Hey, there! Log in / Register
Wicked Evil vs. Wicked Local
By adamg on Tue, 03/03/2009 - 9:32am
Howard Owens, no longer GateHouse Media's online strategist, explains why GateHouse felt it had to sue the Times over boston.com's Your Town sites.
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
More scummy evidence for the case file...
I'm utterly disgusted. As UH was kind enough to post on, I dealt with my own Boston.com reader poaching situation not too long ago. Thanks to the outpouring of support (and enraged emails apparently) from readers, Boston.com removed their duplicitous Google campaign (as well as another one that this situation brought to light, which affected another locally based parenting site).
In addition to the poaching acts, what really bothers me is that Boston.com apparently never seems to find fault in their actions (or have the courage to own up to them...maybe that's company protocol). The director of community publishing at Boston.com did respond to me, but there was never anything vaguely resembling an apology; instead, she shifted the onus to me, saying I should have emailed them directly because it would have been quicker. Well of course it would have been quicker, and less embarrassing for them too! They just clearly don't get it. I sent a Letter to the Editor regarding all of this though I’m not holding my breath that they’ll print it.
As I wrote in my letter to the Globe, the beauty of online publishing is that it offers a powerful way to create community. And I truly believe in blog/online karma - no doubt that Boston.com's activities are going to come back and bite them. My situation was of a much, much smaller scale than the one Howard describes, but they lost readers and integrity as a result.
(I wish Howard's site didn't require creating a new login to comment otherwise I would have done so there as well.)
Link, please?
Or did you purposefully link to a page that shows a not authorized message, or did you mean to link to this?
http://howardowens.com/7341/reactions-vc-backed-sc...
Oh, wait - or did Howard remove or password protect his post after you linked to it? (Is there some hidden feud going on here between Adam and Howard? 8-)
Howard's comments on deep linking:
http://howardowens.com/7335/myth-deep-link
Oy
No, Howard and I don't have any feud going that I know of (I've exchanged some e-mail with him over the years, but we never talked about GateHouse v. NY Times). I suspect some GateHouse lawyer had a chat with him; the agreement between the two companies had some non-disclosure requirements.
If you hurry and get to Google and do a search on:
You can still read the original post. But you probably knew that :-).
not anymore
When I try to read the linked article, I get:
Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.