Tuesday, July 13, 2010

When bloggers merely blog to repeat news, they better divide it rightly

Yesterday local content-scraper, Nashvillest, incorrectly conveyed facts concerning the relocation of the Downtown Greyhound terminal:
The 8th Avenue Greyhound bus station is finally moseying its sweet self down to a temporary location on Charlotte so that crews can get on with the Music City Center construction. The bus station was pretty much the last thing standing in the way of the construction site.
Blogger Christy Frink makes the situation sound like the terminal has the project itself in gridlock. It's been my understanding that the Greyhound terminal only blocked construction on a small corner of the Music City Center site. Other than that patch, construction has gone on as planned. I confirmed this with the City Paper editor, Stephen George. CP journo Joey Garrison gave a more accurate reporting of the scope of the delays than Nashvillest did.

Is Christy's mistake heinous? Not by any means. But popular content scrapers should be a lot more judicious about conveying the news content they are scraping. Christy's spin on the story has the potential to create the impression that slow-walk deliberation of the relocation of Greyhound throws a wrench in the MCC project wholly, not partially. Because of its large following, Nashvillest has a long reach and can multiply misperception.

The lineage of Nashvillest posts on Greyhound terminal relocation hints that they are positively disposed to moving it anywhere but the Music City Center site. Along the way they have seemed displeased with delays. The bloggers are entitled to their opinions on this, but this reader wishes that they would not let their predisposition cloud the facts in this news. It is not too much to ask that the content scrapers be as detached to the relocation story as they were to the news that North End neighbors were upset about the furtive moves to spirit the blighted terminal closer to us.


UPDATE: Salemtown's Hutch points out that the Nashvillest coverage of the Greyhound move is also misleading insofar as the bloggers insinuate that Greyhound was lolly-gagging.

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