Photo courtesy of IESB
IESB’s Robert Sanchez has never been one to keep quiet. He’s known for his no nonsense tough guy attitude, and is usually very vocal on and off the internet. During Robert’s Masters of the Web panel at Comic-Con 2007, the IESB webmaster attacked Cinematical.com and the blogosphere:
“It’s not only established media … we’re not bloggers, for God’s sakes. I’m not a f**king blogger. You know, we might have a blog, but we don’t blog. Chud’s not a blog. Latino Review’s not a blog. And I hate when the established ‘quote unquote’ media treats us as bloggers. But at the same time, bloggers who live 300 miles away from any f**king studio will pick up our stories and they do the exact same thing. There’s even a couple that are owned, by like, AOL — I’m not gonna mention their f**king names — that will run stories without giving us credit. Or they’ll do a stupid little hyperlink, like ’sources are saying,’ you know. But they won’t mention your name. We’re the ones working our asses off to bring you guys news, and we do. I think everyone here does it full time, or almost full time. You know, we have families to support … but son of a bitch, these little bloggers who don’t do anything but live with their mom will take our stories and not give us credit and they write them up as their own.”
Cinematical fought back with an angry editorial by Ryan Stewart. But honestly, it came off like a lame high school argument, with Stewart bragging about all the interviews, festivals and set visits he’s been invited to. What does that have to do with anything? You get invited because you work for a website which is owned and operated by AOL. That’s why you’re there. Nothing against Cinematical, but Ryan’s argument is weak. I like cinematical, and Ryan Stewart is usually a very good writer (much better than I will ever be). I have met a lot of nice people that work for the company, and the truth is that Cinematical does have some top notch writing. That’s way it’s so disappointing to see they engage in such deceptive linking practices.
I’ve had problems with Robert in the past (I think we’ve both agreed to move forward), and I don’t agree with the way that he fights his battles (I still haven’t been able to get the guy to return a phone call to settle a long ago misunderstanding, but I digress). I do however agree with him on one issue: It appears that Cinematical makes an effort to hide story credit using text-based hyperlinks within the story and/or sometimes in a nondescript “read” link in the post meta area. This is certainly the wrong way to handle things. I use to work for Cinematical years ago before AOL bought them out. I was trained to write posts using this method of formatting, and continued to use that policy when I started /Film. Robert (IESB) and Ronnie (then of LatinoReview) contacted me and changed my mind on how news stories deserved to be linked. You will notice that every nonexclusive news story on /Film contains an identified link to a website source, usually in the first sentence. This has become and remains our policy.
However, I do disagree with Robert in the area of blogs. We don’t all live in our parents basements. This is a full time job for me and many others. I also think it’s narrow minded to think of blogs as noncontributing content. As the web becomes congested with more and more information, content and news overload, audiences need to find a filter for content. Look at the big websites out there today. Amazon has an extensive recommendation engine to further filter the products on their website to the user. iTunes offers user playlists to further help filter their library. The same thing is happening to news and content. Social sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit allow users to submit and vote on content from around the web. Filtering is the future of the long tailed web.
Blogs like The Movie Blog, FirstShowing, FilmSchool Rejects, Screenrant and /Film serve as a personal filter of the news, adding opinionated supplemental content. We don’t cover all the news stories of the day, nor do we try to. We cover the news that interests us the most. Hopefully our readership relates to our sensibilities. There is a value for this. Even blogs that don’t offer “scoops” on a regular basis have a big value in this new long tailed web world. How many scoops does a site like PerezHilton get? Probably not many. But Perez knows what news and photos will appeal to his readership because it appeals to him. He acts as a meta filter.
Breaking scoops is not the bottom line key to everything. Sure it helps, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. All that counts is readership. Readers will flock to the source they find most valuable. May-be it’s because of the site usability/design, maybe the personal voice and sensibilities, may-be the content filtering, may-be the scoops, may-be it’s because of exclusive editorial content, maybe it’s because of the community. But I’m guessing it’s a combination of all of the above. Readers aren’t stupid, and they certainly won’t stand for deceptive practices. And at the end of the day, the site that people like to read the most will win out.
What the other blogs are saying:
Neil Miller at Film School Rejects:
“The ultimate problem I see is that there seems to be a rift between to sectors of the online community, almost unnecessarily. What Robert was referring to is the fact that there are websites (specifically some blogs) out there that give online press a bad name. These sites are not responsible with information and have made studios nervous about really opening up to the online community. Unfortunately, he chose to lash out toward a site like Cinematical, which is certainly not the root of the problem. It seems sad at this point, but things are not going to get any better if online outlets continue to lash out at each other. Our real battle is with traditional media. Our readerships are larger, our interaction with our readers is more instant and undoubtedly more impactful and it is time that we get the respect that we deserve.”
