Scanning current headlines on this site it seems every headline is about either a nationally known figure or nationally known media outlet, if not both. The only exception seems to be this piece. Odd that the only out of place story, the only one that doesn’t fit the profile of the other pieces currently headlined on this site, is this one story about the writer’s friend’s business.

And even if Mediaite does regularly covers more than just national stories and figures, and even if the business covered in this piece does align with Mediaite’s usual subjects covered, this particular story about this business just doesn’t seem worthy of coverage here (from what I saw as of this writing the only others to cover it have been a few sites with a focus on NYC media gossip).

The fact that a mostly unknown, little-visited blog added an even lesser known employee to its roster (or broadened its view from coverage of the single life to include the married life) is hardly significant in my opinion.

And even if Mediaite does consider this legitimate material for coverage for some reason, why not have one of any number of other writers here write the piece other than the ONE person who’s longtime friends with the founder of the business featured?

I realize you may not be obligated to avoid a conflict of interest or its perception, but if Mediaite values its readers and wants its content to be taken seriously I think it would do well to do avoid both real and easily perceived conflicts of interest anyway. And especially when it can be easily avoided by simply assigning a different writer.

Maybe if the writer wasn’t a good friend of the owner of the business she featured, I wouldn’t find the many, many links back to the friend’s site so over thet top eiither. Then again I probably would. After all this is definitely the first time I’ve seen a story of any length, much less a one-page piece, send 23 links* to ONE site!

( *23 links to nonsociety’ in this story, if I counted correctly.)

Blog posts about goings on in your friends professional lives should be saved for Tumblr, not a site that is trying to accomplish what Mediaite seems to be. I’ll remain a reader, for now, but the credibility of the site, as well as the author, as someone/some place that will be taking a non-biased look at the goings on of New Media, has taken a hit.

Bottom line, and I honestly don’t mean to be an asshole about this, BUT, this “story” reads as an old Cindy Adams or Liz Smith style of column would have. “Old media” style circle jerks are–I’m fairly certain about this–not where you want this site to be headed and by that I mean becoming a site that is irrelevant in the New Media landscape. ya know, kinda like non-society is.

It lowers the standards of Mediaite to have the editor covering one of her best friend’s web sites and writing about it as news. If Dan Abrams were aware of the conflict, I would be surprised that he would allow Sklar to write about Allison–at least without disclosing their close friendship.

Non-Society is such a non-entity web site that there is no way it would ever make it into Mediaite without this favor that Sklar is doing for her buddy. And the fact that this article is featured at the top of the Mediaite website–really? Rachel sklar should come clean about her best friendship with Julia Allison, and should stop writing about her friends in what is supposed to be a legitimate media site.

The best part is, even if they think that is something worth crowing about, they don’t even bother to do anything with the experience at these “hi-octane” tech conferences other than post kissy face pictures with people who are far more qualified to discuss such topic rolling their eyes at them.

http://www.quantcast.com/nonsociety.com

Never has so much been written (almost exclusively on Gawker) about something that has almost zero relevance.