From the majority of the team, this is a pretty good and textbook PR mea culpa. “Here’s how we screwed up, here’s how we’re fixing it.”
The pushing the merch was tone-deaf and the defensive whining from Linus was NOT on-point, though. I appreciate it ended with “how I’m going to fix it,” but he should keep the defensive shit to himself.
I did watch the video. And I don’t agree with him. He needs to ask for a comment.
Nope. You call them up and go, “This is happening and we’re running a story. Care to comment?” You should even have a list of questions to ask if they agree. They can give you bullshit answers if they want, then you point those out and add that to the story. It doesn’t have to affect the story. Facts are facts, and they can try to explain it away, but can’t. You’re still holding them accountable. You’re just also giving them a chance to apologize or own up to it. And if they dont’ comment, you include that.
Steve and crew are amazing tech journalists. They’re doing great work. But that’s a miss in this whole thing.
I agree with Steve on everything, this was a huge blunder and fail in messaging from Linus. But you are supposed to reach out and ask for comment before running a story. I was a news reporter and have a master’s in public relations.
Edit: Called Linus “Linux”
Thank you for your hard work! I’m a big fan of both systems. What’s the alternative for systems relying on captchas keeping out bots though?
OK, this I can agree with. And in fairness I was never writing about a big, constantly-updated video channel that was continually talking about itself. But it still screams to me there needs to be a chance at letting them respond.