Ray at The Rec Show:
“We all have something unique to bring to the common movie theater we share together. We are bound by that love of dimming lights, trumpeting fanfare, and the roiling emotions of an electrified crowd. We all love being transported together - despite being even thousands of miles apart - and then swapping intellectual spit with each other through our various sites.”
August 4th, 2007 at 7:51 am
“Cinematical makes an effort to hide story credit using text-based hyperlinks within the story and/or sometimes in a nondescript “read†link in the post meta area.”
Actually, we don’t “make an effort” to hide our source links. Peter, I started writing for Cinematical two months after you, and not once was I encouraged nor did I ever encourage any writer to hide their source links. Basically we give our writers the freedom to write the story in any way they see fit, so long as they credit the source at some point through a link and/or a mention.
We are not the only ones who operate this way, and I can name several other sites who do the same exact thing. I’ve actually seen here before posters that were exclusive to Cinematical show up on /Film without any credit back to us. So don’t preach that we’re involved in some shady practices when the rest of movieland does the same thing. 9 out of 10 times we do mention the name of the site we’re sourcing within the post, and we’ll even provide “via” links if we found the news through another site (something that’s extremely extremely rare across the web).
I can point to hundreds of stories on other sites that I know were discovered through Cinematical, but the writer for the other site decided to credit the original (and random) source as if they happened to stumble across it themselves a half hour after it went live on Cinematical. So let’s not pretend Cinematical is in this shady group all by themselves.
Do I agree with the way Ryan handled the situation and handled his post. Yes and no. I do feel we have a right to publicly defend ourselves when someone publicly punches us in the back while we’re not looking. But I do think there were other ways to appoach the post, and the “this is what I did, what have you done” approach is not one that I personally believe in.
My main problem with Robert’s argument is that, while he doesn’t want the “mainstream media” labeling him as a disgusting “movie blogger,” he has no problem turning around and labeling all movie bloggers as people who sit in their mother’s basement. To use a Simpsons reference, it’s like Nelson punching Bart, and Bart turning around to punch Milhouse because he wants someone to shit on too. And, in my opinion, that’s just not right.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Ewwwww … I wanted to write a positive article to try and bridge the gap, but it looks like it’s getting uglier.
I agree with Erik that Robert should not categorize bloggers as people who sit in their mother’s basement. My mother lets me use my computer upstairs.
http://www.therecshow.com
August 4th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Members of the online film community should not openly attack each other. It’s just that simple. It makes us all look bad. I agree that Cinematical had the right to publicly respond to Robert, since Robert’s attack was public… but it should just end there.
People come to our sites to read about movie news and opinions, not this stuff. Shit slinging just always ends with everyone smelling like shit.
August 4th, 2007 at 9:49 am
We all need to play nice in the sandbox now.
First of all Cinematical is a corp owned site who gets spoon feed by studios like Warner Bros cause they are part of that studio and what not. So Ryan shouldn’t say he isn’t a corp site, he is and he is a blogger period.
Also scoops do mean a lot believe it or not, hence the reason a lot the readers come to which ever site has the best scoop or what not and then you have these bloggers rip them off from their hard work and post them on their blog site and then use these social network sites like DIGG to get traffic for a story they never had.
if it weren’t for these social networks sites, sites like cinematical, firstshowing wouldn’t be nothing just a site that no one really goes to cause when was the last time any of those sites really broke a story????
I thought so.
Posters????Give me a freaking break.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Erik, first of all, I tried really hard to write my article in a fair manner, and did not attack anyone (me and robert have some past bad blood but i held back and stuck to the issues at hand). It’s very disapointing that you chose to play dirty and resort to personal attacks in your posting.
The format that cinematical chose and opperates under is one that is inclusive of putting the credit links hidden within the sentences. True or false? Wouldn’t it be just as easy to just write “IESB is reporting” with a link to IESB? Is it a hard thing to do? Then why not?
Do other websites do the same thing you guys do? Yes! Is it wrong? YES! Just because other sites do it doesn’t make it any more right. This is an article about the issues in the IESB vs. Cinematical fight, and thats why we’re talking about cinematical doing it..
Erik, before you make a claim that I stole anything from Cinematical, back up your claim with proof and a link. Because I know that this has not happened. I’m willing to bet money on this, find an example in the last 6 months.
