The one rule of blogging is that you don't discuss blogging... Sorry wrong movie. The one unstated rule of blogging is that you're irreverent to a fault, you don't take yourself too seriously, you never check sources, rumor is better than fact and, most importantly, you never ever say you're sorry. OK, actually that would be five rules. Regardless, on June 12th, AdRants.com reported an amusing piece about Bob Garfield's comments on word of mouth advertising. The last sentence of the post was "By the way, Bob was in on the joke just so you all don't think we're trashin' here."
Yesterday they posted an apology. Specifically,
Excerpt from AdRants.com
We'd like to offer an apology to Bob Garfield. In a piece we wrote yesterday about a CoBrandiT video that featured footage of Bob doing an interview with CoBrandiT that included outtakes shot prior to the actual interview, we mis-stated Bob knew he was in on the joke when, in fact, he was not. He had made some comments, in jest, while defining word of mouth prior to the beginning of the actual interview. Bob says CoBrandiT used those comments without his knowledge and he thought those shooting the video worked for WOMMA and not for CoBrandiT. We respectfully apologize.
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End of wimpishness
That's not one, but two apologies. What's that about? Did someone come down hard on the AdRant boys? Does AdRants see itself as "real media" now and feels it needs to hold to true journalistic standards? Did Bob Garfield threathen to bitch slap someone at AdRants if they didn't retract? Does AdRants now make too much money in advertising that it doesn't want to shake up the apple cart anymore? We're not sure, but what we are damn sure about is that we don't like it.
Now let me just state that we apologize to AdRants in advance if we've offended anyone over there. We really do think they are the Goldman Sachs of the ad blogging world and the last thing in the world we would want to do is disrespect them in anyway. They are the best and deserve our respect and admiration and apologies if we've offended them. Really, we're sorry.
AdRant's first post [The ballsy one.]
AdRant's second post [The pussy one.]
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