The Industry Standard - The Real Dan Lyons bails on blogging - Comments

Dan Lyons is awesome! This

DanRocks — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:42:01 -0500

Dan Lyons is awesome!

This article is complete validation of both Dan's journalistic integrity and his skill. So he's neither corrupt or stupid, as you freetards claim. He obviously did his due diligence on this one. He offered you several well researched options instead of just reading one press release and spewing it back verbatim.

That's your big criticism, right, FreeTards? With SCO either he was corrupt and participated in the pump-n-dump scheme, or he was too lazy or too stupid to check the facts coming from SCO and see what the rest of the world saw, that they were full of it, and either way he cost anybody who trusted his judgement a lot of money. Except SCO's investors, who were able to get out from under their piles of worthless stock.

Well, everybody can have an off day. He acknowledged he was wrong and apologized for all the name calling of people who thought he should have checked the facts rather than reporting the press releases as fact. And to show he was over it, he light-heartedly took a few more shots at them, calling them "nerds" and "amatuer slueths" since hes' the professional, and highlighting the irony that they were all exactly right while he was sniffing glue or something. You see what a great sense of humor he has?

I know, I know, next you'll be saying that he has a history of taking somebody's corporate line in the press only to have to retract it later, like with his hit-pieces at Forbes that always seemed to say Microsoft was great and whoever their threat of the week was, was not only not viable, but Bad for America. But he's learned his lesson. Now he gets mad about it! Look at how angry he got at Yahoo after repeating their PR flacks verbatim without fact checking and it turned out they were lying! Newsweak even made him take his posts off his blog he was so mad! If righteous indignation doesn't certify your sincerity I don't know what does. Never mind the fact that he said the righteous indignation of the open source community over the false claims of SCO only meant they were irrational zeaolots.

Bottom line, Dan rocks and you suck! Deal with it!

I gotta say, this Dan Lyons

Come now — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:08:36 -0500

I gotta say, this Dan Lyons comes off looking even more petty than that Swisher woman. Also, if you're doing all your reporting through a corporate PR department, as this guy evidently was, you pretty much deserve to get burned. But even so, things can also change a fair bit in a month. Why compound what seems to this objective observer a case of reportorial dereliction with childish outbursts and snotty blog posts? Newsweek, I think, is 100-percent right.

I am SO sick of blog-boobs

AngieEmo — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:46:07 -0500

I am SO sick of blog-boobs who only care about FIRST, regardless of how stupid or error-ridden or source-dictated or plain old foolish they may be. Who gives a **** if you are FIRST when your information is devoid of context, or authority or frakking accuracy? Build a ski-lift and get over yourself. I would MUCH rather wait, oh, an hour or so, for RELIABLE and MEANINGFUL and ACCURATE posts.

The last 5 posts on his blog

Dan Geiser — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:55:22 -0500

The last 5 posts on his blog which have been deprecated from his website are still visible via Google Reader.

Dammit - Dan's blog was

MightyCaseyMedia — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:13:02 -0500

Dammit - Dan's blog was better than any digital-realm related content in Newsweek itself. What made the magazine wooden-heads think that putting Dan under a gag order wouldn't make them look like a gang of idiots? Or even, heaven forfend, as lying sacks of shit? Stay tuned...but not to Dan's blog. Unless, of course, he takes up the mantle of FakeDanLyons, as Mark Scrimshire suggests. Which, BTW, I find to be an utterly brilliant suggestion.

Has anyone registered

Mark Scrimshire — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:46:24 -0500

Has anyone registered FakeDanLyons yet?

Could we do a double blind and get Real Dan to blog as Fake Dan?

I am glad Lyons called out

Simon — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:59:44 -0500

I am glad Lyons called out Kara Swisher on being entirely insufferable.

Despite all the drama, I

PJ Brunet — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:00:47 -0500

Despite all the drama, I think Yahoo's search engine is improving and Flickr is more popular than ever. I would use Yahoo more often if the homepage loaded as fast as Google.com. Call me crazy, I still type Google.com every time I search for something.

Thanks.

Only you had the guts to write this story — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:23:55 -0500

Thanks.

The Real Dan Lyons bails on blogging

Jordan Golson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:54:29 -0500

First it was Fake Steve Jobs, now it's Real Dan Lyons.

A frustrated Dan Lyons told me this afternoon that he is hanging up his personal blog at RealDanLyons.com after his Newsweek bosses made him yank a blog post where Lyons (rightfully) called Yahoo's PR staff "lying sacks of shit."

Lyons slammed the company after Yahoo flacks told him just weeks ago that the Google/Yahoo search deal was a "sure thing" and that Jerry Yang wasn't going anywhere. "Then that deal fell apart. And now Jerry Yang is out on his ass. The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever."

We aren't sure exactly how things went down, but the Yahoo PR post and several others are gone too.

Lyons slammed All Things Digital's Kara Swisher for touting an "exclusive" that Yang was stepping down -- an exclusive that was posted five minutes before Yahoo's official press release -- and then (mostly) tongue-in-cheek emailing other reporters who failed to note that she "broke" the story. Those highly amusing posts are gone from his site too.

