Journalism
Judge Censors Stories on Kansas City Power Company
A circuit court judge in Kansas City has issued a temporary injunction ordering two news sites to remove articles from their web sites published Friday about the city's Board of Public Utilities on the grounds the power company would be "irreparably harmed" by their publication. The articles, published by the Kansas City Star and The Pitch, describe a confidential document produced for the company in November 2004 that evaluates whether to tell the EPA that power plant upgrades did not comply ... (read more)Wikipedia Admin Loses His Religion
Seth Finkelstein covers the latest scandal to embarrass Wikipedia: a site administrator and Wikia employee who's been lying for years about his academic credentials. Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old in Kentucky who's never taught a class, claimed on his Wikipedia bio and in an interview with the New Yorker to be a tenured professor of religion with four degrees: a bachelor of arts in religious studies, master of arts in religion, doctorate of philosophy in theology and doctorate in canon law. The ... (read more)Dancing Mortgage People Ate My Brain
My weblog entry on protecting yourself from dancing mortgage people attracted the attention of New York Times reporter Brad Stone, who tracked down Jennifer Uhll, the graphic designer who created the ads for LowerMyBills.Com. Whenever I see one of these ads, I'm reminded of the door-to-door meat salesmen who occasionally show up at my house offering steaks from a beer cooler in their trunk. Every time they do, I want to ask, "Who are the people keeping you in business?" I half expect to find ... (read more)Great Moments in Journalism with Michael Errington
Yesterday, Michael Arrington reported on TechCrunch that BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen is definitely on his way out at the company of the same name. He then bragged about how he and blogger Om Malik had scooped CNET: While CNET writers were all cozy in bed last night, Om and I were competing to break the Bittorent story. That's why blogs will win, and CNET will lose. Today, Arrington posted a correction: In a very tense conversation with Bram Cohen and BitTorrent's Director of Communications, ... (read more)Michael Arrington's Rich Commitment to Journalism
TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington was recently caught scrubbing an old blog entry to hide a conflict of interest. Arrington wrote Oct. 27 about Maya's Mom, a Web 2.0 startup aimed for the Oprah crowd that received "around $1 million" in funding. When he wrote about the company in April, he told his readers that Maya's Mom founder Ann Crady Kennedy was one of his peeps: Disclosure: Ann is a former colleague and so my opinions may be favorably tinted. This sentence subsequently disappeared, ... (read more)59 of 60 Web Users Prefer the Drudge Report
The ad broker for the Drudge Report says that Matt Drudge's site broke traffic records on Election Day with 2.3 million unique visitors and 25.1 million page views. The scariest part of the press release: This proves, once again, that when Americans want reliable, unbiased, instant news on what's happening and what's important, they trust Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report to deliver. Drudge also had 100 million ad impressions that day. If you figure a click-through rate of one percent and 5 ... (read more)A tragic story in today's Houston Chronicle has an unfortunate ad juxtoposition: The ad's animated, showing an SUV stopping safely and avoiding a child's ball bouncing into the road. "You always stop," it begins. "You always drive safely. You deserve a reward." ... (read more)Wikipedia Leader: I Want to Be Deleted
In a provocative commentary for The Guardian, Seth Finkelstein argues that having a biography in Wikipedia is a magnet for libel: For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an "attractive nuisance". It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: "Here's an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be ... (read more)Five Years On, 2,992 - 19 Lives Remembered
Today's remembrances of 9/11 use an official count of 2,973 people who died at the World Trade Center, Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Someone at CBS News this morning goofed and used 2,992, a count that includes the 19 hijackers, as this screen grab from Google News shows: ... (read more)Mexican Flag Raised Over U.S. Post Office
Los Angeles blogger Lone Wacko reported an incident this weekend that should be entering heavy rotation any minute now in the mainstream media: Hispanic pro-immigration demonstrators raised a Mexican flag over a U.S. post office in Maywood, Calif., Saturday as part of a counterdemonstration against Save Our State, an anti-immigration group that claims California is becoming a "third-world cesspool." Maywood became a flashpoint in the escalating immigration debate when elected officials in the ... (read more)
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