The Story of Newspapers

GeekFest Jeddah Beta was covered by local publications* after it successfully happened last month.

While it's always exciting to get recognition via local papers, that excitement is matched by disappointment at the state of journalism in this city.

Wouldn't it be nice if

- facts were checked before publication
- spelling of names were accurate
- proper credit was given (especially to photographers and copy editors/writers!)
- publications had good, functioning online versions

In this Arab News article, for instance, attendees to the event were referred to as "dorks".

"GeekFest is their "little get-together "organized the world over - a celebration of the geek packs, nerd camps and those pledging their loyalties somewhere-in-between (gerd, perhaps?)."

The quotation marks, were they meant to mock the event? Gerd, as in Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease? Okay, maybe I'm just nit-picking now and being butt-hurt in the way that the internet always gets butt-hurt about the tiniest things. But also, GeekFest is not organized the world over.

The real question here is whether local publications are doing enough to be up-to-date in their field. What exactly are their priorities? I suppose in Jeddah, majority of the population still rely on paper to get their news, so there's still that market. But that doesn't excuse bad journalism, does it?

I know some of the writers who work for these papers, and I DO know that they're good, so I don't understand how some articles still come out really crappy. Are they being deliberately reverse-edited?

Having said all that, I'm not ungrateful for the publicity we got. Destination Jeddah did a piece on us, and Saudi Gazette wrote the most accurate version of the event (and was cheered on by the attendees on Twitter). They win virtual cookies.

After all, the whole point of getting publicity is to reach as many people interested in attending the next one as we can.



* English publications. I don't read the Arabic ones.