[SIGCIS-Members] WP Ombudsman on "Email Inventor" & My Response

[Nathan Ensmenger]

On Feb 27, 2012, at 3:30 PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:

> I just posted this to the SIGCIS site. I wasn’t going to spend any more time on this story, but then when I read the Post’s Ombudsman’s column over the weekend I just couldn’t restrain myself.

I had a run-in with the Post Ombudsman this past fall, when the Post published an article that plagiarized some of my work on female computer programmers.  In that case as well, Pexton opened with a similarly glib "who knows what is true in this crazy world of ours" dismissal, and then disavowed any responsibility on the part of his newspaper to check facts, verify sources, or even do a basic Google search (his full response here: http://goo.gl/psLia, mine here: http://thecomputerboys.com/?p=289)

The incident made me even more cautious about engaging with journalists, which is a shame.  Obviously they would benefit from having a few reliable historians in their rolodex.


-Nathan

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Nathan Ensmenger
School of Information
University of Texas at Austin
www.ischool.utexas.edu/~nathan/