Full Disclosure
Posted on July 27th, 2015 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
A commenter below points out that, when writing about Gawker and Nick Denton, I should have acknowledged that Gawker has written negative things about me.
I have no idea if Gawker has written negative things about me. I wouldn’t be surprised, but if Gawker has, I have forgotten.
Jezebel, one of Gawker’s companion websites, has written negative things about me. But then writer Anna Merlan had to apologize for them, because they literally could not have been more wrong, as was proved in about a day.
But if you want to know the truth, I wasn’t really bothered by what Jezebel wrote, because it was just silly and ad hominem; it’s much more irritating to be criticized when the critic is right.
And then the writer of the Jezebel thing apologized. It was a snarky apology—”This is what a professional journalistic correction looks like…”, an oxymoronic claim—but whatever. I accepted the apology and moved on—and encouraged some of the people who kept criticizing her to do the same.
So, yes, by all means, I’m happy to disclose that, and grateful to the commenter for pointing it out. But it wasn’t in my head when I was writing what I wrote about Nick Denton.
13 Responses
7/27/2015 1:05 pm
Reading that jezebel piece after a few months, when facts finally caught narrative, is englightening.
Well, reading almost every gawker media piece.
7/27/2015 1:06 pm
It was a snarky apology—”This is what a professional journalistic correction looks like…
Merlan’s was a terrible apology, but not because of this quote. It was terrible because it focused on why it was reasonable for her to attack RS’s critics as ridiculously wrong based solely on her assumptions of what information and facts existed.
7/27/2015 1:14 pm
Richard —
It’s not 100% accurate to say that “Gawker” has never written anything bad about you. You refer to Gawker as a “companion” website to Jezebel (which outright slandered you), but in fact both are owned by Gawker Media. So, in fact Gawker DID malign you — Gawker Media, that is.
As far as Anna Merlan’s idiocy not being “in my head” when you wrote about Gawker’s latest infighting, I’m dubious. You either have unnaturally thick skin, or you’re cheating a little. Frankly, I won’t even click on a “Deadspin” article anymore because of how kneejerky Gawker handled the Rolling Stone fiasco.
7/27/2015 1:36 pm
Austin-Let me put it this way: I would have written exactly the same thing about Denton before the Jezebel thing that I wrote after.
And funnily enough, I had a moment after I posted that blog where I actually remembered, “Oh, hey, Jezebel wrote about you, you should mention that,” and then something came up and I forgot to add it.
7/27/2015 1:46 pm
Fair enough, thanks for that. I for one don’t care that you didn’t mention Jezebel the first time, since it was recent history, and certainly obvious to your regular readers. But I appreciate your commitment to ethics.
7/27/2015 1:49 pm
Funny, then, that Gawker Media is thinking of changing the corporate name because of the negative association with Gawker.com. This is a clear sign of very deep trouble with the Gawker.com brand. One of the reasons I have strenuously avoided Gawker.com from the first time I heard of the site was just that: the bloody name. The image that came to mind was people standing around a gory car wreck and just watching.
7/27/2015 9:23 pm
I think the name Gawker is perfect for the type of journalism they practice.
From Merriam-Webster dictionary:
gawk (verb)
: to gape or stare stupidly
gawk (noun)
: a clumsy or stupid person
7/28/2015 6:48 am
Richard,
You wrote:
“And then the writer of the Jezebel thing apologized. It was a snarky apology—”This is what a professional journalistic correction looks like…”, an oxymoronic claim—but whatever.”
That snarky comment was written in relation to the factual correction in the original article, not the apology. (She had originally said you were retired, the corrected to say you were editor-in-chief at Worth.)
The apology was in a different article. Merlan wrote:
“This is really, really bad. It means, of course, that when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave’s doubts about the story and called them ‘idiots’ for picking apart Jackie’s account, I was dead f**king wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize.”
7/28/2015 10:33 am
A December 3, 2014, Gawker posting-as the RS “Rape on Campus” story began to unravel-mentioned Richard by name and provided a link to his November 24 “Is the Rolling Stone Story True?” blog. Gawker writer Allie Jones began the piece with a by now familiar (and hackneyed) lede:
“When a young woman says she’s been raped at college, some people-her peers, administrators, and otherwise-disconnected conservative pundits, will go to great lengths not to believe her for various, usually bad reasons.”
“And now,” Jones continued, “questions from journalists and more disingenuous ex-journalists are piling up about the veracity the of Jackie’s account and her reliability.”
Richard is included in the “more disingenuous ex-journalists” category, and it is at this point that Jones provides a link to his blog….
Jones, for her part, is nevertheless reassuring. “Erdely maintains that she found Jackie to be ‘very credible,’ and Rolling Stone is sticking by the story.”
A question for conservative retiree Richard: With enemies like these, who needs friends?
7/28/2015 1:01 pm
Glad to read another of your articles. They are always teaching me even if short. The snarky apology was grudging but revealing. The comments on Merlan’s original article curiously stopped around December 5th, yet I seem to remember a few more comments continued to be made in response to your blog. Reason triumphs over bluster.
7/29/2015 7:51 pm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3179229/Three-members-Phi-Kappa-Psi-fraternity-UVA-claim-targeted-admittedly-false-Rolling-Stone-article-Rape-Campus-filed-defamation-lawsuit.html
7/29/2015 10:05 pm
According to the NYT, Will Dana of Rolling Stone is leaving his job.
7/30/2015 8:19 am
By the way, several articles note Erdely posted an apology for the UVA article, which I recall reading on her site. She has since removed it (or perhaps isolated it by removing any links to any other page on her site.)