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Sparkle (6)
It hasn't been a good month for digital properties. Reports of "churnalism" -- the rewording and publishing of press releases without second opinions or any fact-checking to verify the information therein -- are becoming increasingly common even among major media outlets. The resulting clicky posts quickly spread, trickling down to smaller blog networks and independent bloggers, misinforming readers all over the world. It's, without a doubt, one of the biggest problems of fast coverage.
But there is another aspect of digital properties that has recently come under fire, and that is the high incidence of opinion pieces on popular blog networks that are more about link-baiting than they are about offering a genuine opposing view of an issue.
The most recent incident of this form of reckless link-baiting unfolded at xoJane.com, a women's lifestyle site, where staff "health critic" Cat Marnell wrote a piece about birth control.
I have read the piece several times and I am still not 100 percent sure I understand it, but it appears that Marnell is saying that women need to stop using Plan B, the morning-after pill, as a method of birth control. The reason the piece is confusing is that instead of listing all the reasons that Plan B is not a good idea as a contraceptive, Marnell offers a six-item list detailing why she can't stand all the other methods of birth control, thus explaining why she abuses Plan B. The piece closes with a vague two paragraphs about how women need to "stop letting dudes come inside of us."
Photo by M. Markus.
Needless to say, the comment section of the piece exploded (reaching 863 comments as of the writing of this post). This is where the piece took a severe turn for the worse. Not only does her in-post list put forth inaccurate information about various contraceptives, Marnell also personally responded to any commenter suggesting other methods of birth control by noting more erroneous information. In response to a commenter who asked "what about diseases?" Marnell responded, "yeah yeah, i get blood tested a lot though. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?"
There's "health critic" and then there's unforgivably reckless.
Needless to say, the internet exploded. Finally, Jane Pratt, founder of xoJane.com issued a response. The 684-word response basically said, "At xoJane.com, we embrace a diversity of opinions."
GETTING PERSPECTIVE
Jane Pratt was the founding editor of the now-defunct teen magazine, Sassy, as well as founding editor of the women's magazine Jane, which folded in 2007. For those of us who grew up with it, Sassy was irreverent and unafraid to approach sex in a way that no other teen magazine did. I could relate to the writers of Sassy, and the content was often helpful without being patronizing. It was like having a tête-à-tête over hot cocoa while painting our toe nails and watching Sixteen Candles with a girlfriend who was more experienced than you.
Jane, which came some years after Sassy folded, was similar, only targeted to an older audience -- the girls who had once loved Sassy and who were now all grown up. As editor of Jane, Pratt was named "Editor of the Year" by AdWeek in 2002.
Pratt, who resigned two years before Jane released its last issue, returned to the limelight in 2011 with xoJane.com, a website for women that Pratt described as, "not snarky, but inclusive and uplifting, while remaining nothing but honest at all times. Like Sassy and Jane before it, xoJane.com is written by a group of women (and some token males) with strong voices, identities and opinions, many in direct opposition to each other, who are living what they are writing about." Almost two months after the site officially launched, Forbes named it one the top 10 lifestyle websites for women.
Clearly, Pratt is a woman who has experience as an editor and who knows the female audience. Unfortunately, I don't think diversity justifies the content of Cat Marnell's post. As the section editor of Love & Sex and interim Health editor on BlogHer, I understand the desire to have diversity in the pieces in my sections. But there is also a certain level of responsibility that comes with giving a platform to dissenting opinions that could harm others.
A well-argued piece in support of voluntary euthanasia, for example, is more useful than a reckless how-to guide to suicide. By the same token, a guide about healthy dietary changes is more useful than a destructive piece about how
