7 ms·

As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. Your repeated emails and messages

As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. Your repeated emails and messages left for him obviously informed him. We’ll have to agree to disagree about what constitutes responsible journalism with respect to “trying to interview him.” Once he’s aware that you want to interview him and chooses not to respond, I’d say you tried. Your actions seem to suggest that “responsible journalism” consists of going further and pressing yourself on people who have already made their feelings about the matter clear. I don’t wish to single you out, so I will say the next thing in a general way. I have trouble with flinging the words “public figure” around. There was a man. He constructed a persona. That persona was public. The man was private. The man worked very hard to separate the two. Compare and contrast to hollywood stars of both sexes who practically invite the world into their bedrooms. I think reporting about _why is fair game, _why was a public figure. I think hunting down the man who created _why is intrusive and is at the level of a paparazzo, invading the privacy of a person who from the outset was clear about separating the two. I have a public persona, “raganwald.” I don’t try to hide the man Reg Braithwaite behind the persona. But I don’t think that blogging or speaking at conferences or commenting here somehow invites the world to call me at work if I don’t answer emails, or to hunt down my cellphone records or to waylay me in the street or to take pictures of my children. I am not a public figure in the way that a politician is a public figure. I likewise believe that the man behind _why is not a public figure. _why? Public. Pictures of _why in character? Public. The man who walked away from creating and maintaining _why? Entitled to privacy and to not worrying about people calling him when he chooses to ignore their emails and entitled to have his friends and associates left alone. p.s. As I noted, however, I liked almost everything I read in the article.

davidw 15y ago
A few phone calls do not a paparazzo make. _why, with virtually no effort, maintained his privacy. The upvotes demonstrate that people are interested in the person, and it's a journalist's job to probe. Sometimes more so than other people would be comfortable with. While that can be awkward, I think it's a good thing, although in this case it doesn't matter so much.
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  It may be a journalist's job to probe, but it is a fellow human's job to have empathy. raganwald is perfectly correct in distinguishing between _why as a public figure, and the man behind _why as a private one. The man behind _why clearly wished to remain private; why are his wishes not being respected? I think that you are being dismissive when you say, "a few phone calls". From the article, the author tried: asking RubyConf attendees, asking people he had been known to have a working relationship with, wrote him a letter, called his home phone, contacted a former employer, searched patent records to discover his current employer, and contacted his current employer, not to mention in the process naming his wife's Twitter account, publishing his real name, and publishing the name of his current employer. That's pretty poor form, and I don't think that "journalism" is an appropriate excuse. Like raganwald, I really liked every other aspect of the article. It's well written and I enjoyed taking the time to sit down and read it with a cup of hot chocolate. But -- and this is a big "but", one that eclipses everything in the article that I enjoyed -- I was tremendously disappointed at seeing the private man behind _why outed as he was in the article.
  - AnnieLowrey 15y ago
    Hi thaumaturgy, Annie here. I'm completely receptive to the criticism of my treatment of the public persona / private person question -- as I wrote before, I expected it and appreciate everyone's insightful comments here. But I'd just like to push back on the idea that my reporting somehow constituted harassment, rather than straightforward reporting on a public figure – and one who had unfortunately already been outed and whose offline identity was widely known. We're talking about a phone message, an email forwarded from his office's receptionist, and a note, spaced over the course of a few months. I don’t think that constitutes harassment. My central objective was just making sure he had the opportunity to respond, if he wanted to, and would not be surprised when the piece came out. I did extensive interviewing among Rubyists and other programmers for the piece, and would often ask them about _why's work, his guide's influence, his work's influence on them, etc. A bunch delightedly brought up old war stories about him, some of which made it into the piece. The back channeling about his offline identity came, unsolicited actually, from those conversations. At any rate, I do appreciate all of the comments and criticisms of how I treat it in the piece. And am very appreciative of everyone’s compliments of the article as well.
mbreese 15y ago
He was at one point a very public figure - at least in this community. Just because the persona was his public face doesn't mean that the "person" was completely private. Attempting to reach out of a formerly public figure for a comment (or even a heads-up) is entirely acceptable. It is obviously something that he has taken steps to deal with. What if _why had some comment about his info-suicide or the concept in general? What if he had replied back "good luck with your story - just don't use my real name"?
- raganwald 15y ago
  Serious question here: Where do you draw the line? What makes someone a “public figure?" Does publishing open source make you a public figure? How about speaking at a conference? Playing in a band under a pseudonym? Playing in a band under your real name? Commenting under a pseudonym on Hacker News? How about commenting under an identifiable handle like rbraithwaite? I honestly don’t have a pat answer to this question.
  - mbreese 15y ago
    Neither do I... and I think people will disagree on this. Programmers like being able to make strict rules for stuff, but I think that this is one of those "you know it when you see it" moments. And to make it more complicated - I don't necessarily think that it is up to the person to decide. Unfortunately, to some degree, the public gets a say.
    - thaumaturgy 15y ago
      The public gets a say, true, but the public is made up of individuals, and each individual has the ability and responsibility of deciding how to handle someone else. We aren't talking so much about the public here as we are about one person -- Annie Lowrey -- who made the decision to publicize the contact information for someone who clearly wished to remain more private.
      - mbreese 15y ago
ArtB 15y ago
>"I think reporting about _why is fair game, _why was a public figure. I think hunting down the man who created _why is intrusive and is at the level of a paparazzo, invading the privacy of a person who from the outset was clear about separating the two." Sorry, but I find that rediculous. If Brian Warner kills someone, or James Osterburg overdoses that is not appropriate for public news because they did it under their private personas? Or can Brittney Spears claim that she has two different personas that both just happen to be named "Brittney Spears"? Frankly, as I see it, once you develop a reputation based on name in a wider community you are now a public figure regardless under which persona you'd like to hide.
- lrobb 15y ago
  It's a rather bizarre argument... That would exclude about half of the celebrities that we know... "Prince", Lady Gaga, et al...
  - sesqu 15y ago
    And you consider that to be a bad thing? It's a perfectly sensible argument, as any person who has played both sides of the same chess game can tell you. People can and do have multiple conflicting personas, and attempting to identify [ed: coalesce] them is rarely useful. It can server to debase or solidify credentials or to explain fractures, but those are all exceptional purposes. People have the right to put words in a different location from their money, and they have the right to invite a few friends in for a beer while the regent takes care of official matters. The press has special liberties to infringe on these rights, as they are expected to do so responsibly.
    - lrobb 15y ago
      Whether I consider it bad or not is irrelevant. It's the (US) law.
- icebraining 15y ago
  Killing someone is a very different issue - it's not a private matter, but a public crime. But for the rest, why not? Why should one be forced to have his life publicized just because he creates something that many people like? You're essentially punishing people for doing good things. That feels very wrong to me.
cbs 15y ago
>Your repeated emails and messages left for him obviously informed him. We’ll have to agree to disagree about what constitutes responsible journalism with respect to “trying to interview him.” Journalists are used to having to do real legwork for fact checking and interviewing. Hell, I'm willing to bet that on a daily basis more hoops have to be jumped through to finally contact someone who is ready and willing to be interviewed. As far as "obviously informed him", obvious to whom? Someone who doesn't know if their messages have gotten through to the guy or are waiting in an inbox somewhere only to be read after the writer's deadline? You know what would have made it obvious? Relaying back a simple "no comment" message to acknowledge that contact had been made. Otherwise the reporter doesn't really know.
scott_s 15y ago
That's interesting that you consider your online persona distinct from yourself. I find addressing you as raganwald here on HN as awkward, so I have instead called you by your first name. Do you have a preference? Is that preference related to the distinction you wish to maintain?
- raganwald 15y ago
  Call me whatever you like, as long as you don’t call me late for whiskey’o’clock. In truth, my personality IRL is very different from my personality online.
ugh 15y ago
I think it's every journalists’ duty to do their due diligence in contacting who they are writing about. That's all that was done here. To call it stalking or to compare it to paparazzo is preposterous.
wpietri 15y ago
I'm interested in your assertion that creating a very public persona doesn't make you a public figure. Could you say more about your theory behind that?

