Ignoring the New York Times

On Zeldman.com, were a bunch of links one of which is to a New York Times article on blogging. More specifically it is about linking and blogging, something I’ve written about, oh months ago. Zeldman seemed to think the article was worth reading but it pissed me off.

They set out to examine the top 50 blogs and how they interlink thus promoting themselves and strengthening their positions both in search engines and in the top 50 blog rankings. They make a passing comment on how some of the blogs have no links saying:

Some top-50 sites don’t have any links from the others shown here, usually because they are big in Japan, China, or Europe—regions still new to the phenomenon.

Not all popular blogs are in English

Then they list all the blogs and give a little blurb about them. According to them the tenth most popular blog in the world is ” spaces.msn.com/klcintw” they couldn’t be bothered to learn the actual title. They do have this to say though “The Horn Village Blog, in Chinese.” The 12th most popular blog in the whole world is described as “In Chinese.” the 15th as “In Arabic.” Then what really pissed me off the 16th was described as:

Madrid, Spain–based blogger Marcelino Madrigal writes in Spanish on music, graffiti, and whatever else he wants.

Lazy Translation

So it is not that the New York Times can’t be bothered to email the author, or use Babelfish, or hire a translator, or even ask someone who speaks the language what the site is about. No, they can be bothered for a Spanish site that is about “music and graffiti“, crucially important information to New York Times readers, but I guess they think their readers don’t care what the billion Chinese speakers are blogging about, or the Arabic speakers, or even the Japanese.

And Americans wonder why people don’t like them? Or why people think they are arrogant and ignorant?

Lets just say I won’t be reading another New York Times article anytime soon and I don’t think their readership in China, Japan, or the Middle East is going to improve anytime soon.

I just commented today to my mom, how Beijing, even now that I’ve left still represents one of the largest concentrations of visitors to Muschamp.ca

Thew New York Times embraces Chinese

Maybe some of the criticism I and others have leveled at the New York Times about their online edition and short sighted statements of opinion as fact has not gone unnoticed. On Twitter a reporter today linked to the New York Times in Chinese. So they went from being too lazy to find out the title of the 12th most popular blog in the world in their investigation of the most popular blogs in the world, because it was in Chinese, to translating a significant portion of the news they report into Chinese.

If you have thoughts on the New York Times, blogging, or Chinese you can leave them below. My Chinese is incredibly poor but I did live in China and blog extensively.

This entry was originaly posted on March 3rd, 2006, it was last edited on March 4th, 2019 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Arabic, Blogging, Chinese, Quality.