I’m late getting to this, but it’s important: Yesterday, Chris Fotos at PostWatch noticed that the Washington Post’s Peter Carlson had written a review of the recently debuted Shock magazine without mentioning the copyright controversy that has caused several major retailers to yank it from their shelves. The copyright controversy erupted when Michael Yon discovered that the magazine had used one of his photos in a cover package that disparaged the U.S. military on Memorial Day. Since then, Yon has led a boycott that has resulted in nine major retailers disassociating themselves from Shock (see here for details).

Today, Yon responded to Carlson’s oversight:

The simplest test of any news organization’s research capabilities is what I call, “the Google test.” This admittedly non-scientific measure is the cyberspace equivalent of the wet finger wind test but just like no one should spray pesticide or laquer without testing for wind, newspapers should perform minimal research before publishing any material, even something as trivial as a magazine review. Google “Shock Magazine” and the copyright controversy is there on the first page of the search results.
Some might argue that more relaxed standards apply to media criticism than to investigative reporting. Point well taken. But there is “relaxed” and then there is not mentioning the disastrously clumsy launch of a magazine that, failing to get more than a handful of advertisers, hit the stands with a copyright infringement controversy surrounding the cover photograph, news that was the focus of more than a dozen articles in industry publications, and which resulted in the magazine being pulled off the shelves of thousands of stores. When something is that relaxed, it’s time to call the code.

After reading Carlson’s article, it looks to me like his intent was to sarcastically slam the trashy magazine. If that’s what he meant to do, I can see how reporting on the controversy might distract the reader from his ersatz praise.

But here’s the thing: The joke, if that’s what it is, gets old after the third paragraph. Instead of spending the next 20 demonstrating his own cleverness, Carlson could have used the remaining space to inform Washington Post readers about the huge controversy involving the magazine’s misappropriation of a moving photo. His readers would have been better served.