Gizmodo seeks attention, gets it?

January 16, 2008 | In Technology | No Comments

The Consumer Electronics Show seems to draw more and more attention from main stream media each year. With the popularity of HDTVs exploding and every other person owning an MP3 player, technology is no longer relegated the the geeks and nerds in the AV room.

With more media outlets and the growth in the tech blogging community, the competition to be “your source” for news at CES has never been more fervent. Some source did live blogging, others did creative videos, while at least one blog made a complete fool of itself.

This year, Gizmodo did a stunt at CES. Using a gadget advertised on late night TV that turns off all televisions within a certain radius. Said blogger took the device and shut off dozens of flashy new HDTVs throughout the show and interrupted a press conference. This of course annoyed vender’s, organizers and generally everybody with any sense of common decency.

The individuals responsible for the stunt over at said tech blog have made claims of civil disobedience to prove their independence and not being part of the establishment. The problem comes in that this particular blog is part of a major corporation that is seeking as much traffic as possible – note advertisers paid the bills that allowed the bloggers to do this prank.

Any claims of civil disobedience as a reasoning behind the stunt is pure posturing. This was all about page views, click throughs and visibility. This particular blog has a history of such antics drawing both curious attention and negative attention. As time goes on the site has lost a great deal of credibility. While their competition (Engadget) has almost always taken a journalistic high road, avoiding such stunts and recognizing what credibility is really about.

I have to be honest, I have never been a fan of Gizmodo. Its always felt a little less tasteful or honest in comparison to its competitors. This incident just serves to prove the point. While its competition have run into controversy – including one reported rumor that likely caused a serious, all be it short lived, dip in Apple’s stock price on Wall Street – Engadget has generally felt more trust worthy.

As a professional journalist I question the tactics and explanations from the perpetrator. From posting a “comedy” video of the clips to their “response” to the criticism that flooded the tech community in recent days.

In the end, if they wanted to get attention, they’ve obviously made their point. As for their journalistic credibility – I’d argue they never really had it.