And yes, I agree with John, Ray and Calle, we should play nice. I wrote this article because I had something to say about both of the issues I wrote about. And I feel like I wrote about both issues in a very fair manner without attacking anyone. Even Robert e-mailed me telling me I was “very fair” in my response.
Instead of aguing, why don’t we turn this into a public discussion about the issues: Erik: Why don’t you think that a top notch site like cinematical shouldn’t have clear spelled out credit links to the story source? Doesn’t that seem like the best way to do things?
And Calle: I’ve had only a few front page diggs in the last two months (three of which I didn’t even submit), and none of them were scoop related (one was a list, the other was a funny photo, another was a Sopranos talkback, and one was a trailer). These diggs bring immediate traffic but the digg users leave pretty quickly and do not return to the website. We did not appear on any other social networking sites in the last 60 days (as far as I know) yet, in June we doubled our hits of May and in July we doubled our hits of June. So in the period of the last 60 days we’ve quadrupled our hits without the help of social networking sites. Social networking sites are not responsible for user/reader growth as much as you would think.
One of my favorite moments at Comic-Con was hanging out with all the other webmasters and online movie writers at a Party. It was fun to connect with all the people I talk to each week online. Everyone was extremely nice, including Kevin from cinematical. The truth is in this new long tailed web, we should all be friends. There is a place for all of us. We should be celebrating the online movie community and not arguing and bickering. And I hope we can all do that soon. We can all bennifit as a community or fail singularly. I choose the first option.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:58 am
If that guy really cares about his job and doesn’t want to be called a blogger…maybe he should shut his fat face.
He must have too much time on his hands.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
True true, websites should get along. Not fighting over stupid stuff, that kind of reminded me of AICN vs Coming Attractions. I loved Coming Attractions and wish they would come back.
But bottom line you guys are all (while not much the blog sites) trying to out scoop somebody else before the trades confirm it and thats the fun thing about this stuff instead of getting spoon feed by the studios.
I saw those pictures on IESB about the party and saw the video piece of the party over at Latino Review and let me tell you something they (since Robert and the owner of LR are Latinos) know how to throw a freaking party.
Which next year those other websites are going to try and surpass them. LOL
Calle13
August 4th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Calle 13, I don’t know why you felt the need to call out my website - FirstShowing.net. We have broken a few scoops but I’ll admit that we’re based out of Colorado so we don’t live in LA and I don’t snoop around restaurants and hotels to overhear and find rumors.
However, what we do is a service to the internet combined with a bit of personal subjectiveness. Digg is a whole other story that is not based on who broke the story but rather the way the content is presented. The internet isn’t a world of who broke it, it’s a world of who present it better. All the newspapers in the world cover the same world wide stories when they’re huge, but you choose to read specific ones because you like the content and the way they’re laid out that’s how it works here on the internet, too.
If you run a site and are having problems having your story “stolen” then it’s you own obligation to work yourself to promote it and say you are the original breaker. Digg is user run, it’s not just us the webmasters controlling it. It’s the users who control the internet…
August 4th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I’m sorry, but I think Cinematical is pretty much right on here.
The hypocrisy of IESB here is pretty stunning. Every day I visit IESB, and they cut and paste text straight out of VARIETY, with no link to their story. That, to me, is much worse than what Cinematical or most other blogs do. They lift copy from another source and use it to get hits and ad revenue. At least those blogs he’s slamming bother to write their own copy.
I get that Cinematical makes for an easy target, being owned by AOL. But again, this is a serious case of wanting to have it both ways. I mean, what about those hard working people at Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, who don’t see any ad revenue when IESB decides to appropriate their content.
And let’s be honest, they do it because they don’t want to redirect traffic to another site. Variety might be named in the article, but I’m pretty sure they’d prefer a link. Who wouldn’t?
The whole argument has been silly though. Both sides have turned into an immature pissing match about who gets the most interviews and set visits. I could care less. How about you both just pull them out and measure whose is biggest?
I also really resented the whole “mom’s basement” thing. Hey, got any more really tired cliches you want throw out there? Like people view sites like his as soooo much more sophisticated. Please. The presentation on IESB is awful, the design is an assault on taste.
On top of all that, NONE of this stuff is true journalism. It’s all given away. Reach a certain number on your metrics, and studios invite you to stuff. Wow– which one are you, Woodward or Bernstein?
