4 ms·

Huge props to Forbes for resisting the allure of the “machines will kill us all” clickbait easy money and reporting some facts

smohare 4y ago
[dead]
xnx 4y ago
Reminder that forbes.com is mainly a blogging/self-publishing tool like Medium. The author, Brad Templeton, is not employed or paid by Forbes. Edit: forbes.com/sites/ is not a self-service as I thought. Though not full employees, it looks like there is some editorial vetting of Forbes "Contributors".
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Is that true? Do you have more details about it?
  - xnx 4y ago
    It's a little more opaque and less open than I thought. Not as self-service as I thought. Here's one description from https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html : "Contributors at Forbes are unpaid writers, domain experts with day jobs, as opposed to staff writers who are full time employees of Forbes"
- kragen 4y ago
  Hmm, if they're not paying him, why does he just put links to these articles on his own blog (ideas.4brad.com), instead of copying the whole article? Also https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-blogging-platforms/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-bloggi... doesn't list Forbes itself (just WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Drupal, Squarespace, CMS Hub, and Medium), and https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger-on-Forbes https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger... says: > The easiest way is to know what you're talking about, write often and follow the best practices of news craft (i.e., pick up the phone and call people, be clear and don't make shit up). Our channel editors and staff writers are always on the watch for people they trust, would read and would want their posts adjacent to. It is an evolving vetting process. I've turned people down who are mostly issue advocates or run non-profits. This kind of mouthpiece stuff is what made HuffPo unreadable. We've parted ways with contributors for writing shoddy, libelous posts. We've taken people down for flogging their own newsletter, investment advisory business, PR agency, whatever. We have economists, financial advisors, lawyers, environmentalists, lockpickers, liberals, libertarians, China watchers, NY tech scene watchers, people covering only celebrity tweets. We like freelance journalists, who only have themselves to flog. I would personally rather sign someone up who wrote short every day than someone who wrote 2,000 word posts three times a month. (Bruce Upbin) So I don't think it's accurate to describe Forbes as a self-publishing tool. https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ says Forbes pays their contributing bloggers US$250 a month.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    > Hmm, if they're not paying him, why does he just put links to these articles on his own blog, instead of copying the whole article Because Forbes also still just about has enough cachet for people to want to associate their subject matter expertise with it - far more of a motivation than contributor fees for someone with Templeton's background and earning power - and probably also has rules around duplicate content It's closer to Huffington Post than Medium, but I think the point being made is that there's zero editorial oversight in between the author drafting the post and it appearing on Forbes' website, just the possibility that someone at Forbes might remove "shoddy, libellous posts" at a later stage. I don't think Forbes would have any issue if Brad thought cheap sensationalism was a better way of promoting himself to the Forbes audience (and I doubt he'd quit writing if he wasn't potentially able to earn as much as $50 per blog!)
    - kragen 4y ago
      I don't think "zero editorial oversight in between the author drafting the post and it appearing on Forbes' website" is equivalent to "mainly a blogging/self-publishing tool like Medium", given the large amount of editorial oversight evidently involved at other stages of the process. And, though I agree that Forbes's cachet is more of a motivation than contributor fees, "The author, Brad Templeton, is not employed or paid by Forbes" is evidently a flat-out lie.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Based on what I knew from about five years ago, "it's complicated." At least at the time, brands could buy a slot. I wrote for a company a couple of times. I think the pieces were very lightly edited. There were/are also "contributors" who were mostly individuals who didn't have gross obvious conflicts of interest in the topics they wrote about. I think they either wrote for free or were paid some nominal sum. Again, I think there was light editing. The latter is also what you saw with the CNET Blog Network which I did write for over a number of years at a time when everyone was branding and blogging including journalists and analysts. (I declined to accept money for various reasons. Other people were paid a modest amount.) The problem with these things is that there are always going to be conflicts of interest and biases to various degrees. Some organizations try very hard to weed out direct examples of the former at least outside of explicit op-ed pages. But it's hard to manage. To give a current example, maybe you're bullish on generative AI because you work or consult for a company doing it no matter what reservations you have. Or maybe you work for the company because you're bullish on it. Or back in the day Microsoft's a client of your's because you really like what they're doing and they engaged you and passed on the Unix expert who didn't think much of what Microsoft was doing. CNET got increasingly uncomfortable with the whole model and dropped it.
- andreygrehov 4y ago
  Publishing an article on Forbes costs a couple hundred bucks. A bunch of "contributors" sell a spot on SEO forums. I was doing a SEO optimization for my friend's website and a black hat agency sent me a price list with pretty much all known big media websites listed in the spreadsheet.
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    That is crazy. What a fall from grace for Forbes. It is possible to write regulations to prevent blackhat SEO? I keep thinking about it. Why don't all websites eventually rent their reputation to the highest bidder, but in a sneaky blackhat SEO way? I think many do. <sad face> The modern web feels like 50% great and 50% terrible. It is a hostile landscape to navigate! Twenty years ago, Forbes was considered an excellent business magazine in the United States. For a while (last few years), I was "fooled" when I saw yet-another click-baity / poorly-researched Forbes piece. Then someone (here?) pointed out that Forbes has the "contributors" section with far lower editoral standards (err... asymptotically approaching zero!?). The contributor stuff is just rubbish. I think blocking it on HN is too much, but, please, stop upvoting this crap from Forbes contributors.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I do think Forbes sold its soul for clicks and I don't have any first-hand knowledge of how their contributors and other third-party content works these days. That said, most of the trade press for example uses outside contributors--sometimes paid, often not. As I wrote elsewhere, there are various problematic aspects to the arrangement but there's usually enough editorial oversight to present blatant conflicts of interest around promoting a company, etc.
- brenns10 4y ago
  This can't be reiterated enough times. Forbes articles, in my mind, are automatically bunk now, since they accept minimally vetted blog posts from their "contributors" who are just looking for SEO and a boost from the brand name. Not that Wired is some bastion of perfect journalism, but it's funny how this blog post levels criticism at Wired with little additional data, and simply says "I think they're wrong, because I think AVs will be better one day, so it's worth letting them screw up all over our cities for a few years".
- bradtemp 4y ago
  Forbes pays contributors, who do so by invitation by a Forbes editor who likes their writing. Forbes also allows companies to pay to put in stories, but they are clearly marked as such. It's amazing what people will write by assumption without knowing. And yes I believe in the value of the technology. But also in the truth which is why I was very harsh on cruise in the story earlier this week.
jeffrallen 4y ago
Brad is a robocar supporter ever since he worked with Waymo. He's fair, but he has little patience for anything but full speed ahead rhetoric, he's one of the true believers that think "humans are such bad drivers that virtually nothing robocars do can possibly be as bad as letting humans drive even a year longer than absolutely necessary". So it would be rare to get a critical viewpoint from him.

