Re: Help a journalist with an article

[KHMan <keinhong@...>]

Esther Schindler wrote:
> [snip] (In case you wondered: copying websites is called plagarism, 
> and taking comments from an e-mail answering a question is called 
> interviewing.)
Not trying to be a wet blanket or anything, but I'm uncomfortable 
with this exercise and the above sentence in parentheses. Allow me 
to explain.
You are writing for CIO.com, yet you appear to be taking quotes 
from mailing list postings from persons with unknown affiliations 
(not that it is negative or anything) and nothing is said about 
what applications they are basing those quotes on. But your OP 
says that the story is targeted towards IT managers, enterprise 
stuff, etc. I think there is a credibility gap somewhere with the 
material, which is why I talked of a mismatch.
I think that IT managers would take peers who are working on 
related or similar applications more seriously. But if quotes are 
mismatched to the kind of things the target reader demographic is 
doing or expecting (for example, mostly LAMP/Java/.NET stacks, 
which is very, very far away from Lua), then it would look very 
weird or it might be misconstrued as misrepresentation, unless the 
mismatch is carefully explained.
I thought Luiz was correct to point you the way to find 
prospective companies which use Lua seriously and are successful 
at it. Remember, you say this is a story for CIO.com, so quotes 
that are backed by successful real-world or shipped applications 
are vastly more credible. If these companies using Lua do not fit 
the intended story profile at all, then perhaps Lua should not be 
in the story. Getting quotes from such corporate users of Lua will 
generate far more credible quotes (e.g. ABC, developer of XYZ from 
Company PQR, says "blah blah blah") than asking for responses via 
a mailing list for a story that will run on a site called 'CIO'.
I think we want to do the Right Thing and offer the best in the 
name of Lua's solid reputation and credibility, that's why perhaps 
you weren't getting the response you may be expecting. Just my 2 
cents, and I won't say anything further.
--
Cheers,
Kein-Hong Man (esq.)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia