Spalpeen

From the 15,000 odd comments I’ve received on my articles at Engadget, around 15 people left insulting comments. I happen to find them hilarious, especially without context. Expect swearing, typos, and bad grammar.

Lets start it off light.

Are you dense Conrad?

hey conrad, please look up the definition for: oxymoron.

I agree. Stupidly negative article. What’s with the complete
editorialization at the end? You don’t work for CNN, Conrad.

Now let’s take it up a notch.

Fugly? Dude, the only thing that’s fugly is the name
Conrad Quilty-Harper. It makes you sound like you knit your own
lingerie.

Now for some Apple fun.

What do you expect? It’s a Conrad article. If it’s about Apple,
he’s gushing and spinning to his heart’s content no matter what the
subject matter.

Wow, the blogger”Conrad Quilty-Harper” must be a Apple hater. Becuase this is really nothing important yet he blows it WAAY out of proportion and it is take WAAY OUT OF CONTEXT!

I really suck as a writer.

Mr. Quilty-Harper seems to like superfluous descriptions a lot.

Quilty-Harper fails again. (¬_¬)

His name is Quilty-Harper not “quality writer” what do u expect

I’m also a source of provocation.

Conrad My friend, I bet that remark was just made to start a flame
war, Its Ignorancy to its finest, comment this fanboish seriously
dont belong in a place like engadget, where most of it’s readers
have at least some college of education.

MY mistake, not the whole engadget staff needs to go fuck themselves,
just the fuckin moron prick who posted it, conrad quilty harper,
seriously though, what the hell is this kind of post doing on this
blog???? can someone tell me please?? how IRRELEVANT is this post to
this blog??

Don’t take that tone with me, anonymous commenter!

Excuse me Conrad, but the tone of this article is DISGUSTING. You are
supposed to be reporting as a neutral news writer, yet your level of
obvious bias is ridiculous. Either report the news without bias, and
with some freaking RESPECT, or go write for FOX News.

I hope you realize that you could have sidestepped the whole being
biased tools crap by leaving out TWO WORDS from your article.. but
instead you decided to piss off everyone who likes microsoft, and
everyone else who doesn’t like to see random bias in stuff they read
online. Way to go, Conrad.

Clarification: you don’t have to sleep with anyone to get a job at Engadget. Gawker on the other hand …

Conrad, your a fucking dumbshit who had to sleep with a really fat
women to get on Engadget, first you say the Vaio TZ is Santa Rosa and
now this Gameboy Color is bright yellow? Dude, I want to kick your
fucking pasty ass white cracker ass so bad mang.

… and a later comment …

Yeah uh… maybe Conrad is colorblind?

Some comments even get philosophical.

u r mentally retarded.
Sony is a giant corporation. U R NOTHING.
Conrad Quilty-Harper is a Engadget writer. U R NOTHING.
u have no idea what u r talking about. this is nothing personal but u
r full of shit.

Alright, so maybe this isn’t as funny as I thought. But whatever. Insulting comments go in the comments, please.

In response to a question on the NUJ New Media email list.

One, I thought the NUJ could help build my career by exposing me to British journalists and their editors.

Two, curiosity. I read Donnacha’s Web 2.0 editorial in The Journalist and it infuriated me, but it also made some kind of sense. I thought there’s gotta be a better way to investigate the NUJ’s attitude to new media than writing a blog post, and I thought that “better way” might have been to join the union.

Three, by joining, I thought it’d be a good counterpoint to Roy Greenslade’s public resignation from the Union. Frankly, I think that older journalists with established careers need the least support: it’s young people like me with an interest and some experience in journalism that need help to ensure that they’re not manipulated by employers. Some recent editorial by NUJ members highlighting the increasingly common practice of hiring unpaid interns for long periods of time definitely caught my eye here.

Four, to give back. There’s clearly a lack of understanding in the NUJ as a whole regarding new media and its benefits. Nearly three years at the world’s biggest blogging company has given me a fair degree of knowledge that I wish to impart.

In response to a question on the NUJ New Media email list. 

Professional blogging isn’t much different from ordinary blogging. Effectively, it is just a far more efficient and team-based version of the average blogger’s “I saw a link that is cool/new/interesting so I should write about it” ethos. The scale is just far larger.

