On FeedDemon and Scoops
Posted by: Heather Green on May 19
Jason Calacanis is on a tear over whether CNET should give Om Malik credit for breaking the story about FeedDemon. Dave Winer has some smart points that I couldn’t agree with more. I understand that things CNET has written has already riled up Calacanis and am sure that he’s just trying to do the right thing by Om. I wanted to post about this, since Calacanis mentions us specifically in his blog.
I don’t know how Om Malik got his story, but he’s a great reporter. So I am not taking away from the fact that he did get a scoop. But sometimes when a deal or a bit of news is about to be announced, companies brief analysts and writers about it under embargo. And these people can begin to talk before the embargo is over. If they do, it’s fair game to write whatever you want.
Did Om have it public first? Yes, but apparently according to what Dave says, other people had been briefed. So, wouldn’t it be kind of weird to attribute your knowledge of something to someone…when it wasn’t true?
I hadn't been briefed and saw the ditty Fred Wilson wrote about it. I didn't do much checking around to follow the chain, but when I read Om's site later, I did want to credit that he had broken the news. But if I had been under embargo, I wouldn't have felt at all obligated to link to Om.
And speaking of attribution...the thing that puzzles me about Calacanis' Endgadget blog, for example, is that it just provides a link entitled Read to a story they are using as the basis for some of their posts. They rarely seem to say who the author or publication is. Would love to get an explanation of that or hear from other people about what they think about that.
