Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Harvard Irving — Mon, 28 May 2007 19:50:00 -0000

Amazing. You can't even get your facts straight about this, when the source is easily available to all. The email was not published in Ryan's first article. It was not even discussed. It simply referred to "reliable sources."

Even if you support/defend Ryan for being quick to publish and having honest intentions, how can you defend the sloppy journalism that does not even mention the facts about what the "source" said?

I honestly find it unbelievable that so many people are getting basic facts about this story wrong. It really shows sloppy journalism on top of sloppy journalism. Please explain to me, Robert, what led you to write that Ryan had "printed the email" in your first paragraph?

Did you see this email "printed" in Ryan's article? Did you imagine it? Are you just using secondary and tertiary sources, instead of going to the actual first-hand source when you write your blog?

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Charles — Mon, 28 May 2007 08:51:35 -0000

Robert, you're wrong here, unless you think Engadget needs to be held to no more account than the average person staring out of a window while waiting for the microwave to ping. The email contained information that would have let them cross-check: it said "Apple today issued a press release..."

He should have said "What press release?" Any slightly trained journalist would have. If I'd received that story, I'd have bee n poised to write the story - and then I'd have read the email a second time and wondered about it standing up. Apple PR might not have leapt to the phones, but the clues necessary to stand the story up, or kill it, were right there in the email itself. This was bad practice within Engadget; indicative of a subtle problem that will be very hard to eradicate. But the same one that newspapers and other media struggle with: how long do you try to stand up (or kill off) a story? When do you publish? If Engadget can move a market, then it has to consider taking longer about checking facts before someone comes after them in a very aggressive fashion.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Tooth Fairy — Sun, 27 May 2007 00:41:32 -0000

Get a clue.
Buy one, borrow one, steal one.

Peoples life savings may have been wiped out. Nice Mistake.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Gedeon Maheux — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:37:28 -0000

Sorry Robert, you're way off base here. The onerous is on Engadget to get it right despite their own self-imposed pressure. They are at the top of the heap in gadget blogs, so that pressure is of their own making. I wouldn't feel so strongly about it except the so-called "explanation" did nothing to demonstrate that they learned what went wrong. "We messed up, oh well!" just doesn't cut it.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Brian — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:06:34 -0000

So, what you're saying then is that it's more important to make money than to publish facts?

Maybe _you're_ what's wrong here. You and Ryan, anyway. Covering ass with an excuse that basically amounts to "we needed to move before anyone else" is just bull.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Blain — Thu, 24 May 2007 15:03:36 -0000

The good news: Engadget et al have cemented and backed up their claims of blogging being journalism.

The bad news: It's yellow journalism.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Beerzie — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:49:52 -0000

Get linked or get it right? A marketer does the former, a journalist does the latter. This kind of foolishness lowers the bar for bloggers. Bad job.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Devon Shaw — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:35:51 -0000

Just to point out, that journalistic standards (at least pre-Lewinsky, pre-sensationalist Fox News) for the most part followed the Two Source Rule, wherein journalists were required to seek corroboration/confirmation from a second source before publishing a story, particularly when the first source was anonymous. News agencies in the past couple years have started trampling over this rule, and that's when jobs are lost. Case in point: Dan Rather.

Ryan would have been fired from any reputable print journal for leaking that information.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

DaveO — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:28:10 -0000

"he printed an email"
But he didn't. That was the fundamental error. No email, no indication that the email referenced a non-existent press release. At least if he had printed the email initially, people could have made a more informed choice. Individual readers (and shareholders) could have asked, "why haven't I seen the press release?" No, he left critical information out.

I agree that you'd have to be a jackass to dump your shares based on this story, but you'd have to be a bigger jackass to believe the email and post a blurb that misrepresented the completely unverified email.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

RandomThoughts — Wed, 23 May 2007 23:57:28 -0000

I know I am late to the party, but lets be real here.

Baseball is very competitive, do people give Barry Bonds a pass on steriods because he is just trying to compete? You could say that the Enron executives were operating in a pressure environment, but that does not excuse what happened there.

Engadget jumped at the chance to cover what they thought was the story. They blew it. Just becasue they are in a competitive environment doesn't give them the excuse and that argument should not even be used. Pressure? You call the blog environment pressure? Get a grip on reality.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

John C. Welch — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:27:17 -0000

Um...if you're going to start jailing people for bein' a dumbass, we're gonna need a LOT more jails.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

anon2 — Sat, 19 May 2007 20:32:21 -0000

Anon,

You're a frackin' moron. Insane. Deranged. Delusional. An oxygen thief.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

anon — Sat, 19 May 2007 18:47:51 -0000

I hate engadget. They're a covert, clandestine Microsoft advertising arm that hits out against Microsoft's competitors. What Ryan did was criminal, plain and simple. Numerous breaches of the law from stock manipulation to corporate espionage were involved. Ryan should stand trial, testify under oath about how he came about the email, and go to prison.

engadget would never release email affecting Microsoft stock price in this manner.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

DaveD — Sat, 19 May 2007 09:36:57 -0000

I actually think that most everyone else would have acted the same way. Just look at the New York Times with the Microsoft-Yahoo rumor and how that affected the price of YHOO.

