I call bullshit on Valleywag
I wish I could say I’m shocked that Valleywag’s Megan McCarthy picked up my pal Kevin Burton‘s phone — and proceeded to look through it — when he stepped away for a moment at STIRR, but I’m not. I wish I could say I’m shocked they didn’t apologize to Kevin, but I’m not. Or that that they’d rehash the same bullshit story about Kevin being a WiFi-sniffing stalker (which he’s not), but I’m not shocked about that either.
Instead it’s the same spin they try and put on all these stories. (And I should know, I’ve shown up on Valleywag more than once.) They know they totally screwed up, crossed the line, and committed a completely sickening cardinal sin of “citizen journalism”, but instead they fire back with an ad hominem attack. At best, they’ll give a totally disingenuous public apology that’s so sarcastic you’d think it was a teeth-gritting four year old paying lip service — and maybe, just maybe, they’ll fire-but-not-fire Megan.
What happened is defamatory, slanderous, and strictly nauseating. It sets the entire blog community back. These are peoples’ lives, this isn’t a joke. And it’s exactly this kind of stuff that makes it hard for professional blogs and bloggers to get taken seriously. I think if Kevin wanted to legally pursue this, he’d probably find he has a case on his hands. For all our sake I kind of hope he does.
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup: 
I agree – they try and sweep it under the rug as “Megan is just being nosy, not Valleywag”, and I don’t think that’s a valid excuse. Especially with the way our lives are structured today, there is no longer a clear line between our personal and professional lives. You can’t divide someone up into compartments and say “okay, we know you know this information, but act like you don’t”.
Woa … “lower than a snake’s gut in a wheel-rut” comes to mind, which it hasn’t for quite a while. A wannabe mean-kid looking for 15 minutes of fame?
Mebbe it’s “just” a complete and dismal collapse of a single individual’s integrity. Even if, though … it shows just how “interconnectedness” isn’t ESToid baffle-gab.
Picking up and reading the contacts of someone cell phone – even if it was your own family member falls squarely in the “not cool” category. The act itself is clearly and unabashadly an invasion of privacy and the act of writing and posting it are separate, but equally reprehensible acts on the part of Valleywag. Gossip and tabloid journalism are one thing, but this just isn’t right. To show I’m fair and balanced – he should have never left his phone, that’s a crime against gadgetry.
We take great pride in trash reporting. Since we have no friends and real sponsors we might as well burn down the industry. We admit that we have no integrity.
Ryan, I think you are right to be upset about what happened, but I’m not sure it qualifies as a “cardinal sin” or that it throws blogs and bloggers into disrepute.
It sounds to me like Megan was being nosy — as most journalists are — but not really much more than that. Should she have apologized? Probably. And the Valleywag stuff about Kevin was offside, no question — but then that’s Valleywag. It’s a tabloid.
And I can tell you that any tabloid newspaper from the New York Post to the Daily Mail would have done exactly the same thing — and might even have made some calls to Kevin’s friends while they were at it.
Does that make it right? No. But we had all of that kind of thing long before blogs like Valleywag came along.
Yeah Little Nicky, that’s about exactly the the response I expected. Snarky, self-righteous, totally blasé. Just because you don’t give a shit about peoples’ lives doesn’t mean you need to actively seek ways to disrupt them.
Matthew: it’s not that this kind of crap has never been pulled before blogs. Obviously people have been douchebags to each other since the beginning of time. It’s that stuff like this, Gawker Stalker, etc. has never had a relatively legitimate outlet to exist before blogs. The problem with the concept of “citizen journalism” is that some publications tend to glom onto this idea of new media line-crossing so much that eventually no line is uncrossable (see: Amanda Congdon).
If a publication like the Post or DM were caught in the act, I think they’d probably be more concerned with their lawyers’ opinions and a quick mea culpa — and a little less inclined to lash out at the subject of their abusive behavior.
Its amazing the kind of responses people gave to this story on valleywag and on his blog. Obviously we should all be careful with our things, but nowadays why is it that when someone gets robbed then the victim gets more blame than the thief?
Just because you accidentally forget to lock your car door doesn’t mean you’re giving away your radio.
The tabloid argument doesn’t lend credence to the action. Tabloids are sued all the time for defamation and most of the time they lose. Kevin should file a suit.