In true whistleblower fashion, Lyons' redacted posts (copied before they were taken down) and a feisty response from Kara are reproduced in their entirety below:

Jerry Yang out

And Chairman Roy Bostock says it's the right time for this to happen. I only wish you could have been on the phone for my conversation just — what — a month ago, when the same Roy Bostock swore up and down to me that Jerry Yang wasn't going anywhere because he was absolutely the greatest leader the world has ever known. "Nobody knows this company better than Jerry Yang," said Roy. "Jerry is the right person to continue to lead Yahoo." Roy also insisted that Yahoo did the right thing by passing up Microsoft's offer, even though the stock now stands at one-third the price Ballmer had offered to pay. See that story here. I'd never dealt much with Yahoo before, and I was stunned by their PR operators — they're really an unsavory bunch. During that same reporting this crack team of lying sacks of shit put one of Yahoo's attorneys in Washington on the phone to tell me, over and over, the true "inside story" of what was going on with the Google deal, which was, he informed me, that the deal with Google was a sure thing, definitely going to happen, no way in hell is the deal not going to happen, there are no real objections from the regulators, they're fine with it, the objections from advertisers are not an issue, blah blah blah. Then that deal fell apart. And now Jerry Yang is out on his ass. The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever.

One more thing: Will Microsoft come back to the table? And how much will they pay?

Real Dan Lyons Web Site 11/17/08 6:07 PM Dan Lyons Tech, Yahoo

Kara Swisher: Everybody look at me! Not at Jerry! At me! At me! At me!

I just received an angry email from Kara Swisher of AllThingsD who chides me because in my previous post about Jerry Yang stepping down at Yahoo I did not mention that Kara Swisher actually broke this story today and got an EXCLUSIVE SCOOP on the BIGGEST STORY OF THE DAY!!!!! Just for the record, here is Kara's big scoop, which she posted today at 4:50 p.m. Pacific time. And here is the official press release from Yahoo hitting Business Wire at 5 p.m. Pacific time — a whopping ten minutes later. Kara, honey, I love you dearly, but girl-child, having a company send you a press release ten minutes before they put it on the wire isn't a scoop. That's called taking dictation. Best of all, here is the story from 5:37 p.m. Pacific time where Kara congratulates herself on her own "exclusive scoop from earlier today" — um, like a full 47 minutes earlier. One thing you have to admire about Kara is that in a blogosphere that all too often resembles an echo chamber, she's managed to cut out the middleman; she just echoes herself. And while others engage in logrolling, Kara keeps it real and rolls her own log. Kara, listen. You're not the story. Bokay? You're the reporter. This isn't about you. It really isn't. Now stop it or I will fly out there and sit you down for a talk. You're getting Mossberg Syndrome, honey, and that's not a good thing.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site 11/17/08 7:22 PM Dan Lyons Tech, Filthy hacks

Wall Street Journal credits AllThingsD in Jerry Yang resignation scoop

Turns out Kara Swisher was only kidding about asking everyone to give her credit for breaking the Jerry Yang resignation story a full ten minutes before the company announced it. Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal, which owns Kara's AllThingsD blog, made sure to mention AllThingsD in the fifth graf of its own story about Jerry Yang, saying, the news was first reported on AllThingsD, a Web site owned by Dow Jones & Co.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site 11/18/08 5:45 AM Dan Lyons Tech, Filthy hacks

Swishergate: New York Times fails to credit AllThingsD for Jerry Yang scoop

See their stunning article here, which makes no mention at all of the fact that AllThingsD broke this huge story a full ten minutes before the company announced it. The nerve of these people! Jesus. FWIW, I've been informed by people close to the situation that the Times reporters did get a note from Kara Swisher chiding them for not giving her credit for the scoop. Just like the one I got. Kara says she was only kidding. Oh, that Kara. What a comedian.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site 11/18/08 5:49 AM Dan Lyons Tech, Filthy hacks

Yahoo scoop scandal roundup

Turns out hacks left and right are just running with this Jerry Yang resignation story without even mentioning AllThingsD or giving Kara Swisher any credit at all for breaking this story first. Instead, the hacks are all just basing their articles on the Yahoo press release which came out a full ten minutes after the AllThingsD world exclusive scoop of the century. Check out the huge list of hacks who are just going rogue and refusing to credit AllThingsD: SeekingAlpha, no mention; AP, no mention; MarketWatch talks to Wall Street analysts but seeks no comment from AllThingsD; TechCrunch overlooks AllThingsD as well. Goddamn ingrates.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site 11/18/08 7:19 AM Dan Lyons Tech

Kara Swisher responds in the Real Dan Lyons comments:

How would a snarktastic wonder like you know what a reporter was? I was teasing you, you twit, as you well know (I would dearly love to mangle emails you sent to me recently about your work, but I am too much of a gentleman!). When you come here, we’ll have a “talk” all right–my people like to call it a “sit-down” though. Love and kisses, Kara.