smohare 4y ago

[dead]

xnx 4y ago

Reminder that forbes.com is mainly a blogging/self-publishing tool like Medium. The author, Brad Templeton, is not employed or paid by Forbes. Edit: forbes.com/sites/ is not a self-service as I thought. Though not full employees, it looks like there is some editorial vetting of Forbes "Contributors".

HWR_14 4y ago
Is that true? Do you have more details about it?
- xnx 4y ago
  It's a little more opaque and less open than I thought. Not as self-service as I thought. Here's one description from https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html https://joshsteimle.com/writing/become-forbes-writer.html : "Contributors at Forbes are unpaid writers, domain experts with day jobs, as opposed to staff writers who are full time employees of Forbes"
kragen 4y ago
Hmm, if they're not paying him, why does he just put links to these articles on his own blog (ideas.4brad.com), instead of copying the whole article? Also https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-blogging-platforms/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-bloggi... doesn't list Forbes itself (just WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Drupal, Squarespace, CMS Hub, and Medium), and https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger-on-Forbes https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-a-contributing-blogger... says: > The easiest way is to know what you're talking about, write often and follow the best practices of news craft (i.e., pick up the phone and call people, be clear and don't make shit up). Our channel editors and staff writers are always on the watch for people they trust, would read and would want their posts adjacent to. It is an evolving vetting process. I've turned people down who are mostly issue advocates or run non-profits. This kind of mouthpiece stuff is what made HuffPo unreadable. We've parted ways with contributors for writing shoddy, libelous posts. We've taken people down for flogging their own newsletter, investment advisory business, PR agency, whatever. We have economists, financial advisors, lawyers, environmentalists, lockpickers, liberals, libertarians, China watchers, NY tech scene watchers, people covering only celebrity tweets. We like freelance journalists, who only have themselves to flog. I would personally rather sign someone up who wrote short every day than someone who wrote 2,000 word posts three times a month. (Bruce Upbin) So I don't think it's accurate to describe Forbes as a self-publishing tool. https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ https://bloggingtips.com/how-to-write-for-forbes/ says Forbes pays their contributing bloggers US$250 a month.
- notahacker 4y ago
  > Hmm, if they're not paying him, why does he just put links to these articles on his own blog, instead of copying the whole article Because Forbes also still just about has enough cachet for people to want to associate their subject matter expertise with it - far more of a motivation than contributor fees for someone with Templeton's background and earning power - and probably also has rules around duplicate content It's closer to Huffington Post than Medium, but I think the point being made is that there's zero editorial oversight in between the author drafting the post and it appearing on Forbes' website, just the possibility that someone at Forbes might remove "shoddy, libellous posts" at a later stage. I don't think Forbes would have any issue if Brad thought cheap sensationalism was a better way of promoting himself to the Forbes audience (and I doubt he'd quit writing if he wasn't potentially able to earn as much as $50 per blog!)
  - kragen 4y ago
    I don't think "zero editorial oversight in between the author drafting the post and it appearing on Forbes' website" is equivalent to "mainly a blogging/self-publishing tool like Medium", given the large amount of editorial oversight evidently involved at other stages of the process. And, though I agree that Forbes's cachet is more of a motivation than contributor fees, "The author, Brad Templeton, is not employed or paid by Forbes" is evidently a flat-out lie.