The lead story in this morning's business section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was an AP article on the 40th anniversary of Moore's law. At the end of the article, you'll see a section entitled "The Law of Silicon Valley" where Moore's original observation is quoted. What's listed as the source? "Wikipedia.com."
Is it possible that the author, and his editors, couldn't be bothered to check the original source on a forty year-old topic? Is the Wikipedia the best available, most definitive source? I would expect a high school English teacher would reject that citation, let alone the editors of the AP. Of course, given that they didn't even get the website of the citation right -- Wikipedia is a dot-org, not a dot-com -- why should we believe that they did their homework anywhere else?
1) You're back!
2) This is almost certainly laziness on the part of 2005 print/TV journalists who have adapted to getting nearly all of their information from blogs, etc, in an impressively small amount of time.
3) wikipedia.com does resolve and redirect to wikipedia.org, so that could just be an honest mistake.
The unfortunate side effect of the popularity of news blogs is that now the newspaper is about as reliable as they are.
Posted by: Ficus | April 18, 2005 at 11:35 AM
Hey Ficus! My replies:
1) I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last updated the blog. I have a lot to report (as you know) so expect several more updates in the next day or two.
2) I agree, but it's the opposite direction from where they should be going. By their nature, blogs (and especially moblogs (I hate that term)) are always going to get word of some event out before any single news source. That's a fact they have to accept. In reaction, they should play to their strengths: more thorough analysis, good research, and better writing.
And honestly, I think it would be acceptible for print media to turn to the web as a reference for some brand-spanking-new topic, but for something of this age, I think there's no excuse.
3) I was going to mention in the original post that wikipedia does redirect, but it's somewhat beside the point. google.net resolves to google.com, but can you imagine seeing that mistake in print?
Posted by: Michael | April 18, 2005 at 01:25 PM
Echoing Ficus, welcome back. Not surprised by the inactivity (on the blog) though, as I figured you've been busy with the house hunt.
That AP citation is scary stuff. Hell, anyone on the planet can get Wikipedia content posted!
Posted by: Erich | April 19, 2005 at 05:57 AM
I agree with you. The professional journalists are not only being lazy, they seem to be rolling over and playing dead. I was at the gym the other day and one of the TVs was tuned to CNN. The program that was on was called "Inside the Blogs", and it was a bunch of shots of a computer running a web browser with voiceover. There was the occasional cut back to some talk-show desk. I don't even really need to comment on this.
On the .com vs .org issue: I'm still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt there. The distinction between mistaking a .org for a .com and mistaking a .com for anything is a pretty obvious one.
Posted by: Ficus | April 19, 2005 at 10:35 AM