The PSFK Editorial Policy

My piece on the lack of green awareness at the CES yesterday has caused some debate in the comments section and in the office here. One of the key accusations is that ‘who are we to be a green crusader when we write about gadgets and other consumer goods anyway’ and the team here were concerned that we were being misunderstood.

PSFK’s aim is to inspire our readers to make change to make things better. Better sometimes means ‘good/world-saving’ and sometimes just means ‘better/world-changing’.

I know it says ‘trends’ at the top of the page, but we really didn’t know a better descriptor when we started this site of ideas nearly four years ago. It’s only by looking back, we realized why we get up at 6 in the morning to do this: to inspire our readers and clients to make change.

And remember there are many voices behind PSFK. Our editorial policy is to allow a cacophony of informed voices to write about ideas they want to share to inspire the readers. PSFK is not my site, it’s ours.

Sometimes we might get confused with a cool-hunting blog or a design porn site. That’s because PSFK is mainly a tearsheeting exercise of the ideas we see around the world that fit with our aims (and also of ideas that fail by companies who should do better). The things we write about aren’t because they fit into some pre-determined trend, they just make us sit up and react.

Of course, what happens is that I occasionally write more of an opinion piece, as I did with CES: An Orgy Of Poison?, that reacts to business, media or cultural trends. I suppose in a newspaper, these might be sent to the Editor’s Column but on PSFK everything is published front page because of the way blogging software works. And I admit that could be confusing to irregular readers who expectthe usual ‘look at this’ style.

But to react to criticism that we have double standards by criticizing the electronics industry and then writing about gadgets or even jet planes: we write about ideas that make change. We’re not a consumer facing blog – we don’t celebrate or promote new products so that you go out and buy them. We write about them because they’re different and they represent change and innovation – and that sharing the find with you will inspire you to consider it in your work. iPhone is culturally and technically significant. Yes, there are eco issues too but at the end of the day, Apple makes 1 version of its phone, Motorola makes hundreds of phones that have limited shelf lives. Both Apple and Motorola merit writing about in different ways. At one moment, we could be wowed by what technology is allowing us to do, and at the next we can be angered about the problems technology is creating on an environmental level. We can be both geek-kids and green crusaders because it fits with our mission.

And the jet-plane incident? PSFK wrote about the death of Concorde and supersonic travel back in 2005. This new jet plane announced in 2008 might mean the return of hyper-fast travel for business people and could therefore this plane could create change. It fits our brief well.

Also, PSFK is designed for you to skip through and find the articles that are relevant for you – we don’t want you to read every article. I know a lot of people use PSFK and other blogs for research for their work and we’re thankful that they find it so useful, but just because you use it thus, doesn’t mean we should tailor it thus. You shouldn’t really be cutting and pasting our editorial into PowerPoint to prove a point before a client or colleague. If you do use PSFK for trends research, consider the posts on PSFK as datapoints, not as confirmation on any ‘trend’ you might suspect. Look at the datapoints in PSFK and beyond and use pattern recognition within the whole database to decide for yourself what the trends are. Then, you write about it.

We love debate but after all this, if you have any problems with our editorial policy or you still think we should stick only to a certain style then I don’t know what we really can do. It’s our site, not yours.