global consumption of Internet Links is not mitigated an Internet crisis may develop.

That is why serious journalists never link to their sources if they are just "chat threads" or "blogs". Really, it's just about being a good Internet citizen and saving the links for when we really need them.
posted by Staggering Jack at 3:03 PM on February 27, 2008

I love Mark Morford. I can't say how many times I've run into something of his and read it to the end and enjoyed it, only checking afterward to see who wrote it. I hope to bump into him at a meetup someday.
posted by scarabic at 3:12 PM on February 27, 2008

How dare you question my indignation? Indignation is like air, water, and food to me, sir! Without indignation, I'd be nothing but a puddle of grease on the floor!

No shit, you're a MetaFilter user.
posted by absalom at 3:19 PM on February 27, 2008

That's cool that Morford did that, though he could have just linked to the main site instead of the "chat thread". The number one search result for people coming to MeFi has always been a search for "metafilter", probably because people mention it a lot without linking to it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:43 PM on February 27, 2008

I am soooo deeply grateful to jasper411 for posting this as I had completely missed the original Dyatlov Pass thread and am now totally intrigued. Also have subscribed to Morford's RSS feed. Much linkage joy all round.

Speaking of which, there's now a link to the MeFi thread in Morford's article.
posted by batgrlHG at 7:58 PM on February 27, 2008

Er, as had already been mentioned, sorry.
posted by batgrlHG at 7:59 PM on February 27, 2008

mathowie The number one search result for people coming to MeFi has always been a search for "metafilter", probably because people mention it a lot without linking to it.

It's not people typing into their google searchbars when they think they're typing into the address field? Because I do that      all     the     freaking     time.
posted by Kattullus at 10:32 AM on February 29, 2008