Inevitably, the article sparked a debate about journalism in the digital age. When reporters turn to the Internet to look for sources, do they need to be more diligent than ever in their fact checking? Should journalists be held more accountable for accuracy? Are tools like HARO reliable and who is responsible for quality control?

I turned to colleagues on Affect’s management team for their opinion:

Melissa Baratta, Vice President: 

“In today’s fast-paced media environment, reporters are under pressure to meet tight deadlines and don’t have the luxury of researching and fact-checking every source for feature stories. In cases where the story is about vinyl records or winterizing boats, qualifying your source doesn’t seem like a necessary – or even a viable – step. Sources can lie about all sorts of things, but if their lie can’t do the world any harm, I don’t think anyone should be losing sleep over it. However, I would hope that with breaking news stories that have the potential to impact industries, politics or consumer opinions and behaviors, reporters are maintaining age-old journalistic integrity by triple checking their facts and sources before going to print. New media and new tools shouldn’t change reporters’ commitment to putting out high quality, factual pieces.”

Breanne Thomlison, Account Director:

“As PR practitioners we are expected to create and develop error proof work. We are just as busy as the next person, but making a mistake can cost us a client. Why shouldn’t journalists be held accountable for their mistakes too? Simply googling someone you’ve interviewed should be second nature. PR practitioners google reporters all the time, it’s part of our job to inform and educate, while being accurate. Working so closely with journalists is something we do everyday and while we practice good morale not everyone does. It’s a good reminder for us all to keep reviewing and checking our work/facts.”

Brittany Bevacqua, Senior Account Supervisor: 

“I’m not surprised in the least to be honest. We’ve all encountered lazy reporters from time-to-time, but it’s not fair to say that it’s entirely their fault. Instead of writing one story per day like they did just a few short years ago, reporters today write 5+ per day, plus blog posts, manage their social media identities and more. Plus, there’s insane pressure to be first, or even “early enough,” to a story – the faster you can get to a source that for all intents and purposes seems credible, the faster your story can be published online.

To see bad reporting for breaking news stories from my perspective is somewhat more understandable, but for these more feature-oriented articles or news segments where there’s more time to develop the story, there should be time to fact check. Come to think of it though, I can’t remember the last time a reporter or editor reached out to fact check anything my clients have said during interviews. I’m not convinced that it’s bad reporting. I just might be the ‘new norm’ in journalism.”

Kate Ryan, Senior Account Supervisor:

“If this story was about top-tier media quoting fake experts on cancer research or brain surgery, then I’d be worried. The fact of the matter is, in each of the examples listed in the Forbes story, a reporter was looking for a personal story or opinion. Was the reporter supposed to go to Ryan Holiday’s home and make sure he collects records? How was the reporter supposed to check the merits of the sneeze? At the end of the day, reporting requires personal opinions and stories. If you choose to lie about your personal story, I don’t hold that against the reporter. Yes, a reporter can and should at minimum google their sources. And if a reporter is using HARO to track down expert sources, fact checking and second opinions should be mandatory (or rely on a PR person they have a good relationship with, or a reputable company that can provide a source – i.e. maybe a record store could have pointed towards more reputable sources). But a sneeze? I tend to agree with the “don’t let one bad apple spoil the bunch” mentality. It’s clear that this was a publicity stunt (which is paying off).”

Rosie Esposito, Senior Account Supervisor:

“To me, this “revelation” was less about bad reporting, and more about the 2006 TIME Magazine Person of the Year- YOU. It’s interesting to still see reputable organizations “duped” by people hiding behind computer screens.  But maybe that is the reality of the ever changing media landscape as it continues to be equalized by the internet.”

What do you think? Leave your opinion in the comments and let’s keep the conversation going.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a few tweets regarding Sarah Lacy’s keynote interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sarah, a tech reporter for BusinessWeek, was universally panned — not necessarily for the content of the questions she asked, or for the answers she was able to squeeze out of the notoriously hard-to-read Zuckerberg. (As she notes from her Twitter account: in my book, getting mark to publicly admit to the yahoo deal, address beacon, and give news on changes in the platform and france equals successful interview.)

