Gizmodo Baits The Bears

At CES last week, Gizmodo pulled a prank, using a little gadget called TV-B-Gone to turn off a wall of televisions. It was silly, and probably ill-conceived, and CNet's coverage (through Webware) made the gaffe sound like the crisis in Darfur.

The story was up on CNet all weekend. Why? Because it's a relatively juicy story, and CNet wants juicy traffic. I don't blame them - so do I! That said: relax. The Gizmodo-prank-story-phenom illustrates precisely why blogs are filling in the gaps of media coverage and, in some areas, replacing traditional journalism: in addition to reporting topic-specific news in modular, easily-consumed online form, blogs boost their coverage with a more casual tone and the promise of some adventuresome, if not necessarily professional, features.

All weekend? Really? This is still the biggest story in the electronics industry?

I remember asking Chris Early, the head of Games For Windows and former XBLA chief, if he had any notion of what proportion of XBLA's sales were due to late-night weekend impulse buys from the stoner crowd. It was less about the question and more about helping to create a media environment in which unconventional questions could be asked openly and in which all interviews and Q&As did not necessarily follow the same formula. I couldn't have asked that question with the hobgoblin of "traditional professionalism" breathing down my neck.

Of course Gizmodo shouldn't have nixed those displays at CES, and it's probably just as well that one Gizmodo staffer has been banned from the show. But "additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media"? I see no WMDs. I see Brian Lam's cool-headed response, but no, I can't say that an overly aggressive prank at a trade show in Las Vegas strikes me as particularly worth hysterics of this order.