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Feedback on "How an iPad Speeds Reporting from NASCAR's Pit Row"
- Thread starter topmounter
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Same old people complaining, same old down voting, same old same old. It's boring now. It's a personal shaming of Jordan.
You realize that if the complainers are a majority, they are by definition not tiny relative to the whole, right?
Who, exactly, do you think paid for it?
Whomever it was, they didn't get a very good return on investment!
Mod note
Some bickering and posts with negative personal characterizations have been deleted from this thread. We'd just like to remind everyone that while strong opinions are absolutely allowed and welcomed, please keep it about content, and constructive.
Carry on...
Some bickering and posts with negative personal characterizations have been deleted from this thread. We'd just like to remind everyone that while strong opinions are absolutely allowed and welcomed, please keep it about content, and constructive.
Carry on...
As I said before annk rightly deleted a few posts. It's all getting very silly. Victimising Jordan, and a small group of users continually harassing him. It's turned from constructive feedback in to a personal shaming.
Since when are editors immuned to criticism when they publish crap? Either they need to get a thicker skin or a new profession.
They're not immune, but it's personal attacks on him, rather than what articles he's writing.
If you have any criticism, feel free it to me so the mods don't delete it: jlgolson@macrumors.com If it's really about improving the site, you'll want to see that the feedback gets to me, right?
If you absolutely have to share in a public forum, then it's merely about trying to make yourself feel important on the Internet.
You know how I know you're being victimised, you'd already been down voted, and you're offering people to personally send you criticism. Just shows really, same little group attacking you. It's not about the articles, it's about targeting you. Envious people. Why would anyone down vote someone offering for them to receive criticism.
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I don't see an issue with the article or content. Frankly, the rumor mill has been slow with the Apple non-iOS scene. If things like this weren't posted, the front page would be fairly static most of the time.
It's interesting to note how a consumer centric device is used in an atypical business fashion. I certainly wouldn't have thought there were iPads being used in the middle of a hot racetrack. It also discusses some of the different accessories when an iPad is used in a more extreme scenario.
It's interesting to note how a consumer centric device is used in an atypical business fashion. I certainly wouldn't have thought there were iPads being used in the middle of a hot racetrack. It also discusses some of the different accessories when an iPad is used in a more extreme scenario.
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To me, comments like these are rather strange. Many markets for Apple's products have little to do directly with Apple: medical, aviation, retail POS, etc. Why does the story about a sports reporter using his iPad get so much flack? Would this poster and others have less objection about a sports reporter covering some other sports event? Why does the mention of NASCAR hype up the emotions in this and the other feedback thread?
The article has essentially zero to do with automobile racing. All that's pertinent for this story is that it's an event where the owners, drivers, and mechanics have a history of performance in past races, and it's useful for a reporter to have fingertip access to their history of performance. It's also useful to know that the infield pit area is spread out over several hundred yards and it's important for the sports reporter to move around that entire area. Other than that, no knowledge of NASCAR racing is required to understand and appreciate the article.
One's personal preferences about sports should have nothing to do with the fitness of an article to appear on MR.
Articles about breakthroughs with disabilities with iPads are indeed interesting stories (and some have been covered here in the past). Ditto for architectural or medical applications. The issue I have with your statement is that it creates a false dilemma: the existence of one article on one application does not preclude discussion of other topics in other articles.
You may not be interested in a use case where someone spends dozens (or hundreds) of hours accumulating and organizing data that must be instantly retrieved in a time-critical high-pressure environment. There are all sorts of jobs where those skills and tools are needed. Perhaps a sin of the article was failing to explicitly point out the broad applicability of the kind of approach that reporter Dave Burns had adapted (and virtually none of them have anything to do with N*A*S*C*A*R or any kind of racing/sports whatsoever).
Many MR readers are far less sophisticated than those who participate in this particular forum. Less-sophisticated iPad users may not have realized that such gathering/organizing/reporting operations were even possible on their iPad. If they did realize they were possible, they had no idea what tools to use to get set up. We seem to have sorted out PCs pretty well, but nobody really understands what's possible with tablet computers yet. I would love to see a broad and diverse set of use cases discussed in MR articles. I don't really care which blog they get posted on.
Just to be clear: we don't delete posts that criticise.
We delete posts that break some sort of rule, such as off-topic bickering or insults. And that sort of comment shouldn't be sent in a PM or email, either.It's great that Jordan is open to being emailed, but any feedback on the site - including the news and how it's written and presented - can go in this forum as well - as long as it's polite. You can have a strong opinion, you can think something is awful, you can disagree completely with what anyone else posts - and you can say so. Just keep it respectful.
