Part Three, (Four?) in the whole Bloggers Vs. Trades War. This time Anne Thompson weighs in and defends Variety’s position. And or at least weighs in on quotes Variety EIC Peter Bart gave to MTV about four weeks ago.
She cites the “300″ sequel news as being the last big altercation between bloggers and trades and as far as we can remember, that does seem to be the last flare-up there was.
To recap, story goes like this: Collider got an interview with “300” director Zack Snyder which they called, “Exclusive Zack Snyder Video Interview Backstage at Saturn Awards.” And the news of a “300” sequel was in the third graph. Not in your headline? That’s called burying the lead and really the credit goes to the editorializing bloggers at SlashFilm who called out that little nugget of news as any blogger should, “300 Prequel/Sequel Moving Forward.”
When Variety confirmed the story, that “300” creator Frank Miller was writing something that Snyder would direct, Collider and places like IESB.net cried foul.
Variety alluded to Collider’s news, but didn’t provide a link or cite them by name.
“Another ‘300’ has been rumored from the start, but last week Snyder and the original producing team stoked a frenzy online when they talked about it at the Saturn Awards.”
Then again, what Snyder told Collider wasn’t exactly a sure-fire this-is-happening proclamation, in fact, it sounded incredibly tentative.
“Yeah, I’ve talked to Frank a little bit about it, and he’s going to do something, I think he’s going to draw something. We’ll see what he does. If something’s cool we’ll make a movie out of it,” said Snyder.
Not exactly full steam ahead. Thompson defends their position saying, “it’s not so cut and dry.” “This doesn’t mean that Variety purposely stole the story, as Collider suggested. Variety’s Diane Garrett actually nailed down more info.”
Without throwing too much fuel on this flame, Thompson says lack of accreditation on the web happens all the time and shit happens (also there’s no mention of bigger blogs stealing off of lesser blogs either, this happens ALL the time).
“The fight for numbers now is so fierce that the site that breaks a story wants to get credit for it—via links and traffic. That is what is at stake. By the way, a host of mainstream outlets, online and print, rewrite Variety stories without always giving us credit, either. This is the way of the world.”
Frankly, both sides have a point here, but note to bloggers: stop burying the lead and learn to editorialize you’re content and you’re going to have a much better case against the trades when these issues come up, but responsibility cuts both ways.
