Have you seen this comment that was posted on the Weekly's site earlier today? It's from the subject of the Weekly's latest cover story -- he's talking about the reporter. All I can say is wow.

62. A little bit about the process for the SF Weekly article:

1) When Lauren called initially, the first question I asked her was how she got my phone number. I was a bit startled to realize when she responded to my question that she was lying to me. I then had to ask myself: "Why would a reporter lie to me about how she got my phone number?"

So I realized from the very beginning that something was up, but I was committed to being completely open, no matter what.

2) I talked with Lauren initially for 40 minutes on the phone, even though I was still rather shaken by being lied to within the first two minutes of talking with someone.

3) Lauren then wanted to meet me in person, so she came out to my place. I picked her up at 10:15 at Pleasant Hill BART. We talked continuously from 10:15AM until 5:20PM, when I dropped her off again. She recorded more than 5 hours of the interview on digital audio.

4) During the couse of that conversation, which lasted all day, I showed Lauren the entire administrative interface for Linkup, without restrictions. She of course was particularly curious about records of anyone deleted, and began prying. I turned over to her more than 30 pages of records of people who had been deleted, with complete contact information.

5) Lauren asked for a Linkup account. I created one specifically for her, with no restrictions as to how she would use it.

6) Lauren conducted long interviews with more than a dozen current Linkup members. Many of those interviews lasted more than an hour each. She also contacted many more members for shorter interviews. A good estimate would be that Lauren talked at some length with more than 20 current Linkup members.

7) Lauren scheduled an interview with my partner by phone in the evening, and talked with my partner for more than 45 minutes.

8) Lauren talked with two people from my distant past for more than a half hour each, because I had put her in touch with them, with the understanding in advance that I had a conflicted relationship with those people.

9) Lauren talked with a current friend of mine for 45 minutes by phone. Since his comments weren't negative, they didn't make it into the article.

10) Lauren called someone in New York who had been kicked out no fewer than six times for extreme flakiness, and had created six phony profiles, sneaking back in each time. Lauren told me that when she talked with him (because I had given her his contact information), he told her that whoever called him (which was me) to ask him to stop sneaking back in was really nice about it. Somehow that never made it into the article. Ask yourself why.

11) The one question I refused to answer was because I am applying for a patent, and if you publicly reveal details of your invention you automatically invalidate your own patent application. This was where Lauren chose to write "Firinn holds back details..." in order to make me look evasive, but in fact she deliberately omitted the valid, serious reason I couldn't answer the question. Ask yourself why Lauren would do that.

12) Lauren continued to call me frequently at home, day after day. It finally became so ridiculous that at one point in the background my partner said "Is that Lauren again? What the hell's wrong with her?" These calls took an additional several hours in total.

13) At one point Lauren called me late at night, and one of her first questions was "Diane's mother said you had a body like a Greek god. Is that true?" So you see the level of professionalism here.

14) Lauren attended a full two-and-a-half hour open meeting which was presented to her as representative of the process of discussion and debate through which Linkup was created. She attended the full meeting, and recorded the entire meeting on digital audio. Somehow she failed to mention that Linkup was created through a series of such meetings. Ask yourself why she would do that.

15) Several Linkup members wrote to me very concerned because they felt that no matter how many positive comments they made in extended interviews, Lauren always tried to translate their comments into negative terms: "She's trying to put evil words in my mouth. It's horrible." Given that Lauren spoke at length with more than 20 Linkup members, most of whom had nothing but positive comments, it's hard to understand why all those people were deliberately excluded in favor of quoting Elvin Martinez at great length.

16) Lauren fails to mention in her article that the reason she has access to minute details of Linkup records is because I gave them to her. Ask yourself why she would do that.

There's even more I could tell you, but you get the idea.

Thanks.

Comment by Firinn — December 17, 2007 @ 09:28AM