Because of his BS attitude, like this:
You've been offered constructive critiscm and have yet to embrace one speck of it. Your articles lack a well defined purpose. Your stories contain no arc. You fail to define the scope of your content. It lacks a point of view if it's supposed to be some sort of blog, and some definition of purpose if it's supposed to be journalism. All this is somewhat forgiveable if it's a casual article on some unknown site, but this is the largest Mac community on the planet and the site is dedicated to news and rumors, not features.
Worst of all though, is your attitude. You've taken opportunities to grow and shape the site and squandered them with petty insults littered in the comments of your articles. Even if the community is being a bit harsh, you've given them nothing but ammunition. For me, that's where you've really fallen flat.
You're right, I need to bite my tongue in that situation and let the work speak for itself.
What I was saying about needing to vent in a public forum being weak was solely referring to personal attacks on me, not legitimate feedback like you gave.
However, I will be posting my specific critique publicly because that is the point of this thread. I can always CC you if would like, but that feels unnecessary.
Let's start with the obvious. Puns are a bad idea in professional writing. Even if you didn't intend for this to be a pun, it should have been apparent when you reviewed the piece that it functions as one. There are dozens of synonyms that would have worked in this situation: improves, eases, simplifies, aids, enhances, augments, assists, etc. Given the content of the article, I think improves or simplifies works best.
For the remainder of this critique, I'm going to color code my remarks so that they can be easily referenced. Blue means that the phrase is awkward due to over/under information or some other error makes it unclear. Green is for style faux pas according to general publishing guidelines or for situations where a simple change would make the writing easier to read. Red is for unprofessional tone or diction or for grammatical errors.
Is pit road a proper noun, or is it the general term for the location on a track where pit crews work? I am inclined to think the latter, and if I'm right, then pit road needs to be preceded by an article or given pluralized treatment so the sentence doesn't read so clumsily. For example, one would write, "He covers the end zone." or "He reports from end zones across the country."
Numbers over 10 should be written in numeral form. For most news outlets, even zero through 10 can be written in numeral form. It makes it easier for the reader and most style books like the MLA's use the 10+ rule.
"These days" is colloquial language that should never appear in a serious piece. This isn't a casual conversation, it's a written piece intended to deliver information efficiently. Your writing tends to be heavily laced with colloquialisms and informal expressions and the fact that such a phrase appears by the second sentence is not a deviation from the norm. Also, there's no need to capitalize pit reporter. It's not a proper noun.
The second blue section is written extremely poorly. It seems like you're trying to communicate too much information in a single independent clause. You also leave out critical information. For instance, he covers qualifying whats? Rounds, races, tournaments? Remember, periods and semicolons are your friend. This is how your sentences could be rewritten for clarity:
mirror universe said:
Your intro paragraph also does not answer the five Ws and H of the story. The Who is there (Dave Burns), the What is not (his use of the iPad is introduced later), the When is not (we're not told why this is significant now as opposed to any time in the past), the Where is introduced (pit reporting), and the How is not (we learn about the iPad's utility later on). This is basic for a news story. It might seem unglamorous or rigid, but if it's good enough for the New York Times, it's good enough for you.
More broadly, and this is something that's been discussed a great deal in this thread, the topic covered in the article doesn't seem particularly relevant to rumors about Apple. It fits as an interest story. It appeals to a niche audience and perhaps expounds upon the virtues of a product, but it tells us nothing about some impending sea change in the status quo.
Compare what you've written to something Eric has written recently:
Who: Apple; What: WWDC schedule; When: Today, May 29th, 2012; Where: WWDC webpage; Why: Keynote planning; How: By updating the WWDC webpage.
Note that this was all accomplished with a single sentence. It also tells us a bit of information about Apple and its near term plans because there are a lot of developers who keep a watchful eye on MacRumors.
Now let's return to the NASCAR article:
I thought he reported from pit road? Now it's pit lane? Which is it? And even though he is technically working, you should use the verb report because it more accurately describes what he does.
Again, "means" and "dealing" are colloquial terms in this context. What you're intending to communicate is managing.
Across is also not the correct preposition to use in this context. Over is the preposition you need.
mirror universe said:
The struck portion can either be omitted from the article entirely because it is barely relevant, or it can be moved into a different paragraph because it bears no relevance to the topic sentence of this paragraph, which is the monitoring and reporting of complex races.
This actually brings me to another important point: you need more organization in your writing. Your topic sentences tend to be under-developed and it isn't always clear how some sentences fit together, if at all.
So far I've edited the first two paragraphs of your NASCAR story. At this point the reader still doesn't know the What (iPads for note taking) or the How (the apps that make it possible). In fact, at this point we're still not even sure why this is an Apple story. Of all the critical information in the article, almost none of it has been communicated by this point.