davidw 15y ago

A few phone calls do not a paparazzo make. _why, with virtually no effort, maintained his privacy. The upvotes demonstrate that people are interested in the person, and it's a journalist's job to probe. Sometimes more so than other people would be comfortable with. While that can be awkward, I think it's a good thing, although in this case it doesn't matter so much.

thaumaturgy 15y ago
It may be a journalist's job to probe, but it is a fellow human's job to have empathy. raganwald is perfectly correct in distinguishing between _why as a public figure, and the man behind _why as a private one. The man behind _why clearly wished to remain private; why are his wishes not being respected? I think that you are being dismissive when you say, "a few phone calls". From the article, the author tried: asking RubyConf attendees, asking people he had been known to have a working relationship with, wrote him a letter, called his home phone, contacted a former employer, searched patent records to discover his current employer, and contacted his current employer, not to mention in the process naming his wife's Twitter account, publishing his real name, and publishing the name of his current employer. That's pretty poor form, and I don't think that "journalism" is an appropriate excuse. Like raganwald, I really liked every other aspect of the article. It's well written and I enjoyed taking the time to sit down and read it with a cup of hot chocolate. But -- and this is a big "but", one that eclipses everything in the article that I enjoyed -- I was tremendously disappointed at seeing the private man behind _why outed as he was in the article.
- AnnieLowrey 15y ago
  Hi thaumaturgy, Annie here. I'm completely receptive to the criticism of my treatment of the public persona / private person question -- as I wrote before, I expected it and appreciate everyone's insightful comments here. But I'd just like to push back on the idea that my reporting somehow constituted harassment, rather than straightforward reporting on a public figure – and one who had unfortunately already been outed and whose offline identity was widely known. We're talking about a phone message, an email forwarded from his office's receptionist, and a note, spaced over the course of a few months. I don’t think that constitutes harassment. My central objective was just making sure he had the opportunity to respond, if he wanted to, and would not be surprised when the piece came out. I did extensive interviewing among Rubyists and other programmers for the piece, and would often ask them about _why's work, his guide's influence, his work's influence on them, etc. A bunch delightedly brought up old war stories about him, some of which made it into the piece. The back channeling about his offline identity came, unsolicited actually, from those conversations. At any rate, I do appreciate all of the comments and criticisms of how I treat it in the piece. And am very appreciative of everyone’s compliments of the article as well.

