Tom Evslin’s graceful retraction of something he wrote recently helps us understand the changing media scene. Let’s unpack what happened.
In a posting entitled “Networked Citizen Journalists at Work” (including himself), he discussed the way folks peered into a small telecom company’s apparent business model. What prompted them? An item in David Pogue’s New York Times tech blog, which left some unanswered questions. Tom writes:
What’s interesting is that the business model left unexposed in David Pogue’s post was successively peeled back by bloggers with subject matter expertise AND THEIR READERS. And all three bogs ended up linked together through their comments so those who were interested could learn or contribute to the story.
What Tom wrote next was where he erred. He said:
But note that this isn’t all you should expect from journalism. There’s a strong circumstantial case for how the company makes money (which is not a crime although somewhat deceptive). But none of us, professional or amateur, has pressed the company itself for a reply.
Not so, as David Pogue noted in the comments in the original post I made about this, and to Tom himself.
I have a lot of trust in both of these gentlemen. Today I have even more.