'Big Ass' mistakes

Don't believe everything you read on the Web. Don't believe everything you read in an e-mail. Don't believe everything you read in the paper. Don't believe everything you hear or see on TV. Early on, each of these media were probably maligned as a cesspool of mistruths and lies. Because the Internet is the youngest -- with the biggest potential audience -- it has had to sustain attack after attack about all the lies and hoaxes floating around. And the lesson learned after each mistake? You can't blame the Internet; you can blame the person behind the lie or the person who believed the lie.

Three recent unrelated cases highlight errors of judgment of the human kind. A study supposedly tagged to the World Health Organization showed that blondes would be extinct in another 200 years because of a recessive gene. The "report" was picked up by various British papers, then picked up by various U.S. outlets before someone finally called the WHO and found out the report never existed. The smoking gun was a German wire story, which was based on a magazine story quoting a WHO anthropologist no one had heard of.

Next up was a story in Salon by freelance writer Jason Leopold attacking former Enron exec and current Secretary of the Army Thomas White. The problem? No one could verify that White actually wrote an e-mail that said, "Close a bigger deal. Hide the loss before the 1Q." Salon had to retract the story, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman had to pull his punches based on the Salon retraction. Leopold denied any wrongdoing, but his editors and those at the Times aren't backing him up.

Finally comes the doozy of them all. The Washington State University school newspaper, The Daily Evergreen, was helping celebrate Filipino-American History Month but got one fact terribly wrong in this passage: "On Oct. 18, 1857, the first Filipinos landed on the shores of Morro Bay, California, on a Spanish galleon called the Nuestra Se?ora de Buena Esperanza, which translates to 'The Big Ass Spanish Boat.'" Well, it really means "Our Lady of Good Hope." The writer said she found the "fact" from a Web site (uh-oh) that looked official -- a weblog called PinoyLife.com (motto: "Now with more flavor and no added preservatives"; regular feature: "10 Things That Kick Ass").

No, the Web was not to blame, and PinoyLife was certainly not to blame. A WSU professor rightly wondered why the student (or editor) didn't simply go across the street to the Dept. of Foreign Languages to check the Spanish translation. The Seattle Times report on the error had all the juicy details, with people asking for heads to roll, and meetings taking place with "student groups representing Filipino-Americans, Hispanics and Spanish speakers, Catholics and others." Seems that one error unwittingly, wittily offended half the campus.

Relax, folks. Nobody's perfect, we all make mistakes, and we should remember to think twice when quoting German wire stories, Enron e-mails, and Filipino weblogs.

Why advertising rarely works

AdAge.com reported on a new study that shows consumers like to view multiple media at one time, watching TV while surfing the Net while playing the radio while leafing through a nearby newspaper or magazine. The problem for advertisers is that these people -- usually in the desirable young demographic -- rarely watch or listen to the ads. The professors who ran the study said that advertisers should worry that their target audience has a scattered attention span and must be reached through multiple channels, or through word of mouth.

But is there a tangible way advertisers could tailor their message for the Attention Deficit Disorder crowd? "Perhaps magazines and Internet ads during certain times of the day would better target specific audiences. If online users are at work, they are 'visually centered' and may be better reached by a visual ad instead of one using audio," AdAge posited.

The problem has always been there. People see an ad on TV and they switch channels, take the dog for a walk or visit the throne. People see a banner on a Web site and scroll down the page or click away. Multiple media going at once means you have less chance of actually experiencing the ads, and more chance of reading or hearing what you want.

Advertisers are truly at a crossroads, with the advent of so many media, so many ad-blocking gadgets such as TiVo, and so many young people who know how to turn off ads. There are two possible avenues for advertisers: the high road and low road. The high road is coming up with creative ideas that really bring in an audience ("Whazzup" dudes pitching Bud; the old humorous E-Trade ads). The low road is advertising disguised as editorial, or that's tattoed on celebrities' arms or put in inappropriate public places (toilets, blimps, etc.). Let's hope the creative juices win out and we can enjoy ads as mini-films, instead of cringing when another virgin space is filled with commercial pitches.

Quotable

"Let us face it. Blondes may make the world go round, but the blondest of them all was not blonde at all. Norma Jeane Baker went platinum in 1946 and Marilyn Monroe was born enroute to celluloid celebrity. If the humble bottle of dye could produce the world's best loved blonde bombshell, people of the world rejoice. Blondes are here to stay."

-- the Times of India, in an unbylined "TOI Comment" posted on the paper's Web site alongside a story about the false WHO report on blondes becoming extinct

Mark Glaser currently writes technology features for The New York Times, travel stories for the San Jose Mercury News, and a bi-weekly e-mail newsletter for the Online Publishers Association, whose membership includes most major media companies online. That won't stop him from taking cheap potshots at these outlets, when necessary. You can contact him with any juicy tidbits about online journalism at glaze@sprintmail.com.