NEWS

Glenn Reynolds amplifies on What is a Warblogger. Glad I asked. Apparently it's not what some people think it is. I parse war the same way. On Sept 11, I ran a survey asking if people thought we were at war. Over the next weeks I flip-flopped several times on whether we should be at war. Truth be told, today, I think our leaders make a lot of noise about being at war, but here in the US, it doesn't feel like a war.

RFC: What is a warblogger?

Later today or tonight the BigPub piece should go live. It'll be interesting to see if they run the quotes from the initial interviews, or if they pick up the open discussion that followed between InstaPundit and Scripting News. Key point, at the time of my interview, I was not a reader of InstaPundit, and said so. Some ideas were presented to me as those of the warbloggers, and they were very crude. I said so. I assumed those ideas were attributed to Reynolds. Mistake. Mea culpa. I fucked up. Then I had the idea that I should talk to him, and find out more about him. We had a phone talk, and then I started reading his site. The impression I had was wrong. At least now I got to say that before the piece runs. I have no idea what I said there, for all I know I'm not even in the piece.

Something like this happened when the NY Times did a profile of me last spring. It turned into a condemnation of Microsoft for screwing with SOAP. Although their quotes were accurate, they only quoted the yin, and left out the yang. Is that good reporting? No way. While the story was in process, peace broke out. The story was written as if it didn't happen. Now, viewed a year later, judging from Don Box's ridiculous bluster about what SOAP is (Box now works at MS), the Times may have been right. But the story didn't leave much room for doubt. And MS can try to screw with SOAP, and in the end, I don't think it's going to matter. They've become much less important over time, even in the last year. The story captured none of the doubt, or any of the balance that I have to have, in order to work with such a big company. Dumb-it-down or deliberate manipulation? Impossible to know. I learned from that experience, not enough though, I may have repeated the same mistake in this last bit, where I gave the reporter enough soundbite to hang me, if they omit the balance.

I tried to have an intelligent discussion about this with the Times reporter last year after the piece ran. I asked this question. Suppose a reporter goes to a baseball game, and due to some fluke, his presence alters the outcome of the game, and Team A wins. If the reporter hadn't been there, Team B would have won. Assume there's no question about this. So which outcome should the reporter report? Which team won? Of course there's no question. So why should it be any different for tech coverage? The presence of a Times reporter may have altered the outcome of the SOAP interop work. We don't know for sure. But the outcome was different from what he reported. As a result we have some meaningful interop and it doesn't revolve around MS. Look at the Google API experience. Bing.

In this case the BigPub process got me to read InstaPundit. That's a fact. I'm no longer clueless about Glenn, or warbloggers. And I gotta thank them for that. We have a philosophy in weblog-land, it's an intuitive thing, as I wrote yesterday, it's probably very similar to the impulse that drives people to seek a career in journalism. There is no difference betw what he does and what I do. We are different people, of course, so the result is different, but underlying that, at a deeper level, it's the same thing. If anyone tells you otherwise, they don't get it.

Glenn Reynolds amplifies on What is a Warblogger. Glad I asked. Apparently it's not what some people think it is. I parse war the same way. On Sept 11, I ran a survey asking if people thought we were at war. Over the next weeks I flip-flopped several times on whether we should be at war. Truth be told, today, I think our leaders make a lot of noise about being at war, but here in the US, it doesn't feel like a war.

RFC: What is a warblogger?

Later today or tonight the BigPub piece should go live. It'll be interesting to see if they run the quotes from the initial interviews, or if they pick up the open discussion that followed between InstaPundit and Scripting News. Key point, at the time of my interview, I was not a reader of InstaPundit, and said so. Some ideas were presented to me as those of the warbloggers, and they were very crude. I said so. I assumed those ideas were attributed to Reynolds. Mistake. Mea culpa. I fucked up. Then I had the idea that I should talk to him, and find out more about him. We had a phone talk, and then I started reading his site. The impression I had was wrong. At least now I got to say that before the piece runs. I have no idea what I said there, for all I know I'm not even in the piece.

Something like this happened when the NY Times did a profile of me last spring. It turned into a condemnation of Microsoft for screwing with SOAP. Although their quotes were accurate, they only quoted the yin, and left out the yang. Is that good reporting? No way. While the story was in process, peace broke out. The story was written as if it didn't happen. Now, viewed a year later, judging from Don Box's ridiculous bluster about what SOAP is (Box now works at MS), the Times may have been right. But the story didn't leave much room for doubt. And MS can try to screw with SOAP, and in the end, I don't think it's going to matter. They've become much less important over time, even in the last year. The story captured none of the doubt, or any of the balance that I have to have, in order to work with such a big company. Dumb-it-down or deliberate manipulation? Impossible to know. I learned from that experience, not enough though, I may have repeated the same mistake in this last bit, where I gave the reporter enough soundbite to hang me, if they omit the balance.

