A Bloody Mess: Silicon Alley Insider Takes One in the Neck

The Silicon Alley Insider, the Web site of record for, well, nothing actually, got bit in the neck last week, and now it can’t show its face in daylight ever again.

Last week Gawker Media spammed out an email press release proclaiming it had acquired a new blog called Bloodcopy. SAI ace reporter Nick Carlson dutifully reported it as news – not realizing the blog is in fact a cleverly disguised marketing campaign for Tru Blood, HBO’s exceedingly silly show about vamps with cramps.

Now Bloodcopy is just a wee bit different than Gizmodo, Lifehacker, and the other overly excitable ponies in Nick Denton’s blogging stable. For one thing, it’s written by one of the undead, featuring articles like “Vampires in the workplace,” and talking about how the economy has affected the price of O negative.

You might think the fact the author was drinking buddies with Nosferatu might have given old Nick a clue. Or maybe the disclaimer at the bottom of the blog flog, which states:

Bloodcopy is a sponsored partnership between HBO, Campfire and Gawker Media.

(Campfire is the name of the marketing company behind this whole campaign. I gotta say they’re kind of ingenious, as much as soul-less purveyors of all that is evil can be.)

That wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was all the whining afterward when Carlson realized what a tool he’d been. Here’s his response, titled “How HBO And Gawker Tricked Us Into Reporting An Ad Campaign As News” (and then stole our lunch money, hid a frog in our blankie, and called us ‘poopyface’):

In hindsight, we could have gone further to be certain that Gawker was, in fact, welcoming a new blog to its network.  We could have known, we suppose, that the whole True Blood ad campaign has been all about creating fake news and events. We apparently should keep closer tabs on HBO vampire-show marketing strategies.  (And, yes, we feel a bit sheepish and stupid.)

That said: HBO and Gawker have crossed a line here.  We’re all for experimental online advertising, viral marketing, etc.  In our opinion, however, this campaign is designed to trick people to coming to the same conclusion we came to.  And we imagine that others, too, did not immediately realize that it was “a joke” (as one Gawker insider now puts it).

Memo to Nick: Press releases by definition are generally about 90 percent bullshit. The Bloodcopy one just added an extra 10 percent. We are starting to wonder what else slipped by that hard-nosed skeptical reporter’s eye of yours and onto the pages of SAI.

Now, of course, Carlson (and others) are saying the whole episode has “undermined the credibility” of Gawker Media.

That’s completely silly. Gawker Media has no credibility. And now, neither does Silicon Alley Insider. When your MO is to reprint any press release that crosses your desk without doing basic fact checking, you’re pretty much already a card-carrying member of the Zombie Club for Men.

Suckers.

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