A month ago, I wrote a lengthy piece about how everything I’d written for Lifehacker Australia since 2008 had been reassigned to a different (and non-existent) author. I was deeply annoyed, and folks understood why: that was a major part of my journalistic legacy that had been thrown in the trash for no obvious sensible reason.
I wasn’t expecting that situation to change. After all, Pedestrian was planning to give up its licence to Lifehacker in Australia altogether. I was just minor collateral damage in that decision.
So I was somewhat surprised when I checked this week and found that my author profile was working once more, and all my articles had my face grinning above them once again. (The email link even points to my long-defunct Allure Media email.)
OK, it’s a little annoying that it’s showing my WordPress username, not my full name. But it’s a hell of a lot better than being branded as johnsmithus.
No-one from Pedestrian/Nine has been in touch, so I can only speculate on what happened. But I’m guessing the combined outcry on LinkedIn and on Influencing was enough to make someone decide it was worth reversing whatever system tweak had trashed my archive.
Cynically, the site is more valuable when name authors like myself are clearly visible, even if it’s only getting legacy traffic.
Right now, posts from the US are still automatically appearing on the AU site, which means a whole lot of daily solutions to Strands, Wordle and Connections. So it isn’t quite dead, even if all the local crew have been boned.
How long will that refeed continue? Who knows. But at least for the moment, the stuff I wrote does correctly acknowledge me as the author.
For a happier dive into my archives, check out stuff I’ve written about Butlins, soap operas and Barbara Cartland.
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