The People’s Choice

Here’s something interesting: the Times Union has dropped the media category from its annual Best of the Capital Region readers poll.

So what, say most of you — but at local media outlets, winning in the Times Union Best Of — or certainly, Metroland’s annual  poll — was always a big deal. Being named the best is a point of pride, regardless of who’s number one in the ratings.

Lord knows these polls are not scientific, and in recent years, there have been allegations that some winners used social media to unfairly sway the voting. Is that really unfair, trying to win a popularity contest by encouraging your friends to vote? That’s called being popular.

It’s anybody’s guess why the media category was dropped. This whole poll thing does sound like a lot of work, and it could simply be about newsroom resources.

In the interest of full disclosure, my old blog, Albany Eye, won for best local blog years ago. Looking back at my career, I would have been way better off being best local plumber than best local blogger.

10 thoughts on “The People’s Choice

  1. Those poll results are pure bullshit. The real takeaway is that people have terrible taste in nearly everything.

    1. Interesting. I think it’s bullshit, but interesting.

      With the Survey Monkey polling they drove the results by offering finite choices — whether or not they allowed write ins.

      Oh, and by the way, have a look at this. One could argue that stuff like this makes the poll completely irrelevant.

Leave a Reply to Rob Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *