That’s great, but his whole “I just want to make comics and get paid for it. The less complicated the better” doesn’t quite ring true when he also, by his own admission, runs a small business (employing an assistant, his mother, his stepfather, and three retired friends of his mother’s, he says) that sells everything from signed prints of his art to lip balm. His claim that he doesn’t have a publicist and it was his mother who declined Stuef’s requests for an interview aren’t true, Stuef says; it was a woman named “Amanda DiMarco.” There is an Amanda DiMarco on LinkedIn as “PR and Business Development” for The Oatmeal. According one of Inman’s pre-Oatmeal blog entries, his mother’s name is Ann.
But none of that really matters, since Stuef screwed up by relying on a fake profile. The gaffe calls the accuracy of the rest of his reporting into question and set him up for an incredible shredding from his profile subject. Stuef maintains that, while he regrets the error, Inman’s refusal to participate in the profile caused this to happen.
“I was depending on past reporting and interviews, as he declined to be interviewed by me about any of it,” Stuef said. (Neither Inman, nor his mother, nor Amanda DiMarco responded to CJR’s request for comment.)
Real journalism is more than just playing Internet detective. If Buzzfeed wants to be taken seriously as a news source, its contributors simply cannot make these mistakes. Those who do must be held accountable by more than just their profile subjects, few of which have the kind of platform Inman does.
UPDATE: Here’s Buzzfeed editor in chief Ben Smith’s statement on the matter:
The original article had a serious factual error, which we corrected
fully and within an hour of its publication three days ago, and which
we deeply regret. On a personal note, I think some Oatmeal comics are hilarious.
Rule Number two on the web: You can mess with The Oatmeal, but messing with people who really understand the internet can have serious consequences.
Not just certain personalities like "The Oatmeal" but really any community with internet savants (self-diagnosed asburgers sufferers, nerds, think 4chan and Anonymous and the like) can do research and figure out things with the best of them. With Facebook encouraging people to post their entire life history online, with things like DirtyPhoneBook seemingly deliberately trying to encourage and reward this oversharing in the most base ways possible, and with Google memorializing this for all people for all time, I think that the way in which people will view their use of the internet, and how conflicts work online indeed will change.
#1 Posted by BlueGoldShirt, CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 12:30 PM
"Rule Number two on the web: You can mess with The Oatmeal, but messing with people who really understand the internets is serious business and consequences will never be the same.
Rule three: the cake is a lie.
Rule 34: Let's avoid rule 34"
Ftfy
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 01:10 PM
This highlights the difference between BuzzFeed and The New York Times. I just read an article on Bits Blog that said that Facebook was making changes to its privacy policy. The journalist directly quoted Facebook's Director of Product in a phone interview regarding a key aspect of the change in policy pertaining to privacy.
One can't believe everything one reads on the internet. Some things ARE credible though. BuzzFeed took a chance and lost, this time.
I don't like the idea that "no one messes with The Oatmeal", even though I do love Oatmeal comics. Maybe that's a separate matter. "Messing" with anyone, Oatmeal or otherwise, is wrong when it isn't factual.
#3 Posted by Ellie K, CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 02:19 PM
Rule 4: no one owes you an interview. And no mistake you make is the subject's fault for not talking to you.
#4 Posted by Edward Ericson Jr., CJR on Wed 12 Dec 2012 at 05:48 PM
It seems that accuracy of reporting on the internet is really going beyond just downhill, or sliding down any slippery slope or otherwise. There are so many inaccuracies on so many published news stories. I think the icing on the cake is today 12/14/12 with the reporting of the Newton school tragedy. If any major news source is going to name a killer with no verification, for worldwide release, then the FACTS need to be accurate. The reporting that I have seen today on that case is pathetic. Would you want to be publicized as a killer to the world and then graciously accept without issue just some flippant online retraction as an apology? Is that good enough after the initial destruction of your own good name? The major media sources should all get hit with major slander cases over today's examples of journalism that is beyond BAD. The Newton school reports on the internet were beyond unreliable, and examples of only the worst principles of public reporting. Spinning yarns and rumors is not reporting/journalism by any stretch of anyone's imagination!