I tried to have an intelligent discussion about this with the Times reporter last year after the piece ran. I asked this question. Suppose a reporter goes to a baseball game, and due to some fluke, his presence alters the outcome of the game, and Team A wins. If the reporter hadn't been there, Team B would have won. Assume there's no question about this. So which outcome should the reporter report? Which team won? Of course there's no question. So why should it be any different for tech coverage? The presence of a Times reporter may have altered the outcome of the SOAP interop work. We don't know for sure. But the outcome was different from what he reported. As a result we have some meaningful interop and it doesn't revolve around MS. Look at the Google API experience. Bing.

In this case the BigPub process got me to read InstaPundit. That's a fact. I'm no longer clueless about Glenn, or warbloggers. And I gotta thank them for that. We have a philosophy in weblog-land, it's an intuitive thing, as I wrote yesterday, it's probably very similar to the impulse that drives people to seek a career in journalism. There is no difference betw what he does and what I do. We are different people, of course, so the result is different, but underlying that, at a deeper level, it's the same thing. If anyone tells you otherwise, they don't get it.

Glenn Reynolds amplifies on What is a Warblogger. Glad I asked. Apparently it's not what some people think it is. I parse war the same way. On Sept 11, I ran a survey asking if people thought we were at war. Over the next weeks I flip-flopped several times on whether we should be at war. Truth be told, today, I think our leaders make a lot of noise about being at war, but here in the US, it doesn't feel like a war.

RFC: What is a warblogger?

Later today or tonight the BigPub piece should go live. It'll be interesting to see if they run the quotes from the initial interviews, or if they pick up the open discussion that followed between InstaPundit and Scripting News. Key point, at the time of my interview, I was not a reader of InstaPundit, and said so. Some ideas were presented to me as those of the warbloggers, and they were very crude. I said so. I assumed those ideas were attributed to Reynolds. Mistake. Mea culpa. I fucked up. Then I had the idea that I should talk to him, and find out more about him. We had a phone talk, and then I started reading his site. The impression I had was wrong. At least now I got to say that before the piece runs. I have no idea what I said there, for all I know I'm not even in the piece.

Something like this happened when the NY Times did a profile of me last spring. It turned into a condemnation of Microsoft for screwing with SOAP. Although their quotes were accurate, they only quoted the yin, and left out the yang. Is that good reporting? No way. While the story was in process, peace broke out. The story was written as if it didn't happen. Now, viewed a year later, judging from Don Box's ridiculous bluster about what SOAP is (Box now works at MS), the Times may have been right. But the story didn't leave much room for doubt. And MS can try to screw with SOAP, and in the end, I don't think it's going to matter. They've become much less important over time, even in the last year. The story captured none of the doubt, or any of the balance that I have to have, in order to work with such a big company. Dumb-it-down or deliberate manipulation? Impossible to know. I learned from that experience, not enough though, I may have repeated the same mistake in this last bit, where I gave the reporter enough soundbite to hang me, if they omit the balance.

I tried to have an intelligent discussion about this with the Times reporter last year after the piece ran. I asked this question. Suppose a reporter goes to a baseball game, and due to some fluke, his presence alters the outcome of the game, and Team A wins. If the reporter hadn't been there, Team B would have won. Assume there's no question about this. So which outcome should the reporter report? Which team won? Of course there's no question. So why should it be any different for tech coverage? The presence of a Times reporter may have altered the outcome of the SOAP interop work. We don't know for sure. But the outcome was different from what he reported. As a result we have some meaningful interop and it doesn't revolve around MS. Look at the Google API experience. Bing.

In this case the BigPub process got me to read InstaPundit. That's a fact. I'm no longer clueless about Glenn, or warbloggers. And I gotta thank them for that. We have a philosophy in weblog-land, it's an intuitive thing, as I wrote yesterday, it's probably very similar to the impulse that drives people to seek a career in journalism. There is no difference betw what he does and what I do. We are different people, of course, so the result is different, but underlying that, at a deeper level, it's the same thing. If anyone tells you otherwise, they don't get it.

Glenn Reynolds amplifies on What is a Warblogger. Glad I asked. Apparently it's not what some people think it is. I parse war the same way. On Sept 11, I ran a survey asking if people thought we were at war. Over the next weeks I flip-flopped several times on whether we should be at war. Truth be told, today, I think our leaders make a lot of noise about being at war, but here in the US, it doesn't feel like a war.

RFC: What is a warblogger?

Later today or tonight the BigPub piece should go live. It'll be interesting to see if they run the quotes from the initial interviews, or if they pick up the open discussion that followed between InstaPundit and Scripting News. Key point, at the time of my interview, I was not a reader of InstaPundit, and said so. Some ideas were presented to me as those of the warbloggers, and they were very crude. I said so. I assumed those ideas were attributed to Reynolds. Mistake. Mea culpa. I fucked up. Then I had the idea that I should talk to him, and find out more about him. We had a phone talk, and then I started reading his site. The impression I had was wrong. At least now I got to say that before the piece runs. I have no idea what I said there, for all I know I'm not even in the piece.

