Get Over It, Tom
VoIP Blogger and Journalist Tom Keating was a bit miffed with Voxilla in his recent blog entry
Voxilla You’re Killing Me. His claim that we used him as a source without citing him on two recent news stories is absolute bollocks.
I admit I have an inside track on Voxilla’s story writing process. I know how stories make it from an idea or event to the front page of voxilla.com. I’ve even written a few of those front-page articles myself and thus I have intimate, first-hand knowledge of that process. We have direct access to the necessary sources for a story. We check our facts. We write it, we re-write it, and check it and re-check it. As a result of following proper journalistic methods, which does include citing sources, a good story can take us several days to fully put together. This is true in Voxilla as well as any news organization. As a Journalist, Tom should know that.
Even though I was not directly involved in putting together either the NextAlarm or VoIP Providers Worry as FCC Clams Up story, I can say with certainty that those stories were in the works well before Tom Keating blogged about it, or likely anyone else for that matter. Another example of this: when I wrote my blog entry on GnomePhone, I had no idea we were working on a news item about it. It turns out we had been working on that story for several days prior to the story hitting the blogosphere.
Tom could have easily said something along the lines of “great minds think alike” and/or could have easily made a couple of phone calls to us to clear up any possible misunderstanding. Instead he felt his pride was damaged and went on the offensive, twisting the facts to justify his feelings. He attacked our journalistic integrity by accusing us of lifting text from his blog and turning it into a news story.
Scoop happens. Get over it, Tom.
