Wired Reporter Michelle Delio Comes Unplugged
|
Written By Reprise Media | May 10, 2005 | Share This
|
|
It happened to the Old Grey Lady and now it’s happening to her younger sister. Wired News is the latest victim of an investigation into the sourcing and accuracy of articles by one of its frequent contributors, Michelle Delio.
While Wired’s published a full source review of the stories, a number of people cited in articles […]
It happened to the Old Grey Lady and now it’s happening to her younger sister. Wired News is the latest victim of an investigation into the sourcing and accuracy of articles by one of its frequent contributors, Michelle Delio.
While Wired’s published a full source review of the stories, a number of people cited in articles by Delio have not been located. Many share common names and occupations and were living in large metropolitan locales, making the task even harder, and Delio’s citations that much more suspicious.
Although Slashdot is taking a more inflammatory stance, Wired insists it is amending rather than completely retracting the stories in question.
Delio herself says, “I don’t understand why my credibility and career is now hanging solely on finding minor sources that contributed color quotes to stories I filed months and years ago,” and that there “isn’t one story that contains fabricated news.”
I wonder if it’s the increasingly frenetic pace of the online medium that’s contributing to these types of scandals. As one Slashdot reader points out after hearing Wired has published over 700 Delio stories since 2000:
“That’s more than a story every three days, including weekends, for over 5 years…it seems there should have been the suspicion that someone who can discover, investigate and report on a newsworthy phenomenon every 2.5 days for 5 years straight might be cutting corners somewhere.”
Sure, some reporters are just out-and-out screw-ups - i.e., Jayson Blair - but it does seem like journalists are being expected to produce more and more in less time (and often for less money).
I was thinking of this today as I read about the gang at Gawker Media in this article in the NY Times article I mentioned earlier today. In it is a link to some pretty surprising blogger stats:
- Minimum number of posts they make per day: 12
- Average paycheck: $2500/per month
- Moonlighting?: Yes and no. According to Managing Editor Lockhart Steele, “The idea is that this is a full-time freelance gig. They’re supposed to be able to do their blogs and have enough time to do magazine articles or something else.” Not sure how that happens with 12+ posts a day, but whatever.
- Beep beep! Traffic Pays: Bloggers gets incentivized for traffic spikes. That means big bucks for the bloggers at Fleshbot, Gawker Media’s most trafficked site.
Being a writer/reporter/freelancer is an entirely different game these days. One thing remains the same, whether you’re throwing up a blog post or fine-tuning a feature in a print publication - always document your sources.
Topics: Legal Issues |
As an update, here’s an interview I recently did with Adam Penenberg, who is in charge of the Delio investigation:
http://www.gelfmagazine.com/mt/archives/interview_with_adam_penenberg.html