#5 Posted by lisa , CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 08:01 PM
So I assume that you contact Amanda DiMarco and confirmed that 1. she is the PR person for the Oatmeal and 2. that she actually replied to the request from the reporter.
If you did neither of those then you are as guilty of just reply on internet searches as he was.
#6 Posted by Van, CJR on Fri 14 Dec 2012 at 10:57 PM
This specific article by Sara Morrison just touches on one aspect of the impact of internet journalism- basically public personal conflicts between writers that are actually making some kind of income from their internet activities. It seems to me that Sara is probing some of the fundamental vulnerabilities of the internet.
So, here's my two cents again. This is a little frontline maneuver, with a way-out, from left-field approach.
The internet really is not a media game for the contributors. The internet is not just a closed arena for members of the media institutions. Other citizens that are not members of the media institutions are not just the prey, nor the victims, nor the exploited sources for profit. It's really not a trickle-down arena for the yahoos/consumers to be entertained, distracted to compliance or perhaps controlled by any specific type of state or other organizations.
The internet is not a closed media format for just a few. It's not just a change from a paper to electronic or quicker, possibly easier, cheaper format for media corporations.
The internet is a high-risk virtual reality that many have jumped into or dived into with absolutely no awareness of the risks and consequences. The present trend is creating more of a cesspool of content that everyone is having to wade, explore, or even flee and hide, through different levels and avenues. A relatively few have the power to access demographic information and utilize the mined data for profit from the unsuspecting and unaware unpaid users of VR software.
The open, subscription-free, internet really isn't a fun, or benign world to explore or to educate anyone anymore. Was it ever? I used to be totally ignorant of the significant consequences from mining of data from use of purchased and free software. Is VR just becoming THE SOURCE for private use of mined data by privileged users of VR?
Is VR really turing nasty, and too risky for the average Joe? If you don't have a subscription to, or membership through employment, government, public school, University registration- what kind of information can you really search and access? It's getting to be a "pay-for-view", "pay-for-access" VR, with the prices increasing by the nano-second. If people can only read advertisements, that's not really contributing to an "informed" or "educated" citizenry.
The internet is a very lawless virtual reality that's becoming a virtual war zone.
I tried to watch the free HULU a few days ago. Three ads for a time interval of up to 90seconds every 5 minutes. Even if a person subscribes to HULU, there are still ads. Ads popup with sound, videos etc. on every boundary of the windows just with a click to a web-page. Just about the only page that does not initially include advertising bombing is the initial Firefox and Google browser windows.
Surfing the internet is tapping into an active war zone while clicking away ad- bombs by the second. Without advanced protective gear of varying levels, I'm lucky to not get a completely blacked out window! VR ad-bombs away while burying any reliable or any kind of accurate information.
The ads on HULU now even have links to program series about the advertisements. Is the latest trend now to just watch advertisements?
Oh goody! I can't wait to read the latest celebrity piece about Allstate's- series 5 2012. Do you remember when actor A is badmouthing actor B? Oh no! I can't wait to watch Burger King's ad#15, series 6, actor A is really smashing Actor B about his lousy acting in Allstate series 5, 2012. Oh no! please don't ask me what that last 5 minutes of program was about on HULU, I don't have the attention span to even tell you what I was even surfing for on the internet, when I hit "enter".
Really, who cares if any writer of any article on the internet has done any reliable
#7 Posted by lisa , CJR on Sat 15 Dec 2012 at 12:11 PM
to continue .....
Really, who cares if any writer of any article on the internet has done any reliable internet research, so long as everyone gets any brand of oatmeal, or even more digestible pablum!
#8 Posted by lisa , CJR on Sat 15 Dec 2012 at 12:18 PM