An Invitation to Chris Roper
by Fred on 13/02/08 at 12:27 pm
16 comments
Imagine my surprise when I go onto Muti this morning and see the title: ‘Ideate.co.za gets BURNED by Chris Roper!‘ Aye Caramba, that can’t be good. I clicked through and saw that he’s ranting about Andrew’s article on Monday (about a lame business idea). This is a journalist who’s clearly read Ideate for the first time, not bothered really to investigate the context in which Ideate is written, and then written a brain-fart expecting that people won’t notice that he’s actually, well, lazy.
I’m sorry, Chris, but this is a perception of journalists held by many. The image of the 30-a day man sitting in the cafetaria with a axe to grind, is pervasive – and you’re not doing much to help it. I’ve met many journalists in my time, most of whom are absolute legends, so I know that this perception is only that, perception, and not the reality.
But it’s cool. It’s not too late to change this, Chris, and here’s how you can do it. You can, if you want to, become the poster boy for journo’s everywhere. It’s kind of like ‘The Biggest Loser’ for a journalist gone astray. I’m outlining here a 5 step plan for your salvation. Use it, don’t use it – but, please read it. It may just help not only your cause, but the cause of journalists everywhere (especially those tainted by your waivering pen).
Step 1: Look up ‘irony’ in the dictionary. Here’s a link to send you on the way. The Ideate article your refer to in your rant is dripping in it. I’m not sure how you missed this, but you did.
Step 2: Review. When writing one of your acerbic articles, before pressing the ‘publish’ button, rather ’save’, sit back and re-read what you’ve written. This may save you from further embarrassment.
Step 3: Practice some background research. I don’t know, somehow this seems important when you’re writing for South Africa’s biggest internet portal? If you had, you’d have picked up that Andrew’s one of the most positive guys in the country about business on the ‘Dark Continent’. He also happens to be a pretty successful businessman, paving the way for e-commerce on many fronts.
Step 4: Try not to be negative, especially when telling people not to be negative. Funny that. The biggest irony in all of this is hidden in your article. You’re trying to make a positive stand about SA, and you’re shouting ‘I can’t take this anymore!‘ The hilarious thing here is that you’re trying to have a go at Andrew for being negative, and you come off sounding like a grumpy ol’ man.
Step 5: Chill out. Chris, seriously, chill out. We have enough mud-throwing in our country without you flinging a few pies. Come on over to Ideate HQ and meet us. We’re a bunch of over-optimistic South African entrepreneurs trying to make a full go at this thing called small business. We’re very positive about SA; and Andrew, the target of your invective, is the world heavyweight champion of positive entrepreneurs. If you’re prepared to swallow some humble pie, we’d love to meet you and we’ll show you some of the projects we’ve started in order to make a contribution to our great land.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
Perky
Feb 13th, 2008
Well said!
Chris
Feb 13th, 2008
Don’t know about the humble pie thing, but always willing to meet and be convinced. I do believe that, if you want to hand it out, you have to be prepared to take it.
So mail me, we can arrange a time.
Perky
Feb 13th, 2008
Nice one Chris:-)
Rowan
Feb 13th, 2008
I also want to point out a great article written by our overly “negative” team at Ideate. Go check out the article titled “12 great reasons why its great to be a South African in 2008″ Link is http://www.ideate.co.za/2008/01/21/12-reasons-why-it%e2%80%99s-great-to-be-south-african-in-2008/
Fred
Feb 13th, 2008
Done… Chris, you’re on. Don’t know about the steak, but we may be able to muster up some sandwiches.
JBagley
Feb 13th, 2008
Great to see that Chris is going to meet up with you guys.
Why not ask him to write a really awesome positive piece on SA once he is back, cause I know you guys inspire me to be a proudly South African entrepreneur, and I’m sure you will do the same to him.
Mark
Feb 13th, 2008
I was shocked when I read Chris’s article. Ideate is an awesome proudly South African blog! Hopefully Chris will see that when he reads a few more posts on the site and meets you guys.
Hopefully some good can come out of it.
coda
Feb 14th, 2008
Chris: It really bugs me that you didn’t even link to Ideate’s blog post in question. Oh that must be the crippling 24.com CMS that I’ve heard so much about, what – it can’t handle anchor elements? ;P
I see Jason pasted the link in among all the comment noise. And as for “This comments facility is now closed” – that’s lame too. Why?
JBagley
Feb 14th, 2008
Coda, news24.com is probably the worst and I’m guessing, the oldest CMS around. Actually its so legacy, it can’t even be called a CMS.
It took me a minute to actually find my damn comment where I left the link!
Uno seriously needs to get those 24.com developers to work on their most prized possession – “SA’s first news site to reach 1million local users”
Justin Hartman
Feb 14th, 2008
Nice reply to Chris’ vitriolic article. Very balanced and fair which one would expect from the Editor-In-Chief…
Rhett
Feb 14th, 2008
I agree with coda and JBagley, the News24.com CMS is prehistoric.
I also think Ideate is a great blog and really enjoy their posts, they’re always relevant, honest and definately contribute meaningful things to the SA entrepreneurial community. Keep it up!
Pete
Feb 14th, 2008
I wonder if Chris doesn’t have a Valentine for tonight. Could that be the reason he’s spending hours and hours looking for frivolous articles to write. I’ll give him 10/10 for the thinking behind the article and 0/0 for targeting my favourite bloggers!
Tami
Feb 14th, 2008
It scares me that an editor-in-chief of a reputable site could go off at such a tangent without research. What also shocks me is this comment made by Chris “One of my staff thought of it a few months ago (and she ain’t no genius)”. It makes me ashamed to be a journalist if this this the caliber of person who fills a position like this – not only the lack of research, but publicly degrading a colleague. Makes me wonder why I worked for that degree if drivel like his rant is published.
Stunning reply Fred – I would have been a lot less diplomatic…
wormyzn
Feb 15th, 2008
HAHAHA from one blogger to another Chris you really need to watch the language used for a site that has such a large number of visitors a more professional writing approach should be taken. However ideate has not been ranked so highly on http://www.sablogawards.com/2007/. With Contributors also taking top ranks.
In a nutshell when writing we all like to speak our hearts and minds worth but be nice.
I hope it can be resolved over a sandwich :p
Lize Freislich
Feb 16th, 2008
Love your column.Check out a website called nationmaster.com. It compares international stats like crime rates per country,economies and energy, etc. It makes interesting reading.
Fred
Feb 19th, 2008
Update: we met with Chris and smoked the pipes of peace.
Great guy, with some cool ideas. Watch this space.