mistaken identity: ShortFormBlog

14:01 • 5 months ago

[Ryan] Lanza’s ability to post about his innocence, and mine to see it and relay it to people, is only a social media success story if you don’t question the necessity of dragging an alleged suspect’s possible Facebook profile into the limelight where he’ll be called a mass murderer of children. Other than that, yeah, tweeting’s fun.

I am Facebook Friends with Ryan Lanza, Which Became a Problem — Matt Bors (via susie-c)

I wrote a FB comment on this issue yesterday, part of which I think is relevant to Bors’ situation:

“I’m reminded of the case of Richard Jewell, the man who found the bomb on the grounds of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta in 1996. He found the bomb minutes before the 911 call was made, only to find himself the target of an intense trial by media — a case which, by the way, led to a number of libel suits, including against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Jewell died at a fairly young age, the victim of significant health issues which likely weren’t helped by his media ordeal.”

“What happened yesterday with Ryan Lanza was like the entire Richard Jewell ordeal, compressed into two hours. That is not healthy for our industry nor is it something that we got into journalism school for.”

19:35 • 1 year ago

Tags: colombia deportation deported immigration Jakadrien Lorece Turner Johnisa Turner mistaken identity 234 • Permalink

Our day has been hectic, hers is too, just as long as she makes it home, just as long as she gets here.

Johnisa Turner • Discussing the fate of her 15-year-old daughter, Jakadrien Lorece Turner, who returned to the U.S. on Friday after mistakenly getting deported from the country in May. Jakadrien, a runaway, apparently used a fake name that just happened to be that of an undocumented immigrant from Colombia, leading to the deportation. The U.S. government and Colombian government have gone back and forth over who was at fault for the deportation — with many concerned the U.S. didn’t do due diligence when deporting the girl. source (via • follow)

10:05 • 1 year ago

Tags: amusing embarrassing things jimmy wales Julian Assange mistaken identity wikipedia 13 • Permalink

No, no, no. Different guy. Not wanted in Sweden.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales • Revealing, under embarrassing circumstances, that he had been mistaken for Wikileaks’ Julian Assange by an immigration official in Britain. This despite the fact that Wales runs one of the most popular sites on the Internet. And he likes using this power to stare at you. Wales used the point to emphasize, despite his site’s massive growth, he’s managed to remain mostly anonymous. Good work, son. You proved Julian Assange has more influence than you. Time to update your Wikipedia page. source (via • follow)

16:40 • 2 years ago

Tags: dns easydns everydns mistaken identity our bad owning up to mistakes screwups wikileaks 6 • Permalink

EasyDNS and why having a small writing staff sometimes sucks

We’d like to fess up to something. Earlier today, we wrote a blog post about the latest bit of the Wikileaks saga. In the post, we mentioned a site called EasyDNS as being responsible. When we wrote the entry, we weren’t intending to blame them, but just to note that it happened. If Amazon of all sites can’t handle Wikileaks, we’d expect their beleaguered DNS provider to have even more of a claim than Amazon did. (And others weren’t quite so kind.) Here’s the problem, though. It wasn’t EasyDNS. It was EveryDNS. Without intending a pun, it was an easy mistake to make. EasyDNS soon after wrote a blog post about how everyone was making the same mistake as us, including Gawker, and called us out for it. (Deservedly, mind you. Let’s own up to the fact that we’re not perfect.) We’d like to offer up some thoughts on this whole mess:

How we work We’re a small staff, and whenever me (Ernie Smith) or fellow blogger Seth Millstein blog about stuff, we’re usually working alone, with the goal of trying to cover a lot of stuff quickly. We’re looking up interesting links but offering up commentary or interesting quotes, numbers or blurbs in the process.
Our weaknesses Unlike a larger site, like, say, Gawker (who made the same mistake and isn’t owning up to it), we don’t have an army of editors and are often working around other jobs, so sometimes we’re forced to write our posts in a limited amount of time while self-editing. Some days it doesn’t work out for us, but we try.
Owning up to it Look, our friends at EasyDNS have had a rough day, and we made it a little bit rougher on them. There are some weaknesses in how we work, and instead of chalking it up to a two-second mistake, we’re going to work on our self-editing processes to ensure diligence. To EasyDNS, we’re sorry. source

» One other thought: We’d like to think that when we screw up, there’s opportunity to be found in it. Maybe the problem is collective workload. So, let’s try to make some lemonade out of this: We’re always interested in having more voices on ShortFormBlog, so let us know if you might be interested at trying your hand at the short-form storytelling we do.

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