If Reuters Left Second Life for Lack of Important Stories, Why Did They Miss So Many When They Were Here?

PBS' Media Shift has a very good story on the current state of Second Life, especially as perceived by the media.  Much of the focus is on the closing of Reuters' SL bureau late last year.  "We were primarily interested in Second Life as a business/commerce/finance phenomenon," Reuters lead report Adam Pasick tells Media Shift's Mark Glaser.  "[But e]ssentially the story we were there to cover has moved on."

From this you would get the impression that there's no longer any business news going on in SL, which would be a very strange thing to suggest.  Especially coming from a journalist who missed so much business news when Second Life was his beat.  As I told Glaser, Pasick and his assistant, Eric Krangel, are fine reporters who did many good stories about SL, but "I don't think they were ever passionately engaged in the medium or Second Life's community on an experiential level... [which consequently] caused them to often miss the big picture." 

How often?  Well, consider all the significant business/commerce/financial stories that Reuters' bureau failed to first report on, when they were operating in SL:

• Reuters didn't first report that fear of the CopyBot was undermining the entire SL economy.  The Second Life Herald did.
• Reuters didn't first report that SL retention rates were much smaller than widely believed.  Writing for this blog, Tateru Nino did.
• Reuters didn't first report that a film director had sold the rights to his SL machinima to HBO.  This blog did.
• Reuters didn't extensively report on the relative value of virtual items in the SL economy.  The New York Times did.
• Reuters didn't report that IBM's corporate campus in SL was the site of a major international labor protest. This blog did.
• Reuters didn't first report that CTO Cory Ondrejka was being fired from Linden Lab.  Moo Money at Massively did.
• Reuters didn't report that an art collector had purchased an experimental work set in Second Life for six figures. The New York Times did.
• Reuters didn't report how contractors for the Playboy Corporation were investigating instances of copyright and trademark infringement in SL.  CNN's iReports did.
• Reuters didn't estimate the amount of revenue Linden Lab was earning from SL.  This blog did.
• Reuters didn't report how a number of real world entrepreneurs and developers were using SL to prototype real content.  BusinessWeek did.

Pointing this out isn't meant as a slam against Eric or Adam, who as I said, have done some good reporting.  (My sense, perhaps wrong, is that their SL bureau work was a part-time responsibility.)  However, Reuters' departure has often been mis-interpreted as a sign that business news in SL has dried up, so I think a clarification is in order.  As it happens, there is a lot of news then and since, it just takes more of the proverbial shoe leather to find it, a lot of socializing, offhand conversations, and random exploration.

So why did Reuters miss so much? 

In my opinion, probably from a personal lack of interest in the metaverse experience.  Eric admitted as much when he subsequently described his time reporting in-world as a "creepy" or "boring" activity he only considered a job.  To me that seems a bit like hiring a guy who hates watching Hollywood movies to cover the film industry.  You can see that in Eric's description of being in an SL nightclub:  "I'd right-click the dance floor to send my avatar gyrating as I sat at home at my computer. It was about as fun as watching paint dry."

I think this description deeply misunderstands the experience, and explains a large part of Reuters' failure.  The purpose of dancing in Second Life is not dancing per se, but to share a visual counterpoint and reference anchor to the group chat and IM going on around it.  Or to put it another way:  I've conducted some of my favorite interviews in Instant Message while my avatar was gyrating around like an idiot.  (Yes, even business stories.)  And when other writers realize they need to make that immersive perceptual leap, they'll find a world abundant with their own stories to discover and tell, too.

Image credit: secondlife.reuters.com

Comments

[Doubledown Tandino]

Starred and signed.

[GoSpeed Racer]

Hamlet, you hit the nail on the head.

[Dedric Mauriac]

There are still many businesses working in the virtual environment feeling it out to determine how it can be used. I recently reported on one about HeatSaver Thermal Shades this past weekend. They have a showroom that demonstrates how their products work. The vio group that they are a part of has many small businesses doing similar ventures into the virtual world.

[Veeyawn Spoonhammer]

I'm glad you called them out on this. Reuters failed to dig into the world as I think they expected it to operate more like RL. Clearly, it doesn't and it won't. As far as I could tell they focused solely on businesses coming into SL and almost never covered businesses originating in or operating only in SL. A poor effort on their part.

[Kyle G]

Microsoft continues to train developers in Second Life, conduct community events and more as they do in ReactionGrid now too. Second Life's user generated content in our opinion continues to be the best too overall for virtual world applications and events. Rueters often twisted my own words & I am not sad to see them go.

[rikomatic]

oh no you DIDN'T! Snap.

Nicely played, sir.

Just watch any Metanomics show or Draxtor Despres' dispatches from SL to see how much amazing stuff happened over the past year that was underreported.

[Crap Mariner]

"To me that seems a bit like hiring a guy who hates watching Hollywood movies to cover the film industry."

Well, considering how Reuters has a habit of hiring Israel-haters and the relatives of terrorists to cover Israel news, I guess it was only a matter of time for them to extend that policy into virtual worlds coverage.

