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NEWS: Strife at IC Entertainment


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HeeroTX



Joined: 15 Jul 2002
Posts: 2046
Location: Austin, TX
PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 2:24 pm Reply with quote
Cassandra wrote:

The quotes that Kevin got were from Otakon...which was about a month before ANN states they attempted to contact IC. (They said three weeks before October 6 or so....which puts it around the beginning of September.) So obviously ANN wouldn't have asked him questions then. And I don't believe any ANN staff members attended any of the other conventions that Steve was at....so no, they couldn't have contacted him any other way.

So you're saying that someone else was unable to get a response that ANN was not, and that the only way ANN tried to contact IC was via phone. Meaning, ANN tried to contact a guy, KNOWN to be out of town for at least half (and maybe more) of each week they called, while calling TO an area KNOWN to have issues with its electrical and (probably, I don't know for sure) phone lines because of a natural disaster. Is that the level of reporting you want to extoll?
Heck, the ex-employees even say they can talk to at least one of the Bennetts on AIM.
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Aaron White
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 2:29 pm Reply with quote
The introduction to the interview states that several phone calls were not returned. By "returned" I presume ANN means that they left messages, so the ball was in Ironcat's court. Again, standard journalistic practice. NPR does it, for example; leave a few messages, and if there's no reply they say so, instead of googling around trying emails, IM, etc.
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Cassandra



Joined: 13 May 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 2:49 pm Reply with quote
Aaron White wrote:
The introduction to the interview states that several phone calls were not returned. By "returned" I presume ANN means that they left messages, so the ball was in Ironcat's court. Again, standard journalistic practice. NPR does it, for example; leave a few messages, and if there's no reply they say so, instead of googling around trying emails, IM, etc.


Exactly my point.

But then again, I suppose they COULD have flown down to Virginia and beat an answer out of Steve. I guess that would appease everyone. IC would have given an official response and ANN would have the 'other side' of the story. (Of course, then ANN gets sued for assault, but that's just a necessary evil.)
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SamGoody0491



Joined: 12 Sep 2002
Posts: 37
PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 3:54 pm Reply with quote
First of all, for all you know, and we all know.
They have been paid.

Of course if there's no money, then there's no pay.
But who's to say that they haven't gotten on their feet already, because of the sales from conventions.

Second of all, beginning of august when ironcat had announced exactly what happened, at a con. (AFO) I have since seen him three times, Otakon (early august), he couldnt attend panel because the schedule times were screwed up, but if you went to his table, he explained everything, AWA (sept) again his panel said everything spelled out, again at animenext (oct). And that's just a few of them. So granted maybe it wasnt a one-on-one interview, but when someone's telling you EXACTLY what happened to the company, then all you have to do is shut up and listen.
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Aaron White
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:10 pm Reply with quote
I'll leave it to others to explain why ANN did or didn't cover the con appearances, but ANN did all they needed to do regarding getting a statement from IC: they left several messages. Simply reporting con announcements wouldn't have sufficed as a response to the interview. As for speculation about "Maybe they've been paid," well, maybe Osama's been found, but that doesn't invalidate last week's coverage of the ongoing hunt.
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SamGoody0491



Joined: 12 Sep 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:53 pm Reply with quote
There were interviews done at the table. He actually had people interview him, on camara mind you, behind the table.

Well why dont you ask some of the people that were interviewed, that have posted on this topic in this forum.


Last edited by SamGoody0491 on Thu Oct 16, 2003 5:10 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Aaron White
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:59 pm Reply with quote
From now on, whenever someone wants to insist that ANN didn't do enough to get feedback from IC, I'll simply copy and paste the following:

Common journalistic practice holds that once a reporter has places multiple phone messages requesting a response for a specific article, it is up to the other party to respond. So ANN fulfilled its obligations. Thank you.
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SamGoody0491



Joined: 12 Sep 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 5:08 pm Reply with quote
Anime smallmouth please do.

...but...

Only one phone call is sufficient?
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Aaron White
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 5:10 pm Reply with quote
No. And since the article states that they made several calls...
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HeeroTX



Joined: 15 Jul 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 6:14 pm Reply with quote
ANN has only 1 "news" article on this story, what do YOU think it's about when you read the title:

"Strife at IC Entertainment"

strife (strf)
n.
1. Heated, often violent dissension; bitter conflict. See Synonyms at discord.
2. A struggle, fight, or quarrel.
3. Contention or competition between rivals.
4. Archaic. Earnest endeavor or striving.


And because I wouldn't want you to put in too much effort, here I'll save YOU this job:

Common journalistic practice holds that once a reporter has placed multiple phone messages requesting a response for a specific article, it is up to the other party to respond. Therefore, ANN fulfilled its obligations. (and I even cleaned up the grammar for you)

My dispute with this article is it is too focused on the personal rather than the business or even financial aspect. If you disagree, so be it, but if the intent was to highlight IC's financial woes, this piece is poorly executed. If you read only the headline (as I know I do for some ANN stories) you could have no idea of the financial situation, and the interview itself only moderately clarifies.
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SamGoody0491



Joined: 12 Sep 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 6:16 pm Reply with quote
Not contesting that it says that...
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Tiresias



Joined: 14 Aug 2002
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Location: Illinois, USA
PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 8:22 pm Reply with quote
HeeroTX wrote:

strife (strf)
n.
1. Heated, often violent dissension; bitter conflict. See Synonyms at discord.
2. A struggle, fight, or quarrel.
3. Contention or competition between rivals.
4. Archaic. Earnest endeavor or striving.


