Whenever there’s a link on STW to some newspaper blog or other with the usual “They don’t pay road tax” or whatever rant, there’s always someone who will say “Don’t click on the link, they’re only after the publicity”

Well, according to the latest issue of Private Eye, the Daily Telegraph has got a system whereby writers of blogs with few hits compared to the others get a warning. If they don’t catch up, they get dropped.

So, what many people have suspected is true. They will deliberately write stuff to get a reaction, regardless of whether it’s true or entertaining.

I fell for it with the Drby Telegraph one on here the other day. I must resist, as you have said even if the site owners take no interest I really should know better than pander to the ego of these people.

it’s a lose lose situation, you click the link read then challenge their idiotic statements they get money/fame/another week at their desk. You don’t challenge it and joe public think it’s true.

so what thes solution then?

off the top of my head how about the OP cut n paste original diatribe bobbins onto the thread followed by a link to the rags complaint email/page…or do complaints count as a “hit”?

I don’t know what the solution is.
It’s a kind of large scale trolling with the newspaper’s backing.

Google cached versions?

I posted heavily on the Derby Telegraph one from the other day, but I also sent emails of complaint to the news desk and author.

It’s a tricky one: I don’t want to give them the hits, but at the same time I can’t stand to see it go unchallenged when a journalist uses an opinion piece to spout complete nonsense.

You don’t challenge it and joe public think it’s true.

remember that you are joe public too..

the joe public that you are concerned will believe idiotic statements.. are also very likely to believe that people who challenge those statements are under-sexed Victor Meldrew types with too much time on their hands..

very likely to believe that people who challenge those statements are under-sexed Victor Meldrew types with too much time on their hands

I maybe all that….but I’m still right

It’s an idiotic short-termist tactic anyway – James Martin got lots of hits from us lot when he did his little anti-cyclists rant, but that momentary blip didn’t earn him any new readers/fans and probably lost him a few existing ones.

“clickbait”

Having said that, I don’t know why the Daily Telegraph thing is seen as that astounding a deal. If you’re a columnist that no-one reads, then obviously you’re going to get dropped. In the old days, they’d have to guess according to how much mail was received in response to a column. Now they can tell exactly how many people read any posting.

This might actually reduce the amount of trolling – people rarely write in about stuff they enjoyed reading and are more likely to write in and whinge. This might have encouraged synthetic controversy (Julie Burchill) – she’ll always get a bigger reaction than someone that everyone reads but no-one is outraged by.

Meanwhile, I think it’s Popbitch or possibly Gawker that says that part of the reason why the Daily Mail is one of the world’s most successful newspaper websites (pageviews) is that it the web content doesn’t entirely reflect the newspaper. That is to say, most of the website is devoted to papparazo shots of American celebs that have a limited profile in the UK rather than what’s in the paper.

With the number of links on this forum I’d like to know if Singletrack have put in code to stop the pagerank being passed on.

I guess I could do an experiment too one of the sites I work on, but would that get me a ban for spamming?

You used to be able to avoid going to the Daily Wail by using istyosty, but they had that shut down.

I have a Chrome extension that automatically redirects any DM links to some nice pictures of tea and kittens instead.

Got a link for that Mike? Sounds like just my cup of tea 🙂

http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ – link to ‘Kitten Block’ at the bottom