-ls/cm

[Raul Crimson]

Good point, Hamlet. I was worried when Reuters left SL, and well, for their comments they seem to push others to go away too.
But possibly they just didn't understand SL at all.

[QueenKellee Kuu]

Totally agree, Hamlet.

Reuters was trying to apply old style news reporting to a new style world. In my opinion the only thing that signaled a failure when Reuters left was that their experiment of trying to take that objective, hands off, "un-biased" approach to news in a virtual world was a failure, not that the world was a failure. In a place with no mass media, it sure does require, as you say, a lot more shoe leather and being a part of the community. And funny, that's how news reporting used to be done back in the good old days before the internet and 300 cable stations, or even television at all.

But of course it's much easier to lay the blame outside of themselves than it is to see that maybe their approach was all wrong.

[radar]

Huh. I thought Eric said "I am creepy and boring," not "SL is creepy and boring." I guess I don't agree with him after all!

[Hamlet Au]

I don't know about that, though I only just noticed that Eric would "right-click the dance floor". That doesn't usually start a dance animation, that opens up the pie menu. Maybe he thought the pie menu was a dance move?

[Drew Stein]

Its really quite simple if you dig deep enough and think hard enough. They were here for the PR hit, the came they made a small sensation and then when it was time to do some real work, they got bored and they left. End of story. There being in SL signified nothing, there leaving signified less.

next!

[Maggie Darwin]

It's hard to fault Reuters too much for not using people who grok SL as reporters considering that it seems like there's more than a few Lindens who are in the same space these days..

[Sigmund Leominster]

The MediaShift article is very good. Judging the state of the virtual world based on the exit of a few players is silly. Reuters probably left for one of the oldest reasons in the world - it was costing too much to keep an embedded reporter in a world of just a few thousand readers. And maybe, just maybe, the business models used by larger news organizations are different from the ones needed to sustain a presence in the virtual worlds.

The virtual world press model is, I suggest, more one that devolves reporting to the "citizen journalist" - the blogger or the "real" journalist who is more at home with the fragmented world of internet-based reportage. This is a shift of focus that is very different from the "selling print" model and is, as we know, a challenge for the traditional press who are seeing newspaper and magazine sales - and readership - declining.

Kudos for pointing out that the SL Fourth Estate is doing just fine.

[Georgianna Blackburn]

Thank you Hamlet. Glad someone pointed out specifics.

[BettinaTizzy]

Hamlet, I am going to serve this story on a silver platter to each person I see twittering or blogging Eric Krangel's (formerly Eric Reuters) article. Well done.

[Nasus Dumart]

Great point! Certainly DID hit the nail on the head. Thanks for posting this.

[Marx Dudek]

It would have been quite interesting if Reuters would have left the work of reporting to volunteers who actually "got it", and then these two could have spent their part time sifting through submitted material and approving stories for publication.

I think you described precisely the visuals as an anchor for personal interaction - and sometimes, inaction. (Sitting side by side on a beach, silently watching the sunrise for example.)

I think the Reuters "experiment" needed to fail. Their focus was far too narrow, and the reporters far too myopic. For them, SL was a little like being put on the dog-show beat. But even dog show reporting can be engaging, if the reporter is genuinely enthusiastic about it.

[Toxic Menges]

This si exactly what was needed off the back of the valleywag article - which I am not going to link to..

Will Eric come to this discussion and put his opinion here? No, because he doesn't care - and that's why Reuters only ever had a few thousand readers to his reports.

Your comments on immersion are spot on - imagine if Torley were the reporter for reuters?

[Brielle]

I contacted the Reuters Bureau about an SL based business that was crossing over to real life outreach, which is the reverse of what most businesses do and they totally ignored me. So much for wanting to report cutting edge news!

Not being interested in what they were doing was a major failure. Why didn't they take more interest to connect and network with this fascinating global mix of people? I can't believe their boss didn't want to know why they were only marginally involved. You're right, it's like a person who doesn't watch tv or movies write reviews on the medium.

[Vince]

In the grand scheme of things, the SL news listed by Hamlet which Reuters allegedly missed to report about all are of very minor importance, both in terms of people involved and $ involved.
It makes as much sense for Reuters to keep a permanent presence in SL as it'd make sense for them to send some permanent reporter to the island of Trinidad and Tobago.
I give CNN 9 months to come up to the very same conclusion, now that they have poured money in a ill-designed island.

[Hamlet Au]

Vince, 5 of those 10 stories were subsequently picked up by Reuters' SL office after they were broken. Two of the ten were published in the New York Times, generally accepted as the paper of record.

CNN just re-upped their commitment to an SL presence a couple weeks ago, in fact expanded it and had their publicist send me a press release announcing that. So your prediction is probably ill-timed.

[Crap Mariner]

Actually, Vince, the island appears to be designed so that you can use any of the sets at 64m draw distance and not get another set's interference. Other sets in use will be in the Av Impostors range, reducing client impact. A good variety of sets there... haven't gone vertical to see if there's skyborne sets.