My blog, scramblenetwork.com, is a pop culture aggregator. Like this site, I add a little editorial to the mix, but mostly, its about culling together the stories I think my readers would want to see. Most items get a few lines at most, so no, I don’t always name the source, but I always provide a link. I designed it with casual readers in mind… when I had a full time day job, i didn’t have time to check 50-plus pop culture sites and readers just don’t do it for me. My blog is built for that crowd, and I really doubt they give a damn about who “broke” the story first. I’d love to know what IESB think of sites like mine,who probably refer a decent number of readers to them. I bet it ain’t good.
August 4th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Robert’s Response to AOL, I Mean Cinematical
http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2985&Itemid=99
Ryan Stewart you want an apology? Sure, as soon as you change your web ethics and your “handy†way of linking to sites that work their asses off to get the latest news.
I will be quick about this because there is no reason to drag it out and we aren’t in high school anymore, but I want to make sure to answer your questions.
Below is an example of what I was bitching about. No where in the text does it mention IESB as the source of the news and this was truly a scoop and a great piece of casting for Watchmen (sorry I missed your Will Arnet scoop, I am sure people are much more interested in that than in Watchmen casting) -
Pretty simple, properly link to the source, don’t bury it.
You mentioned something in regards to a set visit that you attended a couple of weeks ago and that the IESB wasn’t there. Would that be The Dark Knight set visit? A set visit that was set up by Warner Brothers. Gee, let me think, who owns Cinematical? AOL right? And AOL is part of Time Warner, or am I mistaken? Hmm…how special that you went to a set visit run by your own company.
We didn’t see you when we were at the Prince Caspian set visit in Prague, or the countless of others that we have done this year including The Dark is Rising in Bucharest and the Sci-fi Digital Day in Vancouver or Inkheart and Golden Compass in London (Update, Ryan has let me know that they were at this other Time Warner set visit of Inkheart and Golden Compass), but who’s counting right? And about mid-September, would the visit you are referring to be Watchmen? Another Warner Bros. movie, convenient.
Also, you just asked for my interview roster for July to compare, here’s a partial list…cast of Hot Rod including Andy Samberg and Ian McShane, Danny Boyle, cast of Harry Potter including Daniel Radcliffe, cast of Rescue Dawn including Christian Bale, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Evan Goldberg for Superbad, Paul W.S. Anderson, Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter, Sam Raimi, Robert Downey Jr., Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, James Kyson Lee, Zachary Quinto, Milo Ventimiglia, Frank Darabont, The creators of the Simpsons including Matt Groening, Todd McFarlane, Aaron Douglas, Clive Owen, Michael Davis, Rob Zombie, Peter Segal, Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, Tobin Bell and Darren Lynn Bousman, Peter Fonda and Ben Foster, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker and Brett Ratner “should I go on†as you said?
Considering that you are a corporate owned site and backed by millions of dollars from AOL/Time Warner you should have a much better access to talent and you are expected to, funny that we have more 1:1s. So far as IESB is concerned, IESB is owned by me and my wife. We run the site and with the help of some great people we do the work that we do. We work hard for the right to interview the talent that we do.
When one of your writers contacted us asking about my rant I didn’t hide the fact that I was referring to Cinematical, the site that you work for. How about you having the balls to go on the record and say what sites you were referring to in your article. Really Ryan, how about owning up to that? There were a lot of “this site does this,†and “that site does that,†going on. So which sites where you referring to?
None of the 10 sites that were part of that panel have ever taken one of my stories without clearly giving IESB credit for it. Do you want to know why? It’s about ethics and character, something that Cinematical is lacking. By the way, the Rendition trailer that you brought up, we had it up before Moviefone, and it doesn’t belong to Moviefone, it belongs to the studio. It’s not something that Moviefone went and worked their ass off to report on, or interviewed somebody to get the information, it was a studio trailer. We have various “sources†that always send us stuff early, that one just looked particularly interesting and it’s a Gavin Hood movie so I posted it.
FYI to our readers, we don’t mind blogs and other sites as long they give credit to where credit is due, very simple really, don’t steal stories and pretend that they are your own. Period.
One more thing, your headline was “How Robert Sanchez of IESB.net Treats His Friends.†Let me show you how I treat my friends. In case you missed it, check out the Masters of the Web party at Comic Con that was hosted by the IESB and Latinoreview. You can click on the thumbnails below. Not bad for a couple of independently owned websites.