In Engadget’s case, instead of one blogger, there is an extended team of writers. Instead of casually browsing the web to find links, we use lists of sources in group RSS readers and email tip boxes. Instead of just allowing anyone to blog, writers are trained for months before they are allowed to post on their own. There are strict guidelines regarding length, style, tone, and content of articles. There are guidelines on image sizes, comment moderation, and event coverage (especially event coverage). Our ethics policy is equivalent to the New York Times. It’s extremely hard work, often involving late hours (remember, I’m based in the UK and I write for an American website), OK but not great pay (the dollar is its lowest against sterling for 25+ years), and huge dedication.

So why do I do it? Because if you enjoy the topic and love writing, it can be extremely rewarding.

At age 19, I was flown out to Las Vegas to cover CES. I had on average 3-4 hours sleep a night, and had flu for a week afterwards, yet I got to work  face-to-face with a team of extremely intelligent people, cover new gadgets before half the mainstream media had woken up, and generally have a riot of a time talking about and playing with new gadgets.

Because of my blogging, I had the opportunity to ask Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, the first question at the Apple iPhone press conference last month. Have you any idea how exhilarating it is for a 20 year old student to be able to do such a thing? To be on an equal playing field with journalists from The FT, the BBC, the Guardian, Channel 4 News (all publications which I intensely admire)?

Those are only two of the many, many examples.

Around two weeks ago I formally* applied to the NUJ, stating my occupation as “blogger”, and that my full salary came from blogging in a freelance role. A week later I received a call from Paul at the NUJ, confirming that I couldn’t be a full member of the NUJ if I was in full time education, and neither could I get a student membership if I wasn’t a doing a media course / on the student paper. Because my “situation” clashed with the NUJ’s rulebook, I had to admit that I’m taking a year out of my course, and therefore I won’t technically be a student this year (I’m off to work at Mahalo in Santa Monica, lucky me). I have to tell them I’m a student again when I get back and resume my course, which means I’ll probably be reapplying: depending on whether I find the union useful or not of course.

I received a letter a few days back, suggesting I attend a London freelancers meeting today (Friday 12th November) at 6.45PM. Unfortunately I can’t attend, so I phoned up the NUJ to see whether this would affect my application. It will, to the extent that I won’t be able to answer any potential objections that may or may not be raised.

Then, I get an email from Martin Stabe at the Press Gazette, quoting Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the NUJ.

“I also approved the application of the first NUJ member who has blogger as their job title. Whilst we have hundreds, if not thousands of members who write blogs, this is the first person who earns their entire living solely from freelance blogging. Who says we’re not attracting new media workers? Membership in new media was up almost 11% over the past year.”

It sounds like I may officially be the first member of the NUJ with blogging as his/her only profession (as long as no objections are raised at this meeting tonight). But am I really the first to join the NUJ as a full-time blogger? It seems like half The Guardian’s online staff are bloggers by profession (including the co-signer of my application), and I’m sure there are plenty of other mainstream media reporters out there who are members of the NUJ, yet their primary job role is blogging. What’s different about me?

I may be the first person to apply as a new member with the vast majority of my experience being at a blog — that has always been a blog, and will always be a blog — but that doesn’t mean I’m the first blogger member of the NUJ.

Is Jeremy Dear saying that I am the first person who earns a salary solely from a blog (which isn’t associated with a mainstream entity) to apply to the NUJ? But wait, you say that Engadget isn’t associated with a mainstream entity? I thought you got your paychecks from AOL, you corporate whore, you! That’s true. So is it a requirement that every blogger who wants to be in the NUJ must be associated with a “big” media company with shareholders and stuff? It seems so. Either that, or no other non-MSM associated blogger has bothered to apply for the NUJ. That scenario honestly wouldn’t surprise me, considering the archaic application process.

The most surprising thing for me is that I was told to my face, on video by Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) and Richard Sambrook (the director of the BBC’s Global News division) that I’m not a blogger, because of my blog’s mainstream media association, and the fact that my paychecks exist and come from AOL.

So why did I apply? Mainly to see what it was like and whether I would succeed, partly in an attempt to enact some basic changes at the NUJ using a method other than arguing online with Donnacha DeLong (setting up a form based online application system, publishing The Journalist magazine online, and allowing international members would be a great start), and peripherally because I want advice on unions. Surely in an ideal world, that peripheral motivation would be the only motivation?

Let’s see how it goes.

*Apparently, “formally” means writing a letter, on paper, and getting it signed by myself and two other NUJ members (thanks to Jemima and her colleague!) using a pen. I also had to stick an AOL payslip inside.