Thursday, April 13, 2006
David Pogue & Drivesavers & the NYT Web site
Says here that New York Times tech columnist (and Mac enthusiast) David Pogue accepted a post-disk-crash complementary data recovery job (value $2000) from Drivesavers, a California data recovery operation, in return for writing a review of their service.
I've also done business with Drivesavers. Wow, seriously expensive. It was in August, 2004. I do not remember exactly how much I paid for my job, but I do remember deciding NOT to get the full treatment. As a result, I had to rebuild my Lotus Organizer database from a very old version, and I lost a significant number of digital photos. (No, I wasn't backing my drive up often enough. Shame on me.) I did feel that I got what I paid for, and that Drivesavers was a responsive and competent organization that I could recommend to my friends and do business with again.
I remembered reading the original Pogue column, which appeared about a year after my own Drivesavers adventure, and when I found out about the Pogue comp story, I tried to find Pogue's original column. I finally found it here. And a followup here. The dates are August 25, 2005 and September 1, 2005, respectively. Then there's this, from February 15, 2006. And the original setup, where Pogue guesstimates the Drivesavers job at a mere $400, is here.
The September 1, 2005 article contains this statement:
[One reason for my interest in this is that I, too, was involved in allegations that I failed to sufficiently disclose a financial quid pro quo. My side of the story here (with links to relevant documents).]
But there's something even more disturbing about this. When I search the New York Times (yes I did buy a subscription to Times Select) for everything by Pogue from 1/1/2005 to 1/1/2006, none of these pieces appear. And when I search the New York Times (since 1981) for "+Pogue +Drivesavers" nothing about Drivesavers written by Pogue appears. And when I search for "+Pogue +Drive" or "+Pogue and +Drivesavers," I can't find anything either. And when I go to davidpogue.com, the instructions for "How to Find Past Columns" are inaccurate, unhelpful and/or out of date; I couldn't figure them out.
I had to search in Google for "Drivesavers site:nytimes.com" to find the primary pieces of the Drivesavers story. (Plus Google returned many "hits" that were actually false alarms, i.e., they had nothing in them about Pogue or Drivesavers.) Other related Pogue NYT pieces I found by hacking Technorati and looking inside the technorati results for links. The original Pogue stories are not gone from the NYT Web site, but they're harder to find than hen's teeth. What's up with that?
I've also done business with Drivesavers. Wow, seriously expensive. It was in August, 2004. I do not remember exactly how much I paid for my job, but I do remember deciding NOT to get the full treatment. As a result, I had to rebuild my Lotus Organizer database from a very old version, and I lost a significant number of digital photos. (No, I wasn't backing my drive up often enough. Shame on me.) I did feel that I got what I paid for, and that Drivesavers was a responsive and competent organization that I could recommend to my friends and do business with again.
I remembered reading the original Pogue column, which appeared about a year after my own Drivesavers adventure, and when I found out about the Pogue comp story, I tried to find Pogue's original column. I finally found it here. And a followup here. The dates are August 25, 2005 and September 1, 2005, respectively. Then there's this, from February 15, 2006. And the original setup, where Pogue guesstimates the Drivesavers job at a mere $400, is here.
The September 1, 2005 article contains this statement:
Had I been a paying customer and not a reviewer, I would have been charged about $2,000.This is a Disclosure. So, to me, Pogue followed the rules of the blogosphere. But apparently he did not follow the rules of the New York Times, because there's an obtuse "correction" (dated March 10, 2006) appended to the September 1, 2005 article, that says that the Times will pay Drivesavers for the services rendered. Hmmm.
[One reason for my interest in this is that I, too, was involved in allegations that I failed to sufficiently disclose a financial quid pro quo. My side of the story here (with links to relevant documents).]
But there's something even more disturbing about this. When I search the New York Times (yes I did buy a subscription to Times Select) for everything by Pogue from 1/1/2005 to 1/1/2006, none of these pieces appear. And when I search the New York Times (since 1981) for "+Pogue +Drivesavers" nothing about Drivesavers written by Pogue appears. And when I search for "+Pogue +Drive" or "+Pogue and +Drivesavers," I can't find anything either. And when I go to davidpogue.com, the instructions for "How to Find Past Columns" are inaccurate, unhelpful and/or out of date; I couldn't figure them out.
I had to search in Google for "Drivesavers site:nytimes.com" to find the primary pieces of the Drivesavers story. (Plus Google returned many "hits" that were actually false alarms, i.e., they had nothing in them about Pogue or Drivesavers.) Other related Pogue NYT pieces I found by hacking Technorati and looking inside the technorati results for links. The original Pogue stories are not gone from the NYT Web site, but they're harder to find than hen's teeth. What's up with that?
Technorati Tags: DavidPogue, Press, NewYorkTimes, WSJ
Comments:
Hey there--You parsed the DriveSavers issue correctly: Neither I nor my editor found anything unusual about accepting a free technical service for review purposes. For years, we had accepted free cellphone service, satellite TV service, music-download service, whatever--for the sake of reviewing them. (As you note, the Times has now changed this policy, and will pay for all this stuff.)
So I'm not convinced that the ethical lapse was as black-and-white as the SF Weekly columnist wants it to be, but whatever; DriveSavers has been reimbursed, and we won't be accepting free services for review anymore.
Anyway, you ask: "The original Pogue stories are not gone from the NYT Web site, but they're harder to find than hen's teeth. What's up with that?"
That one, at least, is clear-cut: the "articles" you're looking for were all part of my weekly Times e-mail newsletter. They were never in the paper.
And the Times archives have never contained searchable access to the newsletters!
Supposedly they're adding the newsletter material now, week by week, going back in time. Already, some of mine are searchable. But in the meantime, as you've noted, the overhaul of the Times search engine has rendered my own "how to find the email newsletter" information (on davidpogue.com) obsolete. I'll amend it once my e-newsletter is indeed searchable!
Hope that clears it up...
David Pogue
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So I'm not convinced that the ethical lapse was as black-and-white as the SF Weekly columnist wants it to be, but whatever; DriveSavers has been reimbursed, and we won't be accepting free services for review anymore.
Anyway, you ask: "The original Pogue stories are not gone from the NYT Web site, but they're harder to find than hen's teeth. What's up with that?"
That one, at least, is clear-cut: the "articles" you're looking for were all part of my weekly Times e-mail newsletter. They were never in the paper.
And the Times archives have never contained searchable access to the newsletters!
Supposedly they're adding the newsletter material now, week by week, going back in time. Already, some of mine are searchable. But in the meantime, as you've noted, the overhaul of the Times search engine has rendered my own "how to find the email newsletter" information (on davidpogue.com) obsolete. I'll amend it once my e-newsletter is indeed searchable!
Hope that clears it up...
David Pogue
