As some of you may know, in addition to my work here on Deep Thought, I also contribute to TheMacMind. Even though I am officially editor-in-chief there too, I am a good deal more involved in the operations of Deep Thought than TheMacMind, so much so that I am probably more of a contributions writer there than a full fledged editor (just look at the number of articles I’ve written for DT compared to TMM).

TheMacMind received some rather harsh criticism over a review that Anthony Cole wrote recently. The meat of the criticism is that Anthony’s review was little more than an attempt to scam software developers in order to get free software.

Anthony took over TheMacMind late last year after it had sat idle, proclaiming, “A new look coming soon” for over a year. Anthony is 16 years old. When I was 16, I certainly wasn’t running a web site. (Now that I think of it, when I was 16, it was last century. Yikes!) Anthony is still very green at this; TheMacMind relaunched just under three months ago. It represents his first real attempt at journalistic work. He is very much learning on the job.

As I tell some of the younger writers on staff here at Deep Thought, if you make mistakes and write a poor article, or an article that isn’t well received, you take that criticism into account and try to improve upon your writing so you don’t make the same mistake over and over again. I’ve been at this for over two years, and I still write occasional crappy articles, or articles where I don’t make myself clear. And I try to take criticism of my work to heart. Did one article come off as a puff piece? I’ll try to avoid that in my next article.

The thing about being a writer is that you have good days and you have bad days. If you’re new at this game, you’ll have more bad days than good. If you’re like Anthony, you’ll try the best that you can, but sometimes you may not convey the right tone, or you may not be as thorough in a review as you should be. Again, this is all part of learning.

I started at UC Berkeley as a junior transfer, after spending two years at a junior college. How did I do on my first paper? A D-minus. I thought it was pretty good at the time, but the professor didn’t think so. At this point, Anthony is like that UC Berkeley neophyte; he is very much learning the ropes, and in the eyes of some, he, like I did on that paper, earned a D-minus on that review. It happens. You learn from it, you grow from it, and you get better.

That said, as a journalistic writer, Anthony does have to take responsibility for what he writes. Readers expect a certain degree of ethical behavior from journalists and writers, and you know what? I’m right there with them. Any intelligent person out there should hold journalists to a high standard of ethics. The problem, however, is that readers—yes, myself included—see what they want to see and make judgments on the character of the writer of said article. Is that right? Should we be judging the character of the individual by what they put in writing? I don’t know. Many online forums have rules against personal attacks: “Attack the post, not the poster,” as XvsXP puts it. I think there are times where judgment on character is warranted; however, one can not make such judgments until they really know who they’re judging.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have reviewed a product or two with a “review” license (i.e. a license granted for review purposes), and numerous reviews where I used the unlicensed demo. It is a common practice for developers to provide free copies of their products to reviewers.

But I digress.

In the case of Anthony, Jim Whimpey, the blogger who criticized Anthony’s article, implies that the sole reason TheMacMind exists is to scam indie developers and get free software licenses in exchange for reviews. The problem here is that Jim does not attack the post, he attacks the poster, so to speak. He makes what essentially amounts to a character assassination of Anthony. Jim doesn’t know Anthony. Jim doesn’t know Anthony’s motives. Jim doesn’t know what Anthony is trying to accomplish. What gives Jim the right to make assumptions on Anthony’s character like this? And that’s all they are, assumptions. Jim could have written an in-depth article discussing the shortfalls of Anthony’s review. Such an article wouldn’t have the sensationalist aspect to it, but I feel that it would have been far, far more valuable to the tech community as a whole.

Those with blogs can ruin a person’s reputation in a hurry. Having a blog, especially one that is reasonably popular, gives the blogger a good amount of power. As the old cliche goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Bloggers are essentially journalists in my mind, even thought they may not have the formal training of traditional journalists. So what does this mean? Bloggers should hold themselves to the same high standards as they hold professional journalists. This means disclosing any conflicts of interest that may exist. This also means that what bloggers say should be grounded in facts, even if it is an opinion. It means they must be able to point to some hard, underlying fact to back up their opinion, and must not succumb to Truthiness. Jim Whimpey does not hold up to this standard in his criticism of TheMacMind. He has absolutely no evidence to support his claims; all he has is an article or two written by an inexperienced teenager who is still learning what it means to write a review. Looking at Jim’s about page, he’s not exactly an experienced writer himself (only 19), so I don’t think I can go too harshly on him either. And even though I’m discussing him and Anthony in this article, this is something that all bloggers should keep in mind at all times.

I agree that journalists should be held to a high standard of ethics and a high standard of writing quality. And I agree that when they fail to do so, their work should be criticized for it. However, those doing the criticizing need to hold themselves to just as high of a standard of ethics and quality. Here are some things to consider and points to keep in mind when criticizing an article:

• Consider the source. Consider the writer’s age and experience level, if possible. Do some research if you can.
• Relatedly, remember that there is a human being on the other end. A human being wrote the article. Human beings write good articles and not-so-good articles. Realize that your words can harm someone’s reputation and credibility, even if the criticism is off-base.
• Never use assumptions as the entire basis of a piece of criticism.
• Unless you have something concrete to go on, do not attack the writer; attack the article itself.
• Be specific in your criticism.
• Do not let personal vendettas against a writer cloud your judgment.
• Sleep on a piece of criticism before publishing it. Think about what you write before sticking it on your blog.

In the end, use critical thinking. That’s all it comes down to, really.

I know I’ll probably end up facing some criticism for writing this article, especially considering my involvement with TheMacMind. I have no problems with Jim Whimpey. It’s his opinion, even if I disagree with it and think it was rather misguided. Hell, I might just end up reading his blog from time to time! I’m not angry with him or anything, I just wish he took some more time crafting his response before jumping to conclusions. But to be honest, I’ve learned that no matter what, you can’t take criticism too personally. You can take it to heart, you can apply it to your work and improve. But you can’t take it too personally.

And that’s way, way more than I ever want to write about this topic again.

UPDATE: Oops! The review discussed on Whimpey’s blog was for CSSEdit, not the DriveGenius review, which was mentioned in one of the comments.

UPDATE 2: The original author responded in the comments thread:

Also, I dont deny making allegations. Of course I made allegations, that was the nature of the post. If I knew the Mac Mind (and others like it) only existed to gain free software I would be outraged and I wouldnҒt have written a post in a humorous tone, Id be pissed off.

I didn’t see the “humorous tone”. Nobody here saw it. Judging by the comments in that thread, nobody else saw it. Jim, if you can explain to me how this counts as “humorous,” I am all ears. I would love for you to correct me and clarify what you meant, because I sure as hell am not laughing.