Monday, March 24, 2008

When bloggers go bad - Peter Abraham, the egomaniacal beat blogger

Update: 11:20 PM. I have a bit of a conscience, so I have removed the pictures. It is not right to make fun of the way someone looks in such an obvious, non-funny way. That was sophomoric, and I'm better than that. As for the rest of this post, I suggest you read it.

I will preface this by giving Peter Abraham the same compliment I have always given Peter Abraham: he changed the way beat writers attacked covering baseball.

Now the bad. While Abraham claims to be the bloggers best friend (for example his blogger month this past February where he lent a day to many different Yankee bloggers) it is all a front. In reality, Abraham is all about getting the attention and looking like a hero to what he believes are his fans.

Exhibit #1.

February 1st, I post the following blog entry:

Want to head down to Florida for Spring Training Baseball? Read this for some money saving tips!

then, I sent Abraham the following email:



(click to enlarge)

Basically, I was giving Abraham the chance to use my idea, but at least give me a hat tip on his blog.

In a few hours, nary a mention of my email, my suggestion or my tip.

http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2008/02/02/spring-training-travel-guide/


Notice the URL is "Spring Training Travel Guide" and notice the time - not even 12 hours after my post. If you click the link, you will see that he changed the title of the blog post to 2nd annual Spring Training Travel Guide. This is because I called him out on stealing my idea for a post, so he had to scramble. This is one petty fat man.

Exhibit 2.

No email to prove my suggestion to Abraham for this blog entry, but I have the following:

Some important 2008 Yankee Ticket on-sale dates

(2/21 - 7:30 PM)

and of course, a little over 12 hours later on Abraham's blog:

http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2008/02/22/time-for-tickets/
(2/22 - 8:57 AM)

Once again, no hat-tip in the direction of NYYSI.

Could these have been coincidental occurrences? Of course. However, it is highly unlikely.

Fast forward a few days, and suddenly Abraham is complaining about Kaybli, Nick and myself posting links to NYYSI in his blog comments. If you have ever waded through the comments on the LoHud Yankees blog, you will know that the majority are asinine at best and unreadable at worst. For whatever reason, I have always taken part in these blog comments, trying my best to raise up the level of conversation.

All of a sudden, my inbox was getting flooded with threatening emails from Peter Abraham for "spamming" his blog.

Here are some samples:

There I am accused of "trying to make a buck". Check out NYYSI - not an ad anywhere. This site is not about making money. It is about getting good Yankee Stadium information out to the general public and Yankee fans in particular.



Here, I am once again accused of "spamming". All I was doing was taking part in the "conversation" in the blog comments, just like anyone else. Keep in mind, the blog has the option of creating whatever name you want, and linking to whatever site you want. Abraham has many of his little pet female bloggers posting in his comments with names that "promote their blogs" and "clutter his comments section with spam". I guess I understand him not coming down on these types - he has probably never gotten any sort of admiration from a female in his life.

Finally comes the hilarious email where he threatened legal action by CCing his legal department:



wow. So, my response to that:



I can't go on any further with this garbage. It is clear that I have wasted far too much time and energy on this "battle" with a wacko beat blogger gone awry. I will readily admit that I am embarrassed I have let it get this far. I just hope before you fellow Yankee bloggers out there think of Peter Abraham as friendly to bloggers or "one of us", you will take a look at this story and realize that Peter Abraham is about one thing: himself.

Update: 3/25 7:53 AM. Thought I'd give Abraham a fair chance at a response (from the comments section below:
Quite professional, publishing private e-mails that were labeled as such.

Meanwhile, if you check the archives of my blog from January 2006 and the archives of The Journal News from that month, I wrote a "Spring Training Travel Guide." Shocking as this may be to you, you didn't invent the idea of travel tips.

And it's unethical and unprofessional to post "come read my blog!" in the comments section of somebody else's blog.

You have posted links to your blog or other such pleas for readers 89 times since Feb. 1.

I'm just asking you to leave my readers alone. People have e-mailed me complaining about your spam.

Thanks
Sure is a lot of research you did there. 89 times? You should look into this word:

ob·ses·sion (əb-sěsh'ən, ŏb-) Pronunciation Key
n.
  1. Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.
  2. A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.


Talk about it in the NYYSI Forums!

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quite professional, publishing private e-mails that were labeled as such.

