Biased Against Quark?

Appearances can be deceiving.

While we here at Quark VS InDesign​.com pride our­selves on read­ing every com­ment by every read­er, and respond­ing when­ev­er pos­si­ble, we don’t typ­i­cal­ly explain how we, this site, or jour­nal­ism in gen­er­al work. However, read­er Victor Oleny asks a very good ques­tion that we feel many of our read­ers are won­der­ing. The answer may sur­prise you.

Here Victor asks:

[Pariah S. Burke said:] “Quark VS InDesign​.com is an inde­pen­dent and unbi­ased news and edi­to­r­i­al Website that is not affli­at­ed with any of the com­pa­nies about whom or whose prod­ucts it writes or may write.”

“If it’s such an unbi­ased web­site, how come it has a pre­pon­der­ance of arti­cles advo­cat­ing InDesign and bash­ing QuarkXPress way beyond what is stas­ti­cal­ly normal? ”

Victor might have been specif­i­cal­ly think­ing about some of our arti­cles, like the six-part spe­cial series about Adobe InCopy CS, “InCopy CS2: In Production.” That series is, to date, the most indepth look at InCopy any­where. If Victor was count­ing that series amongst his charge of “beyond sta­tis­ti­cal­ly nor­mal,” then there’s a piece of infor­ma­tion he’s missing.

We want­ed to give the same treat­ment to Quark CopyDesk, the com­peti­tor to InCopy. We want­ed to build a series of arti­cles called “Quark CopyDesk: In Production,” which, like our InCopy series, would go deep­er into intro­duc­ing and explain­ing CopyDesk and its role in pub­lish­ing work­flows than any pre­vi­ous media. Both InCopy and CopyDesk are extreme­ly pow­er­ful tools that get lit­tle press because few ana­lysts and writ­ers under­stand them. Consequently, many work­flows that could ben­e­fit from one or the oth­er, have no idea the appli­ca­tions are avail­able or what they can bring to the col­lab­o­ra­tive editorial-creative workflow.

We want­ed to give you every­thing you would ever want to know about Quark CopyDesk, and we want­ed to com­pare it side-by-side by with InCopy. Unfortunately we–and you–were nev­er giv­en that chance. The Quark, Inc. pub­lic rela­tions office nev­er respond­ed to our request for infor­ma­tion and eval­u­a­tion copies of Quark CopyDesk, even after we told them how much cov­er­age we want­ed to give to it (essen­tial­ly, we wrote them with what I stat­ed above).

The same thing hap­pened when I inter­viewed Will Eisley at Adobe about vari­able data pub­lish­ing in InDesign, and Jess Walker, also at Adobe, about JDF job tick­et­ing. Neither of those inter­views was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to pub­lish as stand­alone, InDesign- or Adobe-specific views on those sub­jects. They were each half of a pair of inter­views on the same sub­jects; the oth­er half was to be inter­views with Will’s and Jess’s coun­ter­parts at Quark. Like our requests for CopyDesk infor­ma­tion, Quark refused to let their VDP and JDF experts be interviewed.

So, the fact that you are not read­ing Quark’s side of every­thing is not because Quark VS InDesign​.com is biased. It’s because Quark has elect­ed not to let it’s side be made public.

A per­son might won­der if a par­tic­u­lar com­pa­ny might try silence as a means of manip­u­lat­ing the pub­lic per­cep­tion of an inde­pen­dent and unbi­ased news source like Quark VS InDesign​.comas any­thing but unbi­ased. Afterall, a news and edi­to­r­i­al Website will con­tin­ue to write and pub­lish, but if one side of an argu­ment is with­held, that Website would look biased toward the other.

Of course, anoth­er per­son might hypoth­e­size that the silence is moti­vat­ed by fear. Fear that, if com­pet­ing appli­ca­tions were placed head-to-head with­out the ben­e­fit of one com­pa­ny hav­ing undue influ­ence over the results, that that com­pa­ny might fear its appli­ca­tions won’t mea­sure up. A per­son with this posi­tion would point to the unan­i­mous con­clu­sions reached by all inde­pen­dent and unbi­ased news sources that have already com­pared one set of such appli­ca­tions, as an example.

Where you believe the answer lies, depends on the type of per­son you are.

We write what’s news wor­thy in the con­text of the sub­jects we cover–Quark, Adobe, QuarkXPress, InDesign, and relat­ed tools, techolo­gies, method­olo­gies, and events. Quark has not done much that is both news­wor­thy and pos­i­tive of late. Despite our almost des­per­ate search for pos­i­tive news about Quark and XPress–despite our repeat­ed requests for infor­ma­tion and appli­ca­tions that would enable us to paint a deep­er (and pre­sum­ably more pos­i­tive) pic­ture of Quark and its products–there isn’t much to be had.

Even if Quark has elect­ed not to pro­vide news direct­ly to Quark VS InDesign​.com, we will obtain and report that news while being as fair and bal­anced as pos­si­ble. But, we can only report on and pro­vide opin­ion about what’s actu­al­ly going on. Right now, Quark does­n’t have a whole lot going on–at least not a lot that most peo­ple think of as putting Quark in a pos­i­tive light.

It’s cyclic, though. At the begin­ning of 2005, Adobe and InDesign weren’t mak­ing much news while Quark was. At the time, we were accused of being pro-Quark and anti-InDesign because every­thing we pub­lished was about what Quark did right (free English-language Tech Support, reduced prices, QuarkVista’s very cool fea­tures, and so on). 

Victor men­tioned “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly nor­mal.” Look around at oth­er news sources that cov­er Quark and/or Adobe. No one has much pos­i­tive press about Quark right now–not even Quark’s own website. 

Quark VS InDesign​.com is the most com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of QuarkXPress, InDesign, Quark, Inc., Adobe, and relat­ed sub­jects. If it’s hap­pen­ing, you’ll read about it here. It’s unfair to com­plain that we aren’t cov­er­ing news that does­n’t exist.