mbreese 15y ago

He was at one point a very public figure - at least in this community. Just because the persona was his public face doesn't mean that the "person" was completely private. Attempting to reach out of a formerly public figure for a comment (or even a heads-up) is entirely acceptable. It is obviously something that he has taken steps to deal with. What if _why had some comment about his info-suicide or the concept in general? What if he had replied back "good luck with your story - just don't use my real name"?

raganwald 15y ago
Serious question here: Where do you draw the line? What makes someone a “public figure?" Does publishing open source make you a public figure? How about speaking at a conference? Playing in a band under a pseudonym? Playing in a band under your real name? Commenting under a pseudonym on Hacker News? How about commenting under an identifiable handle like rbraithwaite? I honestly don’t have a pat answer to this question.
- mbreese 15y ago
  Neither do I... and I think people will disagree on this. Programmers like being able to make strict rules for stuff, but I think that this is one of those "you know it when you see it" moments. And to make it more complicated - I don't necessarily think that it is up to the person to decide. Unfortunately, to some degree, the public gets a say.
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    The public gets a say, true, but the public is made up of individuals, and each individual has the ability and responsibility of deciding how to handle someone else. We aren't talking so much about the public here as we are about one person -- Annie Lowrey -- who made the decision to publicize the contact information for someone who clearly wished to remain more private.
    - mbreese 15y ago

ArtB 15y ago

>"I think reporting about _why is fair game, _why was a public figure. I think hunting down the man who created _why is intrusive and is at the level of a paparazzo, invading the privacy of a person who from the outset was clear about separating the two." Sorry, but I find that rediculous. If Brian Warner kills someone, or James Osterburg overdoses that is not appropriate for public news because they did it under their private personas? Or can Brittney Spears claim that she has two different personas that both just happen to be named "Brittney Spears"? Frankly, as I see it, once you develop a reputation based on name in a wider community you are now a public figure regardless under which persona you'd like to hide.

lrobb 15y ago
It's a rather bizarre argument... That would exclude about half of the celebrities that we know... "Prince", Lady Gaga, et al...
- sesqu 15y ago
  And you consider that to be a bad thing? It's a perfectly sensible argument, as any person who has played both sides of the same chess game can tell you. People can and do have multiple conflicting personas, and attempting to identify [ed: coalesce] them is rarely useful. It can server to debase or solidify credentials or to explain fractures, but those are all exceptional purposes. People have the right to put words in a different location from their money, and they have the right to invite a few friends in for a beer while the regent takes care of official matters. The press has special liberties to infringe on these rights, as they are expected to do so responsibly.
  - lrobb 15y ago
    Whether I consider it bad or not is irrelevant. It's the (US) law.
icebraining 15y ago
Killing someone is a very different issue - it's not a private matter, but a public crime. But for the rest, why not? Why should one be forced to have his life publicized just because he creates something that many people like? You're essentially punishing people for doing good things. That feels very wrong to me.

cbs 15y ago

>Your repeated emails and messages left for him obviously informed him. We’ll have to agree to disagree about what constitutes responsible journalism with respect to “trying to interview him.” Journalists are used to having to do real legwork for fact checking and interviewing. Hell, I'm willing to bet that on a daily basis more hoops have to be jumped through to finally contact someone who is ready and willing to be interviewed. As far as "obviously informed him", obvious to whom? Someone who doesn't know if their messages have gotten through to the guy or are waiting in an inbox somewhere only to be read after the writer's deadline? You know what would have made it obvious? Relaying back a simple "no comment" message to acknowledge that contact had been made. Otherwise the reporter doesn't really know.

scott_s 15y ago

That's interesting that you consider your online persona distinct from yourself. I find addressing you as raganwald here on HN as awkward, so I have instead called you by your first name. Do you have a preference? Is that preference related to the distinction you wish to maintain?

raganwald 15y ago
Call me whatever you like, as long as you don’t call me late for whiskey’o’clock. In truth, my personality IRL is very different from my personality online.

ugh 15y ago

I think it's every journalists’ duty to do their due diligence in contacting who they are writing about. That's all that was done here. To call it stalking or to compare it to paparazzo is preposterous.

wpietri 15y ago

I'm interested in your assertion that creating a very public persona doesn't make you a public figure. Could you say more about your theory behind that?