I also believe the non-apologetic words of Ryan too. Unfortunately, it does't "raise his stock up in my eyes"... it make me less likely to ever believe what he writes again.

I'm long AAPL. Have been for a few years now. Since the next horizon to review my position is January 2008, this was just a blip on my radar.

But there was REAL harm done to others. And Ryan - however criminally innocent - is directly responsible. Yet, here's the sentence that imediately tuck out in my eyes:

"Given the nature of that news, we felt we had an obligation to inform people that Apple had sent out an internal memo in preparation of a delay in the iPhone and Leopard."

An obligation? To whom? You wanted to be first Ryan. Nothing more. To say nothing about your ignorance to your REAL obligation - to the truth.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

figby — Sat, 19 May 2007 02:54:18 -0000

I have no problem with Engadget here - actually they've been just as wrong hundreds of times, and they eventually correct themselves. It's not what I'd call proper fact-checked journalism, but it is what it is.

The problem is with any idiot who makes stock trading decisions based on what Engadget says...

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Tom — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:56:15 -0000

Engadget posted a 12-paragraph excuse that basically said everyone else would have done it, too. Um, no.

Mr. Scoble, if you were ever going to take a shot at them, this time you would have been justified. I guess the blogger school is just going to stick together on this one...

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

John C. Welch — Fri, 18 May 2007 20:15:31 -0000

Of course, Winer is tying himself in a knot to fellate Engadget and lick the feet of the "First is all that matters" gods. If they're SO professional, why couldn't they sit on the story until they had better confirmation?

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Christopher Coulter — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:37:13 -0000

So letseee, post anything that moves, don't double check, but bleeding-heart apologize later. Works for bloggers, I guess...

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

John C. Welch — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:10:38 -0000

Why would anyone make stock deals based on engadget’s writings, which have a hit & miss history regarding accuracy (and frequently put their on “spin” into stories, which sometimes lowers them to (almost) the level of theRegister and theEnquirer sites)?

it's an old scam, not limited to blogs. You create buzz that drops the price long enough to buy cheap. As soon as the buzz is shown to be crap, the price goes up, and you sell. Lots of money, not a lot of work.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Alfredo Octavio — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:44:45 -0000

Anything that comes from an email has to be considered a rumor, until you confirm that the email came from whom it says it comes. In this time of phishing scams and spams that has to be the rule. Ryan Block, who is an all around nice guy in my experience, should think why he posted what he posted. Yes being first was there, but also putting down a high flying Apple. I know I smiled when I read the post and didn't for a minute think it was a hoax...

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Phil — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:03:24 -0000

It was only $4 billion, what's the big deal? - I feel a blogger challenge coming on - who can knock the most share value off a company in one go.
With great power comes great responsibility...

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Kermit Croaked — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:14:24 -0000

Why would anyone make stock deals based on engadget's writings, which have a hit & miss history regarding accuracy (and frequently put their on "spin" into stories, which sometimes lowers them to (almost) the level of theRegister and theEnquirer sites)?

This shows how screwed up Wall Street is. Even if iPhone and/or Leopard were delayed, Apple would still make about the same money after they were released. So the company's bottom line would only be affected short term, if at all. But speculators buy and sell based on what they think other speculators will do, not based on a company's actual financials, so people sell based solely on the fear that others will sell and drive the stock price down, which ends up being a self-fullfilling cycle.

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:19:48 -0000

(missing word) "verify the info."

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:19:18 -0000

Robert,

I'm not sure I know what you're saying. On the one hand, you are backing away from the policy of shoot first and let the blogosphere self-correct if it turns out you were wrong. On the other hand, you are fully endorsing Ryan Block, who doesn't seem to be backing away from the practices which led Engadget to post false information, but simply explaining how he was fooled and how he made an impatient good-faith effort to verify the.

Are these positions consistent?

Re: Ryan’s wrapup of tough day at Engadget

John C. Welch — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:50:41 -0000

No, they do not know where the email truly originated. If you can show anyone an absolutely foolproof method for showing an email's origins, you can make a ton of money, because that's a problem that a lot of people would like to solve.

They *thought* it originated from Apple, but they didn't *know* and rather than waiting a few hours for confirmation, they just had to be first, because being "first" is more important than "correct".