Sunday, October 16, 2011

Who the Heck is Chris Adams?

The new bylines at Feeling Silly Fit have taken to launching stories with irrelevant quotes from "experts"  they didn’t interview. This week’s example of silly quoting is a weight-loss related snippet attributed to someone named Chris Adams.
People say that losing weight is no walk in the park. When I hear that I think, yeah, that’s the problem.” -- Chris Adams.
The problem is New Byline fails to tell readers who the heck Chris Adams is or what his or her authority is for commenting on park walking as a weight-loss strategy. In an attempt to fill that editorial lacunae, Old Word Wolf located five very real possibilities from the Web and arranged a multiple choice test:
Chris Adams, Feeling Fit's “walk in the park” weight-loss expert, is:
(a) The “human factors engineer” who specializes in furniture design and writes for About.com.
(b) The dead British wrestler whose fitness program involved large doses of gin and human growth hormone.
(c) The Atlanta-based purchasing manager at “Thrive Weight Loss” who writes grammatically challenged news releases at U-Publish.com (“How Do You Lose Weight Easily” without the question mark) and sells stuff.
(d) The Boise, Idaho-based fitness guru who promises customers they will be “completely revitalized” by his “unique approach” to weight loss (“No Gym Fees!!”).
(e) Something that New Byline found at  www.quotegarden.com and believed that if he made it the lede, readers couldn't help but read the rest of the story.

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