May 25, 2005
Clarifying An Item In Today's 'Willamette Week'
Misstates What We Reported About An Anonymous Reader
There's an item in the "Murmurs" column (scroll down) of today's Willamette Week on what we've privately taken to referring to as the Think Brouhaha PDX incident. Unfortunately, it misstates what we reported.
According to the WW item, we outed the anonymous thinkbigPDX, who was accusing us of taking payments from the Beam Development team in exchange for a favorable bias towards their Burnside Bridgehead proposal, as being Phin Barnes of responDESIGN.
What we actually reported simply was that thinkbigPDX was posting comments from a computer at that company. And, in fact, in response to speculation in the reader comments here, we posted an update to our original post, later on the same day the post itself was published, which stated: "The email we received earlier today from thinkbigPDX was sent under a proper name. That name was not Phin Barnes."
Placing that update within the body of the post itself followed our posting of a comment to that item with the same information.
So unless WW knows something that we do not, we feel it proper to briefly revisit this in order to specify that we never reported that thinkbigPDX was Phin Barnes.
Comments (13)
JVK on 25 May 2005
You can always count on Jaquiss and the WW Podling Brigade to mess it up.
Jack Bog on 25 May 2005
When did you stop beating your wife?
JVk on 25 May 2005
When I realized beating yours was more fun.
JVK on 25 May 2005
Actually, that isn't very nice. I retract any cruel insinuations that beating anyone's wife is fun. Or anyone's husband, for that matter. I've never tried either and have no interest. But really, Mr. Bog...manners! Surely you can be wittier than that. I mean, you have your own blog and everything.
Dave J. on 25 May 2005
Pretty sloppy on their part. I read that thread from the get-go, and never got the impression that b!X was "outing" thinkbig as Barnes. Some people speculated that he was, but b!X went to lengths to get away from that.
Hope they'll do the responsible thing and post a correction.
Zach Dundas on 25 May 2005
FYI, Communique fans—
We'll be running a correction in next week's Murmurs column.
ZD
Jonathan Radmacher on 25 May 2005
As I recall, at the end of the thread, didn't someone named "Justin" say that he was thinkbigPDX, and that he didn't intend his posts to reflect on his employer?
The One True b!X on 25 May 2005
Actually, no. Justin quoted a thinkbigPDX item with that disclaimer about responDESIGN, but the emphasis tags appear to have failed, so it looks like he was saying rather than quoting.
thinkbigPDX has never posted under the proper name he gave via email.
(FYI, I will go back now and fix Justin's emphasis tag issue.)
Alan DeWitt on 25 May 2005
It did kinda look like that, Jonathan, but I think Justin was quoting thinkbigPDX's disclaimer in its entirety, and the italics got messed up. It's hard to imagine thinkbigPDX saying "best times... best times..." at that point.
And remember, JVK: Thou shalt not beat thy neighbor's Wife, nor his Ass.
Nameless on 25 May 2005
What about his neighbor's wife's ass?
c'mon... somebody had to say it....
justin on 25 May 2005
Uh, yeah.... I'm not Thinkbigpdx. I screwed up the italics on that comment. my bad... I apologize for the confusion... Though for what it's worth, I do believe Portland should think big.
PhinkBixPDX on 26 May 2005
Readng the whole messy thread over it is clear BIX never make the link from handle to truename. Others though did and do hold onto the theory that there is a name that phits the phacts.
nuf said sports phans.
JVK on 26 May 2005
Phat.