USAVoice.org: Just another dud on the media landscape
8-3-2006
Well, it’s official: USAVoice is just another irritating, hype-laden non-starter out there in the ether, a marketing tool masquerading as new journalism. Having billed itself as the Internet’s answer to CNN (as if that wasn’t a dead giveaway right there), it missed its debut deadline — twice in one month — and hasn’t uttered a peep. As of Wednesday, August 2nd, its home page was still promising a start date of July 31st, and nothing new had been added to the site that this writer could find. All of which tempts one to say: Get lost, you bloody posers — and quit jerking around my colleagues!
Even if they eventually made an appearance and start doing business as a news outlet, at this point they’ve already lost what little credibility any such start-up might have. And that’s the kiss of death.
Meanwhile, they got an awful lot of e-mail addresses and other information out of freelance or unemployed journalists who applied looking for real jobs in online journalism. Poor saps. I was almost one of them, and I understand the temptation.
