Friday, December 02, 2005

LONDONIST BLINKS FIRST

This morning, Londonist were still insisting that their NME Album Top 50 story was an important, crusading piece of journalism. Now, the post has been replaced by the words "After a communication from the NME we have decided to remove this post."


6 comments:

evan said...

I don't get it. Why did they take it down?

Anonymous said...

I'm sure they were pressured by lawyers.

My own take can be found here:

http://blog.myspace.com/lizviola

Greg Smyth said...

They stand by the story, according to quotes in The Guardian. McNicholas gives a hand-wavily vague account of the process that essentially fits with The Londonist's take on it.

But, let's face it, it was a bit of a non-story anyway. "NME fiddles Top 50 to fit more closely what the kids/admen want to hear" - big fucking deal.

As for the Bloc Party/Arcade Fire controversy, looking at the Top 50 tracks of the year Bloc Party's only entry is at 13 while Arcade Fire are at 2 and 14. Surely, from the NME's best album of the year you could've expected a stronger showing for the singles?!

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

But how do you stand by a story when you take it down?

Greg Smyth said...

Like I say, according to quotes they give in the Guardian. And, yes, it is an odd approach to take.

I doubt, even if they believed they were in the right, that The Londonist could afford to risk taking on the legal might of IPC. I assume it wouldn't take much in legal fees to sink an amateur website.

Anonymous said...

We were in the right and yes, there's no way we could afford any sort of legal entanglement.

And I agree with many of the other comment-makers here in that while this was an intersting titbit, it was hardly scoop of the century. Still, the NME seemed sufficently rattled to start firing off threatening emails.

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