Corante Not Trustworthy?

Okay, it was very funny that a blogger by the name of Dana Blankenhorn (who we’ve seen before) attributed Why Google Is Faltering on RSS and that “Google needs to bring in someone with a Clue.” He had no “Clue” himself that the person he was trying to roast left the company half a year ago and he’s now doing cool things with Odeo. Now it’s not worth mentioning or even surprising that someone made a false assumption and came to a silly conclusion because of it. What is interesting is how Corante’s response to the entry, or lack thereof.

As it stands the entry is inarguably factually inaccurate, yet only the comments point to that. Dana has not responded to the comments or updated the entry, even though he had time to write 8 more entries that day. It may seem obvious to you and I that the entry is wrong, but not everyone and the entry is still gathering links. What’s more interesting is that entry has disappeared from the front page. (Screenshot of where it should be here.)

Corante claims to be “a trusted, unbiased source on technology, science and business that’s authored by highly respected thinkers, commentators and journalists; read by many of the sector’s top entrepreneurs, executives, funders and followers; and is helping to lead the emergence of blogging as an influential and important form of reportage, analysis and commentary.” They’re not helping blogging or their trust by leaving that entry up un-corrected and covering it up by taking it off the front page.

Update: Jason notes that the entry was deleted in MT, just not removed from the filesystem.

10 thoughts on “Corante Not Trustworthy?

  1. Haha… very funny! I’ve read the entry but I didn’t know it has been deleted. And by the way, I think Evan is doing cool “things” at Odeo, and not cool “thins” 😉

  2. You can’t comment on it because it has no post ID which makes me believe that the braintrust over there deleted it from MT and rebuilt but doesn’t realize that MT doesn’t actually unlink the files it spews all over your hard drive. Whoopsie… The future is dynamic. Get used to it 🙂

  3. I can promise you that we’re not sweeping it under the rug and are in the process of addressing it.

    Hylton Jolliffe
    Editor, Corante

  4. As it stands the entry is inarguably factually inaccurate, yet only the comments point to that. Dana has not responded to the comments or updated the entry, even though he had time to write 8 more entries that day.

    Dana (in my limited experience) tends to respond to comments via email rather than on the site. Not sure why…

  5. “I can promise you that we’re not sweeping it under the rug and are in the process of addressing it.”

    Seems to me the only addressing really required is a final note stating something like “Dana was talking our his arse on this one. Sorry everyone!” I imagine you’d reword it, but how long can it take to put up, like 3 minutes tops?

  6. It was my mistake, and mine alone.

    Hylton suspended me from Mooreslore, which is why there was no new post.

    I think it would be wrong to infer from this that Corante as a whole is mistake-prone. I’m not terribly mistake-prone. But I do make mistakes.

    And when I make them I try to correct them. In this case I erased the post. Well, I didn’t succeed at that, which is an important lesson to everyone.

    I should have re-posted, or changed the original post and re-filed. And I should have apologized to everyone — not just my editor — a good deal faster.

    If given another opportunity, you may be sure I will do better.

  7. I hope it will. And with honest critics such as you on the case that’s more certain.

    A blog that isn’t read can have tons of mistakes.

    I would rather be read, and hope to earn back your trust over time.

    Thanks again.

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