Ten Things I Hate About Top 10 Lists

Little did Dave Letterman know when he came up with Top 10 lists many years ago the havoc he would wreak across publications trying to mimic his technique. The latest bastardization of Dave's lovable list is PC World's Top 10 Things We Love About Apple and The Top 10 Things We Hate About Apple.

These lame fluff pieces certainly attract readers. The pointer to the Love article on Digg had 536 Diggs as of writing this, while the Hate piece had over 2000, and the comments suggest that Apple bashers don't agree with the Love stuff, while I'm sure Apple fans don't agree with the Hate list, but you didn't need to generate a list to figure that out, did you?

Why publish it at all is the question, but what's really interesting about this piece is that last week PC World Editor Harry McCracken actually quit his job when his boss Colin Crawford allegedly refused to run "Hate" article because it was too mean and might upset Apple and other potential advertisers. According to an Apple Insider report on the incident. this came on the heels of a recent edict by Crawford that reviewers shouldn't be too critical to potential advertisers. (And publishers wonder why the general public has lost respect for the mainstream press.)

I feel for McCracken having to work for a guy who simply doesn't understand the role of the press is not to coddle advertisers. I think most reputable companies understand the relationship doesn't come with a quid pro quo that you won't be honest about a product in a review, regardless of your advertising budget. I can't pretend to speak for Steve Jobs, but does Crawford actually believe that Jobs would micro-manage the PC World ad budget because of a silly fluff piece like this one (especially when it's accompanied by the flip side "love" piece). Please, even corporate America deserves more credit than that.

Maybe McCracken really quit because he didn't want to subject us to any more Top 10 lists, but more likely he got tired of working for a guy who didn't understand the magazine business.

Comments

[Marcos]

There's really no reason to believe the line that the story was killed because it might upset advertisers. McCracken himself has said things to the contrary. Most likely Crawford killed it because it was a poor article. Both lists are. (The 1998 hockey puck mouse?)

Daringfireball posits a equally plausible scenario:

http://daringfireball.net/2007/05/mccracken_pc_world

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Thanks for the comment and the link. It's an interesting piece, although mostly speculation. As for your comment, you could be right. None of us knows, but we can all agree that these were poor articles.

Thanks again,
RM

[Bumper]

Clearly in both articles they had to dig deep to make it to ten. The later items were pretty lame.

Except the statement about the mini not being upgradeable is just plain wrong. The internet is rife with instructions and success stories about upgrading the processor, swapping out the hard drive and upgrading the wifi card.

Lame articles and shoddy journalism don't really give an editor much of leg to stand on. If this really was the reason the editor left then it was time for him to go.

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I don't think he was defending these particular articles so much as his own editorial integrity and independence from the business side of the publication, but you're right that these were bad articles on to which to take his final stand.

Thanks for the comment.

Regards,
RM