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A L S O__T O D A Y
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K True of false: No one ever had their mind changed on the Internet. Share your thoughts on the function of discussion areas in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y The dumbing-down of programming When you just can't stop clicking The dumbing-down of programming Maximum confusion Let's Get This Straight - - - - - - - - - -
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HACKER HEAVEN, EDITORS' HELL | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - In the Post story, former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan asks, "What makes someone do such a thing? And how can we trust anyone? And what could we have done to prevent this?" I'd humbly suggest to Sullivan, Lane and the New Republic that preventing such fraud is a relatively simple matter: If you want to run stories about the fascinating but labyrinthine world of hackers, make sure you have an editor or two around who understands it at least well enough to catch blatant lies and fictitious organizations. Experience within a specific field gives journalists decent noses to sniff out fishy tales from bona fide facts -- that's what got Forbes' editors suspicious in the first place. If an online publication of note had succumbed to a similarly wacky fraud in the offline world -- say, if News.com or Feed (or Salon) had published a story about bribery at some federal regulatory agency that turned out not to exist -- you can well imagine the outcry. There! Proof that Web journalism has no standards! I wouldn't reflexively turn the tables on the print press, though. Bad luck and a determined con artist (Glass reportedly devised both a fake corporate site on America Online and a bogus voice-mail message for Jukt Micronics) can trip up any publication, in print or on the Web. But the next time you hear some pundit proclaim that the online press is inherently inferior to its print and broadcast predecessors, remember the Glass saga. Like previous goofs, such as Pierre Salinger's gullibility over TWA Flight 800 reports that had circulated and been debunked on the Net, this latest incident suggests that mainstream journalism still holds pockets of ignorance when it comes to technology and Internet coverage. Certainly, U.S. newspapers and magazines have come a long way over the last two years, particularly by hiring reporters who have a deeper understanding of the Internet. But the New Republic's gaffe with "Hack Heaven" makes it plain that many publications still have a long way to go. The online medium does have one great advantage over print when it comes to such embarrassments: You can yank a bad story from a Web site in a second. (In fact, all evidence of the article is now gone from the New Republic's own site.) I'm sure the New Republic's editors wish they could similarly erase "Hack Heaven" from the print edition, but it's still sitting on newsstands this week for gawkers to titter over.
Fans of Word, the long-running Web magazine that was shut down by its owners in March, were relieved two weeks ago to read that Word had found an angel to buy it: a Houston-based food processor named Zapata. Zapata, founded as an oil company by George Bush in 1953, is changing its name to Zap -- and wants to get on the Net in a big way. Its desire is so burning, in fact, that the company took out a display ad in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reading, in bold headline type, "ZAPATA WILL BUY YOUR WEB SITE! Contact Avie Glazer, President & CEO," followed by a phone number and e-mail address. Who knows what other ailing or defunct Web sites Word may find itself
sharing owners with. Zap's approach is certainly unorthodox, even oafish
-- but I bet Glazer gets a ton of responses.
E-mail Scott Rosenberg.
Let's
Get This Straight R.I.P., Word -- but don't get out your
handkerchiefs for "content." Media
Circus Blame it on the Net: Walter Cronkite and Pierre Salinger
could learn a thing or two from alt.conspiracy. |
