Snark Bytes
USAVoice.org: Add another thud
8-15-2006

 
Now you just knew all the fake hype wasn't going to end with the last e-mail from USAVoice, now didn't you? (See previous two posts here and here for the background on this scam.) Sure enough, I got another e-mail, this one inviting me to sign up for a one-hour conference call, which sounded like maybe it would finally be an interview of sorts with real people participating (besides me, that is; but as it turns out, I wasn't by any means the only one 'invited' — see the comment at the end of the first post).

No such luck: when I went to the sign-up page, it was headlined Training Call. Now there's a dead giveaway if ever I saw one. It's the kind of thing one expects when one is being considered for a job at a call center, not for an editing or reporting position. Not only have they not interviewed me yet, let alone made a job offer, but they reveal that 1) the call will actually be 90 minutes long, 2) that participating in the call doesn't yet constitute a job offer, 3) that there will be several other 'candidates' on the line with us but 4) that we won't be able to talk or be heard while the 'lecture' is going on, 5) that I have to be able to talk on the phone during the conference call while being online (I guess those of us 'candidates' who are forced to use dial-up Internet were out of luck, eh?), and 5) that I should take careful notes. Oh, and this was going to be a long-distance call, with no mention of it being toll free.

Let me see now: it's 90 minutes long distance at my expense, they're contradicting the information they gave me earlier, they're being evasive about who they are and where they're located, they haven't made me any job offer or even interviewed me yet, but they want me to take careful notes. Uh-huh. Right. And no, as of today, August 15, 2006, USAVoice still isn't up and running as any kind of news outlet.

So, having been 'invited' by the ghosts at USAVoice to participate at my own expense in a 90-minute long-distance conference call that turned out to be a training session — if that doesn't smell, then dogs crap rose petals — I decided that my time and money were better spent reading about Hezbollah in the New York Times. The Times may be establishment and it may be flawed, but at least it's a real news operation — which is more than I can say about USAVoice. And at least I know who owns the mainstream media.

If that weren't enough, it turns out that whoever is claiming to be Klaas de Vries Jr. (see last blog post) regularly surfs the Web, enough to have found this humble blog and enough to want to ensure that his name gets in, and in the manner he would prefer (sorry, bubba, the first you get, the second you don't). Hey, too bad — I don't give a damn about his personal battles with supposed impostors or alleged perpetrators of frauds. I wanted to know something about USAVoice, and that's the only reason his name came up. No, I won't post his useless comment, either, because it had nothing to do with USAVoice; and before we go any further, let me now state the policy of this blog regarding giving anybody free publicity I don't think they deserve:

"It is the policy of PoliticalEye to publish comments not simply because they are sent, but because they are relevant and, to the extent that the senders make claims, those can, when necessary, be demonstrated to be true. We don't give anyone carte blanche to simply peddle their own propaganda here — you can damned well get your own blog for that. Nor are we, by extension, either PR flaks or stenographers: there will be no 'he said, she said' stories here. If you don't like it, blog away somewhere else. We don't care."* — The Director

Now, then: having stated the official policy, let me add this: oh yes I *DID* do searches with the name "Klaas de Vries Jr" — you're dead wrong about that, mister — and those didn't produce anything useful. There is nothing that I was able to retrieve that indicates you are either a journalist or working for a legitimate news organization in any way. Your claims do not constitute proof, and though you may be a blogger, that by itself does not a journalist make.

Moreover, all I was able to pull up were more pages of you either complaining to someone else about alleged fraud that has yet to be proven, carping about how someone else is impersonating you (also unproven), ranting about this persistent nemesis of yours named Defrawy, or struggling to be some kind of author or entrepreneur, to which end there are mentions of you possibly trying to represent artists and of a supposedly 'hilarious' published exchange between you and someone claiming to be an African prince. None of which is relevant to my reportage on USAVoice. And I've had far more expert people than I am sussing out domain info on USAVoice, none of which produced anything useful, either. Whoever is behind that outfit, they remain Vegas-based shadows — and that alone is highly suspicious in the news business, which needs to be far more transparent than that.

Good luck in your entrepreneurial endeavors, whoever you are, and please leave news reporting to real reporters: you haven't the skill for it. (Translation: go peddle your bogus crap somewhere else, and stop bothering legitimate reporters, you dork!)

As for the rest: anyone heard anything more about NewAssignment.Net?? I'm dying to know if they're going to make a real go of it, and whether independent journalists such as yours truly have even a ghost of a chance of getting work from them.

Until next time ...

UPDATE: USAVoice never did come to pass, other than as a marketing effort and an attempt to get a whole bunch of e-mail addresses for potential marketing mailing lists. Almost a year after my posts ran, the Washington Post (no pun intended) ran this story on phishing via job ads like those from USAVoice. Enough said on that. And as for NewAssignment.net, it didn't survive either, though I'm guessing that had more to do with the lack of a successful business model to fund online journalism — something we still don't have in 2014, more's the pity.