The Story
For the second time in two days, I find I must apologize to the readers of this blog. The posting pictured above, Opening Impenetrable Clamshells, I now realize, does not meet the standards that I personally expect of the Heck Of A Guy Blog. Now, the content itself, the style, and the layout are acceptable if not spectacular. Nor am I chagrined that the recommendations I made in the post to resolve the problem discussed were improved upon and surpassed by the suggestions in the comment made by the inestimable Mrs. Linklater. That is, indeed, how blog interaction is supposed to work.
It’s Time
No, the fault lies in timeliness. I recognized when I originally composed the piece (posted 26 July 2006) that it lagged behind its two quoted sources, The Oyster Awards from Consumers Reports (March 2006) and Tales From Packaging Hell from Wired (22 May 2006), by four and two months, respectively. On the other hand, I was then, and remain now, a novice still in the throes of learning the fundamentals of blogcraft, I thought I could offer some added value by synthesizing other information along with the material from these sources, and I have a special interest in such everyday frustrations, all of which, I believe to this day, justified the publication of this article in July.
And, it’s not as though I promote the Heck Of A Guy Blog as one of those sites that remind viewers to constantly refresh their browsers lest they miss the latest reports. “Breaking news” at 1heckofaguy.com translates into little more than updates on the NCAA Basketball Tournament (only 192 days until the first game of the first round), alerts to something going on at the time in another blog, seasonal notifications of the Sumer Is Icumen sort, and the occasional current photo of the progeny (or sonogram of Awesome-O) performing some act in the more or less present tense. Heck, I don’t even do much journaling of the “How I Spent My Past 24 Hours” sort, which viewers who know what’s good for them would be wise to appreciate. Most of my posts are time-insensitive. Two posts from last week, Pish-Posh Pastiche Post and More Found Art in fact, were presented primarily as nostalgia. The opening words of A Labor (of Love) Day Weekend Post from two days ago were ” Twenty-nine years ago this morning, … .”
Such rationalizations, however, cannot absolve one of all journalistic sins. There are, after all, some blog values that are the equivalents of moral absolutes. One of those, which this blog came perilously close to violating, can be expressed as
A buddy of mine runs TrendPointers, a sophisticated, web-based service that he characterizes as “early alert system of the emergence and trajectory of events and news relevant to investment decisions.” He states the principle straightforwardly,
The last link in the information chain is the mass media. It’s been said many times, in many ways — by the time the big news is on the cover of Time, its too late. The popular news typically does not pick up on the next big thing until the big thing is well under way. Mass media usually have long lead times and, very often, start their coverage only after lesser sources have already raised the visibility of the issue.1
The blogger’s responsibility is clear. Yet, displayed on the front page of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune was this story:
The content of the indicated article, Retailers burst plastic bubble,2 can be discerned from the subtitle and the first two lines:
The *&%$# clamshells that are a pain to open are going away
You buy vitamins or a video game, tools or a toy. All that now stands between you and your purchase is a thick layer of rigid plastic that seems tougher to crack than Ft. Knox.
Yes, it’s true. The Chicago Tribune’s front page story on 4 September 2006 was similar to the Heck Of A Guy post of 26 July 2006.
I’ll leave it to the reader to judge between the comparative merits of versions of the article appearing in The Trib (which quoted the same Consumer’s Reports source) and this blog … if that reader wants to waste his or her time. The correct answer is, the Heck Of A Guy piece is much better, even if one doesn’t take into account Mrs. Linklater’s contribution. Of course, The Trib has to make do with a huge, salaried staff of reporters, fact-checkers, and editors while the Heck Of A Guy blog has me and a slow, intermittently available satellite access to the internet so it’s hardly a fair competition.
Nonetheless, the bottom line is that the Heck Of A Guy blog was barely more than a month ahead of The Trib on the same story.
There is nothing to do but ask the readers’ forgiveness and vow that I will take every step necessary to prevent another occurrence of such an embarrassment.
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As one of many who have never been able to catch DrHGuy in any mistake, grammtical or otherwise, I can’t help but take some perverse pleasure from noting that the original post was
26 July 2006 NOT the published note 26 July 2004.
This very inconsequential gotcha falls under the category ‘Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then’
My humble thanks to DoD. This is clearly the kind of help I need. The error has been corrected.