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Based on what I knew from about five years ago, "it's complicated." At least at the time, brands could buy a slot. I wrote for a company a couple of times. I think the pieces were very lightly edited. There were/are also "contributors" who were mostly individuals who didn't have gross obvious conflicts of interest in the topics they wrote about. I think they either wrote for free or were paid some nominal sum. Again, I think there was light editing. The latter is also what you saw with the CNET Blog Network which I did write for over a number of years at a time when everyone was branding and blogging including journalists and analysts. (I declined to accept money for various reasons. Other people were paid a modest amount.) The problem with these things is that there are always going to be conflicts of interest and biases to various degrees. Some organizations try very hard to weed out direct examples of the former at least outside of explicit op-ed pages. But it's hard to manage. To give a current example, maybe you're bullish on generative AI because you work or consult for a company doing it no matter what reservations you have. Or maybe you work for the company because you're bullish on it. Or back in the day Microsoft's a client of your's because you really like what they're doing and they engaged you and passed on the Unix expert who didn't think much of what Microsoft was doing. CNET got increasingly uncomfortable with the whole model and dropped it.
andreygrehov 4y ago
Publishing an article on Forbes costs a couple hundred bucks. A bunch of "contributors" sell a spot on SEO forums. I was doing a SEO optimization for my friend's website and a black hat agency sent me a price list with pretty much all known big media websites listed in the spreadsheet.
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  That is crazy. What a fall from grace for Forbes. It is possible to write regulations to prevent blackhat SEO? I keep thinking about it. Why don't all websites eventually rent their reputation to the highest bidder, but in a sneaky blackhat SEO way? I think many do. <sad face> The modern web feels like 50% great and 50% terrible. It is a hostile landscape to navigate! Twenty years ago, Forbes was considered an excellent business magazine in the United States. For a while (last few years), I was "fooled" when I saw yet-another click-baity / poorly-researched Forbes piece. Then someone (here?) pointed out that Forbes has the "contributors" section with far lower editoral standards (err... asymptotically approaching zero!?). The contributor stuff is just rubbish. I think blocking it on HN is too much, but, please, stop upvoting this crap from Forbes contributors.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I do think Forbes sold its soul for clicks and I don't have any first-hand knowledge of how their contributors and other third-party content works these days. That said, most of the trade press for example uses outside contributors--sometimes paid, often not. As I wrote elsewhere, there are various problematic aspects to the arrangement but there's usually enough editorial oversight to present blatant conflicts of interest around promoting a company, etc.
brenns10 4y ago
This can't be reiterated enough times. Forbes articles, in my mind, are automatically bunk now, since they accept minimally vetted blog posts from their "contributors" who are just looking for SEO and a boost from the brand name. Not that Wired is some bastion of perfect journalism, but it's funny how this blog post levels criticism at Wired with little additional data, and simply says "I think they're wrong, because I think AVs will be better one day, so it's worth letting them screw up all over our cities for a few years".
bradtemp 4y ago
Forbes pays contributors, who do so by invitation by a Forbes editor who likes their writing. Forbes also allows companies to pay to put in stories, but they are clearly marked as such. It's amazing what people will write by assumption without knowing. And yes I believe in the value of the technology. But also in the truth which is why I was very harsh on cruise in the story earlier this week.

jeffrallen 4y ago

Brad is a robocar supporter ever since he worked with Waymo. He's fair, but he has little patience for anything but full speed ahead rhetoric, he's one of the true believers that think "humans are such bad drivers that virtually nothing robocars do can possibly be as bad as letting humans drive even a year longer than absolutely necessary". So it would be rare to get a critical viewpoint from him.