Meanwhile, if you check the archives of my blog from January 2006 and the archives of The Journal News from that month, I wrote a "Spring Training Travel Guide." Shocking as this may be to you, you didn't invent the idea of travel tips.

And it's unethical and unprofessional to post "come read my blog!" in the comments section of somebody else's blog.

You have posted links to your blog or other such pleas for readers 89 times since Feb. 1.

I'm just asking you to leave my readers alone. People have e-mailed me complaining about your spam.

Thanks

Anonymous said...

Sad that you even reduce yourself to such a petty argument with one of your original fans, Peter. We're not the only reasonable people who think your heads gotten too big. Its also been noted many times that you treat many of your readers abrasively and without enough respect.

Anonymous said...

It is just amazing to me how obsessed you are with my blog. I have no advertising and I average 200-500 hits per day. Why the obsession? REALLY!?

Anyway, most of the times that I posted "spam" on your blog, I received positive feedback from your "loyal" readers. I was posting things that would be of interest, would help them save money, etc. Don't worry, I'm not posting the lineups - I'm not stepping on your toes.

You didn't invent the idea of helpful information for the Yankee fan.

Anonymous said...

I find it weird that he went back and researched this:

"You have posted links to your blog or other such pleas for readers 89 times since Feb. 1."

Anonymous said...

John - here is why:

ob·ses·sion
(əb-sěsh'ən, ŏb-)

Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.

Anonymous said...

Its not even true. We definitely did not post links on his blog anywhere close to 89 times since Feb 1st. We haven't even made 89 blog posts since then! I don't know what the hell he is talking about. I'd put the number closer to maybe 10.

Anonymous said...

Word Press software allows you to search for comments by name or IP address. Two clicks and 89 comments were returned.

I needed to document it to my IT dept to ban you guys and your spam.

As for my readers, they vote with their page views. Those who act respectfully get treated the same way. My blog has raised money for charity, I've hosted kids and readers in the press box and on at least 10 occasions this spring training, I've helped the children of readers obtain autographs. Our
"pinch hitter" series raised the profiles of 28 bloggers in January and I have a great relationship with Alex Belth, Jay Jaffe, Will Carroll, Will Leitch, etc. None of them would think to try and usurp readers from each other's blogs.

I've tried to work with you guys to no avail. Ross posted incessantly trying to draw my readers away. I had people complaining that his spam was breaking the tone of the threads.

And it's totally unprofessional to publish private e-mails.

No offense, but can I ask how old you guys are? I'm assuming h.s. age. You're really going at this the wrong way.

Anyway, good luck. If you want to behave responsibly, I'll be happy to let you post again.

Anonymous said...

"Word Press software allows you to search for comments by name or IP address. Two clicks and 89 comments were returned."

I think your WordPress software may have you confused, Peter. We may have posted comments 89 times but everyone posts comments! There's people who comment on your site multiple times a day with a link back to their site. We're talking what you call "spam", how many times we blatantly said "click here to go to nyystadiuminsider.com" for whatever reason as a comment. We maybe did that 10 times max and we stopped when you told us to.

I think you got us all wrong by misinterpreting your software. How could we "spam" back to our blog 89 times when we didn't even have close to 89 entries in that timespan? All we were doing in those 89 comments was contributing to the discussion not "spamming"!

Anonymous said...

I just can't believe this guy is still at it. Wow.

I'm comfortable letting Pete know that I am 26 years old, work at a fortune 500 company in public relations and I used to work for a major broadcast network in production.

I graduated from a major Big Ten University in 2004 with a 3.0+ GPA. I was a journalism major.

Have been on the sidelines for the Super Bowl and have been on the Court for the Final Four Multiple times.

I'm hardly unemployed, high school age, a basement dweller or anything of the sort.

I have a beautiful girlfriend, I live in an upscale section of Manhattan I have a good job, good family etc, etc.

You, Peter Abraham have gotten under my skin far too many times.

Thankfully, the power of technology combined with my love for writing have given me an outlet to voice my frustration. That you are so up in arms about all of this only serves as justification for me wasting my Monday night and part of Tuesday with this crap.

Respectfully yours,

high school age, unprofessional blogger

Ross

Anonymous said...

