When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

Helge: How reliable are we bloggers as sources? Is blogging all about recycling stories and the value grows with the recycling frequency?

When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

Written by Josh Catone / October 25, 2007 / 0 comments

There are not one, but two stories on Techmeme this morning broken by Fake Steve Jobs , a.k.a. Forbes' Daniel Lyons. Both were repeated on a number of blogs. Yes, we know who Fake Steve is now, and yes he's a credible reporter working for a respected publication, but bear in mind that these stories were reported with no sources and on the blog of a fictional character. Yet, they were taken at face value by a number of prominent bloggers.

The first story Lyon's "broke" was about the supposed imminent demise of PodTech . "Well, they've had a good run but apparently the Casa de Scoble is heading for the big sleep," wrote Lyons. "Or is it the dirt nap? I can never remember. No announcement yet but we hear it's imminent." It was picked up by TechCrunch , Valleywag and others and repeated as if the original source was, well, Lyons and not his fictional persona (the one that just released a book).