Patrick O’Keefe

Ah, Wikipedia. I actually really like Wikipedia. But, obviously, with so many chefs working the broth, things happen. Like, for example, a couple days ago. I have never edited Wikipedia in my life and I most likely never will. But, links to my sites have shown up in Wikipedia many, many times. This isn’t a surprise, really, because of the work that goes into those sites. Bad Boy Blog is linked to on all sorts of pages because of the stories that we’ve broke and the reporting we have done.

So, after a source at the label sent me the tracklistings for the upcoming albums from Danity Kane and Day 26, I published them. Shortly after my reports, they were added to the Wikipedia pages for both albums. Again, no surprise - many fans have come to regard us as a first stop for news on Bad Boy artists.

I figured this because I was getting a little traffic from it and it was in my referrals. I opened them up just now and realized that both links had been removed by Admc2006. The reason was the same for both. “Blogs are not reliable sources.” Of course, that’s not fair. (As an aside, the new source link in the Danity Kane entry, Wal-Mart.com, doesn’t even have a tracklisting). That’s like saying “Magazines are not reliable sources.” It’s too vague. Some magazines are not reliable sources… some are. Some blogs are not reliable sources… some are. But, at our heart, we’re just a publication, whatever you call us.

At Bad Boy Blog, we have an established history of breaking stories and checking sources. We broke the tracklisting for B5’s “Don’t Talk, Just Listen”; we broke stories about Jordan McCoy filming a reality show, Diddy not changing his name (when 50 outlets had reported he was), Cheri Dennis’ album being digitally released exclusively, Christian Daniel being dropped from the roster, 8 Ball & MJG being dropped from the roster, Elephant Man adding four tracks to the U.S. release of his album and on and on.

Is this the stigma of being a blog in the minds of some people - however misguided? If the name of the site was Bad Boy News or Bad Boy Journal or Bad Boy Herald - would I then be a reliable source? I have to think no, that another reason would be created. But, Chris doesn’t really like the term blog and I don’t really care, but it’s funny to see how these standards are invented and then applied to me.

Personally, I don’t think blogs should be targetted in any sort of way. And I was just talking about this over at YanksBlog.com, because there has been talk that the Yankees may try to prevent players from having personal blogs, out of fear that they might say something inappropriate. If something is inappropriate, it’s inappropriate - it doesn’t matter whether they say it on their blog or to a reporter. Where it comes in is knowing what to say and what not to say. Once in a while, someone may see a little trouble because of something they said, but that’s the same for speaking to the press, as well. People are human, things slip out. And, sometimes, the companies that you associate with make themselves think that something you said is inappropriate.

However, no matter where anyone links to, we broke both of those tracklistings, as far as I know, and that’s the bottom line.

Is this worth sharing?

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.