From where I sit, there seem to be two critique threads emerging:

1. She didn’t involve the crowd enough. In an audience teeming with bloggers hungry to ask their own questions, she held off opening the floor for a Q&A until the final ten minutes, an inarguably bad move.

2. Her interview style was more flirtatious than journalistic. This is the meme I find more troubling. Apparently instead of going for Zuckerberg’s jugular, she engaged him in a two-way conversation, often cutting him off to make a point. In the words of this commenter on the CNET post recapping the debacle, Sarah opted to play the “let me pretend to be your girlfriend” trick. She killed the substance of her questions by picking the wrong approach to posing them.

The commenter goes on to raise the larger question the tech establishment should be asking itself:

This points to love/hate relationship that geeks have with the women who try to invade their territory. Treat them with respect and genuinely act as one of them, and you get treated like Veronica Belmont or Cali Lewis. Fail to do this, and you get treated like Sarah Lacy.

There’s a whole category on Valleywag devoted to Valley Foxes — of whom Smoking Sarah Lacy is one. It’s easy to see that Sarah Lacy’s reputation as a “flirtational” reporter preceded her. Was this SXSWi keynote a disaster waiting to happen? Why did it catch anyone by surprise? And, if she really did get the goods from Zuckerberg, does it really matter how she did it?

I’ll leave the sexist subtext for another blogger to tease out of this story. (Exhibit A: Dig a Tech Girl). In the meantime, I await Sarah Lacy’s official, non-Twittered response.

Updated: Looks like Sarah’s BusinessWeek cohorts have her back: Facebook CEO Admits Missteps totally sidesteps the controversy. The lines separating journalism and PR just got a little blurrier…

Updated again: The video emerges. I haven’t watched it and probably won’t get to until much later in the day. I wonder if what I see will totally undermine this blog post.

I stumbled upon the new Industry Standard website recently and had the same reaction as O’Reilly Radar’s Jimmy Gutterman:

The new site is, to these eyes, an unintentional parody of Web 2.0 features. Rather than mere advertising, it has a more high-end sponsorship model (i.e., one pay-for-it-all advertiser), it seeks to create a community (you have to sign in to enjoy the more interesting features), it combines aggregation and a sliver of original material with a “wisdom of crowds” prediction market, and it appears to have a bare-bone staff. And, of course, to keep costs really low, this time the brand is online-only.

You have to admit that the new logo does bear an eerie resemblance to the ones included in this faux Web 2.0 logo round-up (originally from a thread on Yay Hooray). I mean…”beta?” Come on, guys.

MSDS: I hope this post makes up for my accidental casting of Web 2.0 design in a positive light during our meeting last week.

The paper’s Technology home page is usually where I start my day at the office. From there, I usually get hooked into a Blogrunner headline or head into the Bits blog.

Today, Saul Hansell posted two really thought-provoking posts on the merger in Bits: An Offer Yahoo Can’t Refuse, and the follow-up, Microsoft is Building a Spaceship out of Spare parts. The latter features one of the best geeky similes I’ve read in a long time:

For Microsoft, trying to build a new Internet portal-search engine-advertising network-cloud computing company will be trying to make a new interplanetary spaceship out of an old Soyuz capsule and Skylab while hurtling through the cosmos. The parts are temperamental; the systems are delicate; and the risk of catastrophic failure is ever-present.

Another New York Times blog, Dealbook, describes How Microsoft Could Go Hostile. They also have a good rundown of previous high-profile tech acquisitions in The Biggest Tech Deal Ever, Sort Of.

I’m really interested to see how this shakes out — and, more importantly, how that benefits (or hurts) both marketers and Microsoft/Yahoo end users. Bits and Dealbook are resources I’ll continue to refer to as the story progresses.

In this fresh and engaging interview, Weber openly shares his views on numerous topics, including: the guiding pillars of successful journalism (keep content fresh, useful, concise and surprising), how print publications stay relevant (take a great deal of information, boil it down and present it in a way that is easily accessible) and the different channels ideas go through at BusinessWeek before they become an assignment (ideas flow top down as well as bottom up at the publication). At 30+ minutes, the podcast is a little long but, all in all, a great listen!