Something like this happened when the NY Times did a profile of me last spring. It turned into a condemnation of Microsoft for screwing with SOAP. Although their quotes were accurate, they only quoted the yin, and left out the yang. Is that good reporting? No way. While the story was in process, peace broke out. The story was written as if it didn't happen. Now, viewed a year later, judging from Don Box's ridiculous bluster about what SOAP is (Box now works at MS), the Times may have been right. But the story didn't leave much room for doubt. And MS can try to screw with SOAP, and in the end, I don't think it's going to matter. They've become much less important over time, even in the last year. The story captured none of the doubt, or any of the balance that I have to have, in order to work with such a big company. Dumb-it-down or deliberate manipulation? Impossible to know. I learned from that experience, not enough though, I may have repeated the same mistake in this last bit, where I gave the reporter enough soundbite to hang me, if they omit the balance.

I tried to have an intelligent discussion about this with the Times reporter last year after the piece ran. I asked this question. Suppose a reporter goes to a baseball game, and due to some fluke, his presence alters the outcome of the game, and Team A wins. If the reporter hadn't been there, Team B would have won. Assume there's no question about this. So which outcome should the reporter report? Which team won? Of course there's no question. So why should it be any different for tech coverage? The presence of a Times reporter may have altered the outcome of the SOAP interop work. We don't know for sure. But the outcome was different from what he reported. As a result we have some meaningful interop and it doesn't revolve around MS. Look at the Google API experience. Bing.

In this case the BigPub process got me to read InstaPundit. That's a fact. I'm no longer clueless about Glenn, or warbloggers. And I gotta thank them for that. We have a philosophy in weblog-land, it's an intuitive thing, as I wrote yesterday, it's probably very similar to the impulse that drives people to seek a career in journalism. There is no difference betw what he does and what I do. We are different people, of course, so the result is different, but underlying that, at a deeper level, it's the same thing. If anyone tells you otherwise, they don't get it.

Glenn Reynolds amplifies on What is a Warblogger. Glad I asked. Apparently it's not what some people think it is. I parse war the same way. On Sept 11, I ran a survey asking if people thought we were at war. Over the next weeks I flip-flopped several times on whether we should be at war. Truth be told, today, I think our leaders make a lot of noise about being at war, but here in the US, it doesn't feel like a war.

RFC: What is a warblogger?

Later today or tonight the BigPub piece should go live. It'll be interesting to see if they run the quotes from the initial interviews, or if they pick up the open discussion that followed between InstaPundit and Scripting News. Key point, at the time of my interview, I was not a reader of InstaPundit, and said so. Some ideas were presented to me as those of the warbloggers, and they were very crude. I said so. I assumed those ideas were attributed to Reynolds. Mistake. Mea culpa. I fucked up. Then I had the idea that I should talk to him, and find out more about him. We had a phone talk, and then I started reading his site. The impression I had was wrong. At least now I got to say that before the piece runs. I have no idea what I said there, for all I know I'm not even in the piece.

Something like this happened when the NY Times did a profile of me last spring. It turned into a condemnation of Microsoft for screwing with SOAP. Although their quotes were accurate, they only quoted the yin, and left out the yang. Is that good reporting? No way. While the story was in process, peace broke out. The story was written as if it didn't happen. Now, viewed a year later, judging from Don Box's ridiculous bluster about what SOAP is (Box now works at MS), the Times may have been right. But the story didn't leave much room for doubt. And MS can try to screw with SOAP, and in the end, I don't think it's going to matter. They've become much less important over time, even in the last year. The story captured none of the doubt, or any of the balance that I have to have, in order to work with such a big company. Dumb-it-down or deliberate manipulation? Impossible to know. I learned from that experience, not enough though, I may have repeated the same mistake in this last bit, where I gave the reporter enough soundbite to hang me, if they omit the balance.

I tried to have an intelligent discussion about this with the Times reporter last year after the piece ran. I asked this question. Suppose a reporter goes to a baseball game, and due to some fluke, his presence alters the outcome of the game, and Team A wins. If the reporter hadn't been there, Team B would have won. Assume there's no question about this. So which outcome should the reporter report? Which team won? Of course there's no question. So why should it be any different for tech coverage? The presence of a Times reporter may have altered the outcome of the SOAP interop work. We don't know for sure. But the outcome was different from what he reported. As a result we have some meaningful interop and it doesn't revolve around MS. Look at the Google API experience. Bing.

In this case the BigPub process got me to read InstaPundit. That's a fact. I'm no longer clueless about Glenn, or warbloggers. And I gotta thank them for that. We have a philosophy in weblog-land, it's an intuitive thing, as I wrote yesterday, it's probably very similar to the impulse that drives people to seek a career in journalism. There is no difference betw what he does and what I do. We are different people, of course, so the result is different, but underlying that, at a deeper level, it's the same thing. If anyone tells you otherwise, they don't get it.