Sorry Peter, if I had this disclaimer at the bottom of any emails from you, I wouldn't have published them:

THIS E-MAIL IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE ADDRESSEE(S) AND MAY CONTAIN
CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED
RECIPIENT, YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED THAT ANY USE OF THIS
INFORMATION OR DISSEMINATION, DISTRIBUTION OR COPYING OF THIS
E-MAIL IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS
E-MAIL IN ERROR, PLEASE NOTIFY THE SENDER IMMEDIATELY BY RETURN
E-MAIL AND DELETE THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE.
THANK YOU.

You should send an email to your legal department and let them know to add that to the emails.

Anonymous said...

Boom. Hey Ross, I'm spamming your blog right now. Here's my link..

Anonymous said...

Wow Pete.

You are a professional writer. IT's your job. You went to college, just like I am right now, and earned your position. You are better than this.

You often show a clear bias regarding which players who you like and don't (And that certainly epitomizes professionalism, right?). You often bicker with dimwits who post on your comments section (Again, professionalism).

And you have a problem with the fact that we post and have our names as links? Come on dude. LEts banter idiotically on your comments section. That's far more productive then bringing up important and valuable points to Yankees fans who are already being made look like idiots by the ticket prices, etc.

You need to get off your high horse. Problem is, you are just drawing attention to our crappy little site. So, thanks for paying attention to us. I don't really think it makes me feel good, but it certainly makes you look like pretty bad in my eyes. That's just as good.

Anonymous said...

Just to add to this -- I keep a Yankees blawg (the name of which I'd prefer to keep private in this string), and have e-mailed with Peter on several occasions. He was quite abrasive in his treatment for no reason at all. Not that this adds much to the debate, but I'm just saying, yeah, he can be a little terse. But at the same time, you guys have failed to note that he also provides the best access to teh Yankees by any beat writer out there. So he's got a reason to be a little sensitive (and "obsessive") about his spot on the hierarchy. I'll admit, I'd barely heard of LoHud or The Journal News until I stumbled on Peter's writing. So, I think neither side looks good here, and everyone needs to let it slide a little.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous: Thanks for your input.

If you check out the first line of the blog post, you will see that I gave Peter his props for exactly what you said:

"I will preface this by giving Peter Abraham the same compliment I have always given Peter Abraham: he changed the way beat writers attacked covering baseball."

Anonymous said...

Something tells me this whole thing boils down to a tub of chicken.

Anonymous said...

Its always the chicken.

Anonymous said...

I appluad you, ross. Peter Abraham, although he provides excellent insight to Yankee fans like myself in the quickest manner possibly, has developed an ego as big as his physique as quick as he developed a fanbase. I will continue to visit his blog, because it still is the best around. But there is something to be said about someone handles a situation such as this. He's supposed to be a professional.Abraham has the time to come here and post more than one response? I would call it laughable, but that couldn't be more of an understatement. At the very least you got the oppurtunity to speak your mind about the way he has changed - I'm right there with you. Hey, if you dont write "Thanks sooooo much pet3! <3!", or "Mets and sox suk!", you really have no place onhis blog.

Anonymous said...

YOU GUYS = ASSHOLE DOUCHEBAG CUNTS

GO DIE.

Anonymous said...

credible source = drunken Peter Abraham

Anonymous said...

Also, JDW - I am glad someone else agrees with us here at NYYSI. You totally get it.

Anonymous said...

Every day I stumble upon something which makes Peter Abraham look more like an egotistical jackass.

If this guy's head gets any bigger, it's going to snap his neck.

Anonymous said...

Wow

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Ross. Pete does give the best insight to the Yanks but this post really showed me what kind of person he is.

Oh Yea

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN IS NOT GOD PETE

Anonymous said...

Next time you jump in the tub to wash your folds bring a toaster you fucking egomaniacal manatee

BooYAA

Anonymous said...

This thread is a little old but first time I saw it. I had Abraham on my college radio show last year. That night, the equipment was being a little wacky and he was getting some bounce back I believe. Anyway, I e-mailed that night thanking him for coming on and all he replied with was "get your phones fixed". From that point on, my opinion of him was changed. I totally agree with what everyone has said. Great insight and probably the best of the best Yankee beat writers, but such an abrasive asshole. Well done Ross.

Anonymous said...

Wow. Thats fucked up. Thanks for sharing that story. Just another in a long line of reasons why Peter Abraham isn't the most pleasant human being in the world.

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