Guests included Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Weston, Mark Neveldine, Lauren Lee Smith, Brian Taylor, Frank Reyes, Marc Schoelermann, Ray Park, Michael Davis, Daniel Alter, Tom DeSanto, Zack Ward, Robert Meyer Burnett, Neil Marshall, Ken Foree, Brandon Molale, Chris Tongue, Chris Patton, Ryan Wieber, Michael Scott, our favorite studio publicists from Hollywood, the boys and girls from IESB.net, Joblo.com, Darkhorizons.com, TheMovieBlog.com, Chud.com, Latinoreview.com, Ropeofsilicon.com, Bloody-Disgusting.com, Comingsoon.net/Superherohype.com, Shocktilyoudrop.com, Movieweb.com, Collider.com, Blackfilm.com, Firstshowing.net, IGN.com, Rottentomatoes.com, Rue Morgue Magazine, People Magazine, ReelzChannel.com, About.com and many, many more.
August 5th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Let’s give both IESB and Cinematical proper credit for one thing: The name-dropping bullshit is both amateurish and gross.
It’s the movie website version of “My Dad is bigger than your Dad.”
August 5th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I wish those who consistently pull out the corporate card on Cinematical actually got to spend a day in the life of Cinematical. Since I’d like to preserve my job, I can’t go into specifics — but let’s just say it ain’t very much fun. We’re a very opionated site, and studios hate opinionated sites because, at some point, something bad will be said about one of their movies. No one “hooks” us up with anything, and it’s a lot more of a burden than a perk.
Cinematical made a name for itself long before AOL bought out Weblogs, Inc., and a good majority of our writers came to the site with their own contacts (those who know our writers know they also write for other sites, print pubs and television stations). Aside from a mild traffic boost, where not much different from any other blog with the exception that we have to fight to retain our freedom of speech a lot more than, say, IESB.
With regards to my beef with Peter, we’ve discussed the matter in private over email (where this whole thing should’ve ended up in the first place), and I feel we’ve resolved a lot of our issues. I’m not one to resort to low blows; I’m a movie writer just like everyone else is, and I’d love for everyone to happily be able to co-exist in this realm just as much as the next guy.
I left a corporate cubicle existance, and a heck of a lot of money, to be able to do what I love for a living. I probably make less than the guy from Burger King, but I will rarely complain. At the end of the day, there’s nothing better than being able to wake up, write about what you love, and share that passion with a slew of like-minded individuals. And if I can make some solid friends out of that — make someone smile and laugh from time to time — then it’s all worth it.
August 5th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Wouldn’t this be over if Ryan/Cinematical would admit that they wrote a story and did not give IESB credit?
Doesn’t Ryan also have beef with Devin from Chud and also Ed from SHH!?
It’s funny to see that those 11 sites on that panel all get along and that must be for a reason.
I have emailed multiple sites and no one has one complaint about IESB, actually they say that Robert and Stephanie go out of their way to help this community and even help out competing sites.
Cinematical should swallow its pride and make up with IESB.
August 5th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Well, since Peter was so gracious as to reference my site in his article (Thanks Pete), I feel that it is only fitting that I make a comment (or six).
First off, there is an underlying theme here of contempt toward the entire medium of blogging. I was there during the “Masters of the Web” panel to witness Robert’s comments first hand. It is undeniable that the larger websites look down upon blogs. The reason for this is that some blogs out there are not responsible with how they deliver information to their readers. They don’t link back, they don’t contribute to the community and they certainly don’t play fair. It gives blogs a bad name and that is unfortunate. Their are blogs out there (The Movie Blog, Slashfilm, Firstshowing, etc) have great integrity. That is why their sites are successful.
They also provide perspective on the news. Alex and Peter are correct when the talk about the fact that it is more about how you present the news rather than just being the first to report it. There are readers that read all of our sites. And while they may see the same story on each site, they are getting a unique perspective with each stop.
The big sites do it, too. One of the best sites with perspective is CHUD. They may be abrasive at times, but they always present the news differently from what you would see in Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. Latino Review and IESB are very similar in that sense. The list could go on and on. The point is that we are all similar in the fact that we add our unique perspective, often to the same story.
Do I think Robert’s comments were a little too general in attacking “blogs”? Sure. I think that even he would say that there are some blogs out there that do things right.
Do I think that Ryan spouted off a bit and turned it into a big pissing match? Yes. He could have been a lot more tactful in the way he approached the issue, but he let his emotions spill into his post. It happens.
The big thing to remember here is what John Campea was getting at above. These things should not be done via the public forum, for one. As well, it really isn’t right for members of the online community to be lashing out toward each other. We have bigger issues to deal with, like traditional media looking down on us. And something like this just adds to any negative perception about the online community that may already exist.