I told myself I wouldn't get involved in this ongoing spat between a few members of the board here, but I have to say this. HeeroTX, you just shot yourself in the foot with that definition. Look at point 2. It defines strife as a struggle, fight, or quarrel.

By the standards of grammer and syntax in the English language, this states that strife can be either a struggle, a fight, or a quarrel, or any combination of 2 or all three of those concepts. The former employees are in a STRUGGLE with IC to get paid, or in other words are in a QUARREL with the management to get their full back pay.

Now, I'm sure you can even post the definitions of struggle and quarrel and show that they support your side, but in the general use and context of the English language, I'm going by the "layman's" definitions of them, i.e. what the comman person thinks they mean, basically an arguement or disagreement.

To me when I see the word strife, aside from occasionally mistakenly reading it as strafe which would make the business world a lot more entertaining, I think of a disagreement, not a violent brawl as you seem to be saying ANN knowingly implied when they posted the story.

Now, as far as this topic goes, we're just beating a dead and rotten horse here, hell you can't even tell that it did used to be a horse. People on both sides are bringing up the same arguements over and over again because apparently they think the other person either didn't pay attention the first time or is a stark raving moron and just doesn't get it, either of which may be true. An old professor of mine would call this an arguement based on circular reasoning, "and since a circle has no ends, it would go on forever and never be settled, therefore I'm right and the rest of you can shut up and go to hell.", actual quote from him by the way, thought it was so good I copied it into my notes for later reference, god was he a crazy old man.

Needless to say, no one will settle and agree the other side is right, so this thread is pointless now since it has degenerated into a quarrel, a strife if you will. Therefore unless anything new and of "true" value is added soon, I ask that the moderators lock this thread so we can all get on with our lives. By the way, I have nothing against any of the people posting in this topic and hope that they don't flat out hate me now for what I've said.
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HeeroTX



Joined: 15 Jul 2002
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 8:53 pm Reply with quote
no offense tiresias, but I have no idea what you're trying to say. I've never denied that the interview is about an arguement, a "disagreement" if you will, or call it a quarrel, whatever, between IC and former IC people, in fact, if anything I've been arguing that this is EXACTLY what it is about. My arguement is more along the lines of "why is this news?" why do we CARE? or why are we supposed to care. (and no, this specific post isn't asking anyone who has already attempted to tell me to spout the same thing you've already said)
I think this story is about personal issues with IC people, other people disagree. If the story told me (explicitly) that IC entertainment was in financial difficulties (which I already knew) then that is news. If IC was rolling in cash and employees were getting hosed, that is KINDA news about the jerks running the company. The fact that IC has no money (a "fact"(?) unreported in the story) and THUS person X is unpaid seems to be logical A->B.
I don't see why ANN didn't have a story saying "IC is in financial trouble, here's what ex-employees say about it", instead we get "Here's what employees say about an issue we don't want to tell you about".

Even tho it's possibly even MORE just "fan politics" than this story, I think the start of the "Mike Tatsugawa v. SPJA" story is better REPORTED:
animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=3489

It does a better job of putting the comments in overall context and explaining the situation. This one seems more like that story's "follow-up" but without the lead-in.
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Iron Chef



Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 487
Location: Seattle, WA
PostPosted: Thu Oct 16, 2003 9:26 pm Reply with quote
Heero, you've put up a mighty good fight, m'man. Your debating skills are certainly admirable, and I can't really find much fault with what you're saying at all. I'm just going to say my piece here:

My journalism professor in college had a neat little way of defining what makes a good news story. It was the acronym CHIMP PINT. It stood for Conflict, Human Interest, Magnitude, Proximity, uh two things I can't remember, Novelty and Timeliness. Basically, the more of these subjects you covered in a story, the more "newsworthy" it would be.

The IC story definitely has conflict, but it also contains human interest (three or more folks who claim to have been wronged by their employer), magnitude (percentage-wise, IC did lose quite a bit of employees) and timeliness (these are very recent events).

You make the point that this article is very one-sided, and you're totally right here. If I were still a journalist (which I'm not), I'd call this story a "scoop," basically the prelude to a much larger story that will unfold over the course of days, weeks or longer. As Cookie said quite a few pages back, he did hear more from the IC camp, but he is withholding that information until he gets the green light from them. Good on him for that.

Personally, there are some comments from the staffers that I would have edited out because they were pretty sensational, and sensationalism has a tendency to damage an otherwise good story.

The bottom line here is that this is a story in progress. ANN did the interview and tried to get some info from IC but couldn't. They published the story anyway, and now we all have to wait to hear the official response from someone at IC. From a purely journalistic standpoint, it's a mostly solid news story, even if the format of it (Q&A) is a bit obtuse and unorthodox.

As far as the staffers go...I don't think I'd work at a place that didn't promise to pay me unless it was for an internship.Either get paid or don't, or get yourself a nice, legal contract that spells out EXACTLY when you're going to get paid, how much and how often. Otherwise, you're totally asking for trouble at some point in the future. Or, as my mom is fond of saying, "You made the bed, now sleep in it."
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Aaron White
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 17, 2003 9:45 am Reply with quote
I think it's been pretty well established that the article fulfills established standards of journalistic practice and is therefore in no need of further defense.
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