Mick Weinstein's  Instablog

Thomson's StreetEvents removed Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz's f-bomb from its transcript of the Q1 2009 YHOO call:

When asked what “technical difficulty” occurred, Thomson Reuters republished the final transcript, replacing it with “(expletive deleted).” Its policy is to not include swear words in transcripts, a spokeswoman said, though the previous labeling was a mistake.

We left Bartz's actual words in our transcript.

Which approach is more helpful to investors and analysts - who are reading the transcript for a verbatim account of the call, to understand the company and its management better?

Kara Swisher has a lengthy post describing her site AllThingsD's adjustments to its Voices section, which links out to posts from around the web. Dow Jones (NWS)-owned AllThingsD had come under some scrutiny from Andy Baio about its format for linking out in this section, and Swisher also found herself needing to reply to a recent comment from her colleague Robert Thomson, Dow Jones editor-in-chief, who opined “There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet.”

I was always under the impression that ATD received prior permission for Voices excerpts, but apparently that wasn't the case. At Seeking Alpha, we also link-out to interesting items from around the web in a prominent fashion from our Market Currents and homepage central column, so I find this an interesting development toward developing some kind of standard around editorial link curation. Some initial thoughts:

• I think the manner in which ATD had previously linked-out was, while on the aggressive end, perfectly legitimate, so I find it a bit hard to identify with the criticism from Joshua Schachter. The Voices excerpts never gave more than a brief introduction to the article, so it was always clear that the ATD editor intended to send to the reader to the original source if the item piqued their interest. In almost all such cases, I would think the original author gains from the increased exposure far more than s/he 'loses' in any revenue gained by the aggregator (does the author really 'lose' that at all?).
• The new format does direct more attention and traffic to the original site, which should allay any scuh concerns, but I wonder if the shorter excerpts now give enough of a taste to the reader to accomplish the goals of the Voices section.
• I  appreciate the manner in which this disagreement played itself out - for once, a respectful process to address a dispute among bloggers and larger internet publishers.

On the broader issue of directing blame toward Google and link aggregators for the woes of traditional media companies, I find myself simply astonished by how oblivious the executives of these companies remain regarding the economics and dynamics of online content. It seems to betray a healthy dose of what we call in Hebrew tsarut ayin - base resentment of the success of another, dispaced anger for one's own misfortune or poor choices. Mathew Ingram is certainly right:

"if a newspaper or media outlet finds its business model severely impacted by the fact that Google excerpts a single paragraph of a news story, then it deserves to fail... The bottom line is that newspapers need to think about what kind of value they are adding and focus on that, instead of trying to either beat Google at its own game or pretend that it doesn’t exist."

Disclosure: Kara Swisher and AllThingsD are Seeking Alpha contributors