A Change Of Venue

“I always gagged on the silver spoon.”

A mini rant here. Those of you who have wandered by this blog every once in a while to have a quick look-see, or even spend some quality time perusing the content, might recall that I incorporate some of my favourite links to other sites, just here on the right-hand sidebar. They include a couple of friends’ blogs and a handful of others that I find especially noteworthy.

Well, as of today one of those links has changed.

Gadling is (or rather, was) an excellent source of travel-based material: pointers, tidbits and recommendations from real-world travellers, just like me and many of the people I know. It was well-written, informative, frequently funny and often a source of solid travel data that simply couldn’t be found anywhere else, certainly not in this format.

Sadly, that began to deteriorate about six months ago. It has recently devolved into a poorly-written, badly-edited screed that looks and reads as if it were being managed by a twelve-year old bully with Bill O’Reilly syndrome (”WE’LL DO IT LIVE!”). It has become nothing more than a hobbled shadow of its former self. But there’s more (or less, depending on how you see it).

In the past few weeks there have been many posts to Gadling that were not only severely off-topic, but xenophobic and in at least two instances hurtful - all written by the same person (who shall remain nameless). I weighed-in on these posts and posted my comments along with a number of friends who agreed and did the same, plus many others from all over the world. The response from Gadling (parent: AOL) was not only to ban one of the commenters from the site (and possibly others), but to eradicate their comments as well. It’s as if they and their comments never existed - they were ‘disappeared’.

Just this morning Gadling sent an e-mail to this person suggesting that the ‘Comments’ section was not the place to comment on the content of a blog entry or the way in which it’s written. BULLSHIT! That’s why it’s called a ‘Comments’ section - it is the very reason for it. The point of the exercise was to be as public about the comments (and the outrage) as possible, not to have it lie in some weak editor’s virtual in-box.

And lest anyone think that this was the reaction of one, maybe two responders (myself included), one particular post that clearly struck a nerve garnered over 400 responses, dozens of which took this writer to task for the very same poorly considered and badly written content.

There’s a sadness at losing a great travel website to amateurish hacks. There’s precious little really good travel writing online or even through newspapers and periodicals these days, and Gadling was a breath of fresh air. Finding new and engaging material posted several times a day (often MANY times), was great - you never knew where the next ‘adventure’ was coming from. Yes, there are good writers submitting to Gadling, quite a few actually. But they seem few and far between when compared to the prolific output of the others. The only upside to this deterioration is that all those terrific articles that USED to populate the site are searchable in their database.

But this is more than just ‘loss.’ The one particular Gadling writer is not alone - there are others. The level of quality writing — never mind the horrid grammar, spelling and geographical errors — is quite astonishing when compared to what it was six months ago, even four. The meanspiritedness, and even outright callousness of some of the posts (like this one) often alternates between being jingoistic and misanthropic. The hackneyed editorial guidelines that allow these kinds of jaw-dropping and often off-topic posts to be submitted for vetting is one thing, but the editorial direction that allows them to be published is quite another. Add to that the squelching and censorship that parades as ‘reaction’ by those same editor(s) when people don’t agree with what’s been said, and you have a vile stew of a publishing venture that appears to operate on a “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I…?” set of rules.

Gadling wasn’t and isn’t some basement-level grade school ‘current affairs’ project. It was and is a professional travel writing website with advertising and investors that generates revenue from the uniques, the bookmarks and the links of interested eyeballs - yours and mine. If website ventures — especially ones that are owned and operated by larger media companies — wish to be considered competitive in the grander scheme of things (and the so-called ‘blogosphere’ has certainly had a significant impact on the more traditional forms of media), then they have to be held to similar ideals and expectations. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

People are fond of saying that the Internet is in its infancy - it is not. This September marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of Google as a search engine - an event that quite literally changed the way the Internet worked, certainly how we all used it. YouTube is barely three years old and I doubt anyone would debate the impact it has had on everything during that short period of time. It’s taken a while, but most of us have come to accept the fact that there is no such thing as the next ‘killer app’. The Internet IS the next killer app - always has been, always will be.

With the worldwide decrease in newspaper and magazine circulation; the catastrophic drop in television ratings; the consolidation of media outlets across all strands; and with the impact all of this continues to have on associated staff cuts, bureau closures and advertising revenues, good or bad, like it or not, the Internet increasingly has become the ’source’ the world turns to. This is the world in which Gadling, and all other websites of its ilk, operate.

Maybe some day soon the geniuses at Gadling will wake up and realize that the billowing smoke and burning stench is emanating from their own bridges.

End of rant.