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Home > Archive > Debian Developers > July 2005 > Does Debian need a press office?
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Does Debian need a press office?
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| Kevin Mark 2005-07-07, 7:56 am |
| Hi members of Debian at large,
With the recent article from Zdnet, does Debian need a press officer or
www.debian.org/press? If harm is done to the reputation to the Debian
organization by word or deed, should there be someone to respond to
this? Any legitimate news organization should do adequet fact checking
and take a moment to ask some individual in Debian (or any org) for an
offical comment. They found something 'newsworthy' and ran with it like
a tabloid. I doubt they would do this with IBM! We are not second-class!
Cheers,
Kev
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| Andreas Barth 2005-07-07, 7:56 am |
| * Kevin Mark (kmark+debian-devel@pipeline.com) [050707 12:33]:
> With the recent article from Zdnet, does Debian need a press officer or
> www.debian.org/press? If harm is done to the reputation to the Debian
> organization by word or deed, should there be someone to respond to
> this?
We have a press office, and the press office is just now preparing an
announcement about security.
Cheers,
Andi
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| Thijs Kinkhorst 2005-07-07, 7:56 am |
| On Thu, July 7, 2005 12:46, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Kevin Mark (kmark+debian-devel@pipeline.com) [050707 12:33]:
>
> We have a press office, and the press office is just now preparing an
> announcement about security.
This sounds very after-the-facts to me: the press had to base its report
on the statements that individuals make on mailinglists and blogs; what
was needed was an official statement early, when it came appearent that
there was a problem.
So we might have a press office, but it's not functioning like it could.
Be there early to present the facts. It's better to admit that something's
wrong and provide people with the facts about what exactly it is, than
have people guessing and gossiping away in the absence of real, official
information.
Also, I've not seen any real effort coming from this press office you
claim to exist. Look at the news page on www.debian.org. The only
announcements I've seen are along the lines of "Debian 3.0 updated" or
very occasionally "Debian present at some conferences". Debian could be
spreading such news items as "x.org now in Debian", "apt now more secure"
(with details of course on how this works and what advantages it has), or
"city of XXX switches desktops to Debian" (with some quotes as to why they
chose it).
I am hereby offering to be on the press office team, on the condition that
at least some other people will too (we need a team, not a single person).
I'm CC'ing this to 'press', I hope to discuss how we can arrange matters
to revive the press office.
regards,
Thijs
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| Lars Wirzenius 2005-07-07, 5:58 pm |
| to, 2005-07-07 kello 13:38 +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst kirjoitti:
> This sounds very after-the-facts to me: the press had to base its report
> on the statements that individuals make on mailinglists and blogs; what
> was needed was an official statement early, when it came appearent that
> there was a problem.
Not to belittle the fact that the project stumbled on security support,
but the press certainly did not have to rely only on web log entries and
postings to public mailing lists. They could have asked questions of
people. That is, in fact, what the press was traditionally supposed to
do: dig out the truth of the matter, not just repeat what someone else
has said.
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| John Hasler 2005-07-07, 8:49 pm |
| Lars Wirzenius writes:
> Not to belittle the fact that the project stumbled on security support,
> but the press certainly did not have to rely only on web log entries and
> postings to public mailing lists. They could have asked questions of
> people.
It doesn't matter what the _press_ should do. The fact is that the most they
_will_ do is look at the Web site. You can't even rely on them to do that:
they need to be sent press releases.
--
John Hasler
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| Matthew Garrett 2005-07-08, 7:49 am |
| Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.iki.fi> wrote:
> Not to belittle the fact that the project stumbled on security support,
> but the press certainly did not have to rely only on web log entries and
> postings to public mailing lists. They could have asked questions of
> people. That is, in fact, what the press was traditionally supposed to
> do: dig out the truth of the matter, not just repeat what someone else
> has said.
As has been pointed out, we're obliged to deal with the reality of the
situation (which is that the press /don't/ do the checking that they're
supposed to do) regardless of what we'd like the situation to be.
However, in this case, the main thing the press were basing their
reports on seemed to be Martin's blog - and Martin's both a member of
the security team and a press officer, so this could easily be mistaken
for an official pronouncement. In a volunteer organisation it's not
always clear whether somebody is speaking officially or not, and people
should take that into account when making public statements.
--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59-chiark.mail.debian.devel@srcf.ucam.org
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| Andrew Suffield 2005-07-08, 5:54 pm |
| On Thu, Jul 07, 2005 at 06:35:34AM -0400, Kevin Mark wrote:
> With the recent article from Zdnet, does Debian need a press officer or
> www.debian.org/press? If harm is done to the reputation to the Debian
> organization by word or deed, should there be someone to respond to
> this? Any legitimate news organization should do adequet fact checking
> and take a moment to ask some individual in Debian (or any org) for an
> offical comment. They found something 'newsworthy' and ran with it like
> a tabloid. I doubt they would do this with IBM! We are not second-class!
It's zdnet. They'd do it even faster for IBM. zdnet are not
journalists, they are an advertising shop. Their business is to
attract as many banner ad views and clicks as possible, which they
routinely do by posting controversial stories which later turn out to
be false. It seems to be working.
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ |
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