Jason Unger

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One of the problems I have when coming up with topics for this blog and for the Online Savings Blog is choosing subjects to speak authoritatively about.

It's not that I can't or that I won't — it's just that I don't get that much enjoyment from it.

When I'm blogging, I'd rather share my experiences and stories living life than try and provide "useful" and informative content. It's a lot more fun to just shoot the breeze and post funny links and insights.

Every day, I read a number of amazing blogs like Copyblogger, Penelope Trunk and Get Rich Slowly, who are there to provide compelling and timely content. This is what I do every day at CE Pro — but it's not what I want to do when I write here.

Bloggers have been getting a bad rap lately, but a lot of that has to do with the different expectations and meanings that term has to people. Engadget might be a blog, but they are much better tech journalists than anyone in the mainstream media. Top it off with a strict policies regarding relationships with who they're covering and they've got a much cleaner rap sheet than many "professional" journalists.

But because anyone can start a blog, "bloggers" all get lumped together — the ones redefining journalism and the ones simply telling you about their day. But does that mean you should only start a blog if you really have something useful and informative to say? Of course not.

When you come to CE Pro, you get the informative content and breaking news. On this site, I get to talk about whatever the hell I want.

So what's the take away from this? You always have something to say — and you can speak authoritatively about it: you. As Gary Vaynerchuk recently laid out, you have to look inside yourself to find happiness.

I don't pretend to bring you compelling content with every blog post on this site — I only post things that I find interesting and want to share. That's our agreement.

Thanks for being a part of it.

You might have great content, an engaging angle on a topic and a well-thought out story, but if your content doesn't look good, it may not matter.

So how do you make sure that your content looks good?

The background here is that Web users do not read — they scan.

This is why it is important to break up the text with bullet points, write short paragraphs, and be clear and concise.

If your content doesn't look easily digestible, your visitors won't read it.

I don't like when a paragraph goes longer than 4 full lines — normally 3 lines are my max. If it looks like it will take too long to read, I won't read it.

The next time you post a story online, take a look at in in draft mode and imagine yourself as a reader.

Would you want to "sit through" that story?

How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo)

Wow. If there's any columnist out there today who doesn't deserve to be fired, it's Penelope Trunk.

But she's been canned from Yahoo! Finance, according to her blog, because her career-oriented columns lower the overall CPM of the finance-related articles on Yahoo.

While this is a legitimate excuse, it's not like there isn't money to be made in career advice advertising. People will pay for material if they know that they'll be getting something valuable in return. Penelope's columns deliver that.

Even though she's written her last column for Yahoo, at least she gets to go out with a promo for her blog and RSS feed.

(Yes, she is my friend on facebook.)

You may have never heard of David Richards, but if you're writing anything in the technology sector, he's probably familiar with your work.

Richards, seen here on the right (via)

You see, Richards is the biggest plagiarist in technology journalism today, consistently stealing content from Web sites and re-publishing under his own byline.

Richards is in management at SmartHouseNews, an Australian Web site owned by publishing house 4SquareMedia. Oddly, 4SquareMedia has no Web site, as its official domain is a parked hosting page, and its .net equivalent reveals that "this is a test."

Phil Sim at Squash has an excellent background on Richards, who wrote a questionable story on 60% of Windows Vista needing to be re-written.

Without a doubt, Richards is the most notorious and controversial technology journalist in Australia and it won't surprise anyone down under in the tech media or IT industries that he's managed to get himself embroiled in this kind of saga.

First things, first. Richards is a real, bona fide journalist. He's not an amateur blogger. He's not a techie, who took up a writing. He's got a Fleet Street background and was responsible for one of the most, important investigative journalism works ever published in Australia when his expose on the Painters and Dockers union uncovered extensive corruption and sparked a historical Royal Commission.

Richards is also a successful entrepreneur. He started a PR company, Weston Communications, which he built up and sold and following that he founded a publishing company DWR Media, which he flogged to US publisher Penton Media for up to $US8 million (Penton would about 2 years later offload the division for a pittance).

Along the way, though, he's ticked a lot of people off. He's brash, pushy and thrives on controversy. He always seems to be suing someone, or else being sued. In the past few months, he's been accused on plagiarism, attacked for conflicts of interest and laid a big, steelcapped boot into one of the world's biggest PR companies.

I was first tipped off to Richards' plagiarism by Lee Distad, a contributor to CE Pro, who saw that a story he wrote ("How the Format War Affects Custom Shops") appeared on SmartHouseNews.com.au.

The article, given a new title of "Are You Making Money Out of the Format War?", has Richards as the lead writer in the byline, with Lee given second billing. The two stories are nearly identical.

We gave him no permission to publish the story, and given that Lee wrote the story, Richards' byline is completely unwarranted.

It's straight-up plagiarism.

Richards has plagiarized other stories from CE Pro, including at least one that I wrote. At least two of the stories (originals here and here) have his sole byline (copies here and here).

When I contacted Richards to remove Lee's story from his site, he ignored my email, even though I said I wanted to keep it civil. One week later, I re-sent the email, CC'ing the contacts of SmartHouseNews's Web site, including sales, marketing and editorial.

Richards replied, saying, "This was removed a week ago."

But it wasn't. And, as of this writing, it's still there.

It isn't just CE Pro that Richards plagiarizes.

He's plagiarized TWICE (his version here), Big Picture Big Sound, BusinessWeek (original and copy) and The Hollywood Reporter (original and copy).

He's republished stories from Residential Systems (original and copy) and Stereophile (original and copy).

He's even republished feature stories from CE Pro as from a "US Wire Service" (original and copy).

I could keep on going on about stories he's copied, his continued acts of plagiarism and his general disregard for other's work, but I would be here all night.

Richards is a disgrace to journalism and should be shunned by the technology industry — journalists, manufacturers and marketing folks alike. I agree with Robert Scoble, who called for Richards to be fired after his Vista-rewrite story. Can him.

On SmartHouseNews's site right now, there are advertisements from Pioneer and Mitsubishi. You are decent companies, but you shouldn't support publications based in plagiarism. Please consider dropping your advertising.

Title says it all.