RonRosenbaum.com? NOT! (Or: Stupid domain tricks)

On Friday, Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits published a piece by Ken Sands (Congressional Quarterly’s executive editor for innovation) on a current spat in the journo-sphere: Jarvis on the Death of Print: Gloating, or Practical?

I edit the Tidbits blog. As I was producing that post, I was searching for a good, direct link for Ron Rosenbaum — a journalist and author who recently wrote in Slate that media maven Jeff Jarvis has been gloating over the death of print. I discovered that Rosenbaum blogs for Pajamas Media — and I prefer to link to people’s blogs, so they can speak for themselves.

I noticed something about Rosenbaum’s blog that, in the context of the current rancorous debate he sparked over the fate of traditional journalists, strikes me as somewhat sad.

This screen grab says it all:

rosenbaum

RonRosenbaum.com: It's just a blog title, not a domain. Really.

The name of Rosenbaum’s blog appears to be a domain: RonRosenbaum.com. But it isn’t — that’s just the name of his blog. Even worse: The domain RonRosenbaum.com currently doesn’t resolve to any site.

This reflects a discouraging level of online-media cluenessness that is so common in the mainstream media mindset…

Currently, this domain is owned by The Authors Guild (not Rosenbaum himself). Apparently the Guild is doing nothing with this domain, not even forwarding it.

error

The domain RonRosenbaum.com currently doesn't point anywhere.

…That’s a shame, since people who might hear that Rosenbaum’s blog is RonRosenbaum.com would logically plug in that domain and go… nowhere…

According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, in October 2006 that domain did resolve to Rosenbaum’s blog on Pajamas Media — but since then, it hasn’t gone anywhere.

I’m surprised that Pajamas Media — which is generally pretty savvy about search visibility — would allow one of their blogs to have the same title as a nonfunctioning domain. They don’t do that with their other blogs. Maybe there’s some backstory that explains this choice in this case, but it seems fundamentally confusing to net users and thus a pretty bad idea.

Deeper irony: Given Rosenbaum’s current criticism that Jarvis is “dancing on [journalists'] graves,” I’m surprised that he would choose to blog on Pajamas Media — which bears this tagline throughout their site: “Sending the MSM down the river.”

pajamas

Hey, Ron Rosenbaum: Is Pajamas Media gloating over the death of print? If so, why are YOU blogging there?

I’m just sayin’…

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Post meta

This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on November 16, 2008 at 8:16 am and filed under blogs, emotions, journalism, media evolution, search. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment(Latest is displayed first) or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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6 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

The level of snarkyness between these two is reaching Gawker proportions and I for one love it.


1. robert ivan on November 25th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
David,
And 1,000 times shorter.


3. Jeff Jarvis on November 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
This is hilarious. Jarvis wins.


4. Robin Wolaner on November 16th, 2008 at 10:59 am
This is interesting. This sort of thing happens all the time in the print world, but I’ve never seen it happen in the web world.

Occasionally, a print marketing campaign will make it all the way to the presses before anyone bothers to involve the web department to secure a domain integral to the print product. This results in a domain getting published in the paper without anyone actually owning the domain. Yikes! This is usually a panic-filled, wide-eyed moment for the marketing staff in charge of the project.

If a cyber-squatter notices before the company does, this could be an expensive mistake.

The sad part is, it’s not that the marketing folks didn’t care about securing the domain. They just didn’t know enough about the web to make that simple phone call.

In this case, at least someone involved owns the domain. I suspect the technical contact at the Author’s Guild just hasn’t gotten around to forwarding RonRosenbaum.com to Ron’s Pajamas Media blog. Shouldn’t take them more than 5 minutes to set up the domain forwarding.

Amy Gahran reply on November 16th, 2008 10:13 am:
Yep, it should take the Authors Guild just a minute or two to set up forwarding.

But that said, this blog has been around — under this name — for YEARS. At least 2006, as the Wayback Machine shows.

D’Oh!

- Amy

Dave reply on November 16th, 2008 10:21 am:
I’d be happy to help them figure this out…as a consultant.

Amy Gahran reply on November 16th, 2008 10:59 am:
Yep, me too

- Amy

5. Dave on November 16th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Looks like it’s still registered to the Author’s Guild (www.authorsguild.org).

Amy Gahran reply on November 16th, 2008 10:11 am:
Yep, I mentioned that and linked to the whois file for that domain in this article. We’ll see if that changes soon

- Amy Gahran


6. Stowe Boyd on November 16th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Nice. A 1,000 times better than Jeff’s rebuttal.


7. David Mastio on November 16th, 2008 at 9:32 am

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By Jarvis v. Rosenbaum, Digested for Easy Reading | Web2.0h...Really? on November 16, 2008 at 12:39 pm

[...] Digital news consultant [!] Amy Gahran does some impressive web reporting [!] that reveals evidence of Rosenbaum’s startling online [...]