This is how I think your first paragraph should have been written for a news story:
mirror universe said:
There's a who, what, when, where, why, and how, it's been condensed into a single sentence, and it's immediately clear what relevance this story has to MacRumors, even if the connection is tenuous.
I can continue with this, but I think I've given you something to chew on. If you'd like I'd be more than happy to continue but I suspect that I'm going to hit the character limit on posts if I try to pack any more into this one.
However, I will be posting my specific critique publicly because that is the point of this thread. I can always CC you if would like, but that feels unnecessary.
Let's start with the obvious. Puns are a bad idea in professional writing. Even if you didn't intend for this to be a pun, it should have been apparent when you reviewed the piece that it functions as one. There are dozens of synonyms that would have worked in this situation: improves, eases, simplifies, aids, enhances, augments, assists, etc. Given the content of the article, I think improves or simplifies works best.
For the remainder of this critique, I'm going to color code my remarks so that they can be easily referenced. Blue means that the phrase is awkward due to over/under information or some other error makes it unclear. Green is for style faux pas according to general publishing guidelines or for situations where a simple change would make the writing easier to read. Red is for unprofessional tone or diction or for grammatical errors.
Is pit road a proper noun, or is it the general term for the location on a track where pit crews work? I am inclined to think the latter, and if I'm right, then pit road needs to be preceded by an article or given pluralized treatment so the sentence doesn't read so clumsily. For example, one would write, "He covers the end zone." or "He reports from end zones across the country."
Numbers over 10 should be written in numeral form. For most news outlets, even zero through 10 can be written in numeral form. It makes it easier for the reader and most style books like the MLA's use the 10+ rule.
"These days" is colloquial language that should never appear in a serious piece. This isn't a casual conversation, it's a written piece intended to deliver information efficiently. Your writing tends to be heavily laced with colloquialisms and informal expressions and the fact that such a phrase appears by the second sentence is not a deviation from the norm. Also, there's no need to capitalize pit reporter. It's not a proper noun.
The second blue section is written extremely poorly. It seems like you're trying to communicate too much information in a single independent clause. You also leave out critical information. For instance, he covers qualifying whats? Rounds, races, tournaments? Remember, periods and semicolons are your friend. This is how your sentences could be rewritten for clarity:
Your intro paragraph also does not answer the five Ws and H of the story. The Who is there (Dave Burns), the What is not (his use of the iPad is introduced later), the When is not (we're not told why this is significant now as opposed to any time in the past), the Where is introduced (pit reporting), and the How is not (we learn about the iPad's utility later on). This is basic for a news story. It might seem unglamorous or rigid, but if it's good enough for the New York Times, it's good enough for you.
More broadly, and this is something that's been discussed a great deal in this thread, the topic covered in the article doesn't seem particularly relevant to rumors about Apple. It fits as an interest story. It appeals to a niche audience and perhaps expounds upon the virtues of a product, but it tells us nothing about some impending sea change in the status quo.
Compare what you've written to something Eric has written recently:
Who: Apple; What: WWDC schedule; When: Today, May 29th, 2012; Where: WWDC webpage; Why: Keynote planning; How: By updating the WWDC webpage.
Note that this was all accomplished with a single sentence. It also tells us a bit of information about Apple and its near term plans because there are a lot of developers who keep a watchful eye on MacRumors.
Now let's return to the NASCAR article:
I thought he reported from pit road? Now it's pit lane? Which is it? And even though he is technically working, you should use the verb report because it more accurately describes what he does.
Again, "means" and "dealing" are colloquial terms in this context. What you're intending to communicate is managing.
Across is also not the correct preposition to use in this context. Over is the preposition you need.
The struck portion can either be omitted from the article entirely because it is barely relevant, or it can be moved into a different paragraph because it bears no relevance to the topic sentence of this paragraph, which is the monitoring and reporting of complex races.
This actually brings me to another important point: you need more organization in your writing. Your topic sentences tend to be under-developed and it isn't always clear how some sentences fit together, if at all.
So far I've edited the first two paragraphs of your NASCAR story. At this point the reader still doesn't know the What (iPads for note taking) or the How (the apps that make it possible). In fact, at this point we're still not even sure why this is an Apple story. Of all the critical information in the article, almost none of it has been communicated by this point.
This is how I think your first paragraph should have been written for a news story:
There's a who, what, when, where, why, and how, it's been condensed into a single sentence, and it's immediately clear what relevance this story has to MacRumors, even if the connection is tenuous.
I can continue with this, but I think I've given you something to chew on. If you'd like I'd be more than happy to continue but I suspect that I'm going to hit the character limit on posts if I try to pack any more into this one.
Someone has too much time on their hands