‘completely unfinished, unconfirmed story’

That stops you from publishing now?

“We’re working to discover how this accident happened.” Someone clicked ‘publish’ instead of ‘preview’ by mistake. RSS update services immediately get notified, so no matter how quick you are changing it back to draft, it’s too late.

Still, it’ll be fun to see if Mr Whatley still has a job by the end of the week now…

I’ve had similar happen to me — particularly when I’ve had the likes of the Pingpress.fm plugin activated. Despite being a genius-plugin, it’s often led to me sending stuff out into the ether that was never ever meant to go live.

Accidents happen, it’s all about how you deal with them, and I think you’ve handled this one smartly, Mike.

I very much like your “precog” draft system, but that’s a nasty ghost in your RSS system one that is a huge oversight of many “private” forums too…

I hope Whatley is cool about all this!

BTW, is it true you’re harassing people about removing tweets & blog posts about your original story?

I’ve read tweets from people saying you’re “demanding” they remove stuff. If there’s any truth in that, then it’s an even bigger cock-up than your original cock-up.

You know it’s still in the RSS feed, right?

There’s a chap’s livelihood in question Dom, I think it’s rather good that the team here do all they can to — as Mike put it — ‘limit any personal damage’. I think that’s the minimum Mr Whatley would hope for.

I understand that, but anyone with an once of common sense knows that if you ask someone to remove something from the Internet, the only thing that will happen is that the information will spread about 100 times more quickly.

The original story may be an unfortunate mistake, but it takes an astonishing level of stupidity to try to retroactively censor it.

Fair point Dom!

[...] Butcher, top chap at Techcrunch UK, sorted out the error right-away and posted this apology. He knocked it on the head right-away, but a run-away bug put the story straight into the RSS [...]

No, it doesn’t. We’re just trying to explain what happened, in the interests of transparency.

@Dom – I believe mine was the original Tweet & screenshot. I had a DM from @yiannopoulos a few minutes after publishing – it was polite, not demanding and made clear that the piece was not confirmed. Because of this I immediately deleted it from my Twitter, Flickr and FriendFeed as I didn’t want to cause Jame’s any more stress.

It’s good that you’ve apologised on behalf of TechCrunch so quickly Mike, but I hope you can also make sure you do anything else needed by James to ensure this mistake on your part doesn’t damage his relationship with his employer.

No, we didn’t “harrass” anyone, we asked a few people very politely, when the post first appeared on someone’s Twipic while we were trying to remove the post from the RSS feed. Like I said, would wouldn’t want someone’s job to be at stake for a dumb accident with RSS, that’s all.

Yep, like I said, we’re trying to give some context to this and apologise for the accident.

Dom, you are so right – lessons learned all round, fear not!

No offense but I didn’t even know about this incident until this apology was published. You’re giving the unsubstantiated rumors more publicity.

I think you’re over-reacting to a few Tweets (I did a search and there were only a few). Many more people will see this post than would have come across those Tweets which lives in the present moment (who goes back & reads old Tweets?).

I think a private apology to Whatley, removing the story, and looking into seeing how this happened were sufficient actions. Whatever your intentions, I think this post has more to do with redeeming your image than protecting Whatley’s privacy.

Jon – Yes, we’ve pointed out that we were working up a story totally in draft, and we were poised to check in with James when this accident happened. And I can promise you, no-one pressed “Publish” at any point.

Actually no – our badly-drafted RSS-published post has made it onto several blogs now, and has been republished as if it were a real story several times now – so there was no point in not reacting now to limit the damage.

I reckon it was the only course of action Liz.

Sorry Mike, I probably could have worded that more clearly. Just to be clear I received the DM shortly after I published the screenshot to Flickr. I didn’t mean to insinuate that @yiannopoulos had deliberately pressed ‘Publish’ and I just wanted to be clear that the request to remove was polite not rude or demanding

To clarify, I mean, the action that Mike and the team took was the only course of action. Anything else and they’d have left the stamp of the hugely influential Techcrunch brand on the various blog posts and Twitter accounts, lending authenticity to the story. By publishing and correcting the error, they bring the brand and reputation to bear, for the better.

I’m willing to bet James would much rather have had a public apology (and have people find out, roughly, about the content of the removed post) rather than have rumour and conjecture spread all over the internet.

Yes there were only a few tweets/mentions right now. That’s because it’s Monday morning around 1am UK time. If TCUK had waited ’til the Retweeters woke up, the story would have gone much, much further I’m sure. Whatley’s a very well known chap so there’d have been rumour after rumour being posted. He’d have spent Monday answering DMs from his circa 4k followers, no doubt.

Now, with this post, the issue is clarified and corrected and everyone can move on.

Oh, and we’d rather go with an *actual* story this time, not a draft of something that might be a story we have yet to confirm in any way

Jon Mulholland -Really appreciate that clarification, thanks.

[...] Europe accidentally published a draft post on James based on an incorrect rumour and then urgently retracted it, offering what we believe to be the first ever apology from the blog.  For this if nothing else, [...]

This is exactly why I write all of my posts in a simple text editor, then copy them over to the publishing software once I’ve made the decision to publish. I don’t think any blogging system has a strong enough wall between “draft” and “live” to live so dangerously.

Having said that, please know that I’m not passing judgment; I’ve made plenty of stupid blogging mistakes and will make plenty more in the future. I just wanted to throw out the suggestion that you write drafts in an offline, separate program to protect your stories and your subjects.

Christopher – Fair points, thanks. Unfortunately the post went out on RSS without manual intervention for some inexplicable reason. We’ll be instituting new practices following this incident.

We’ve now established that no-one hit publish manually.

And let me just re-iterate that this half-cocked post had the potential to affect someone’s livelihood. This is not something we take at all lightly.

Not the best timing Mike just after you ask twitter the following…

Is it possible to publish something on a Blog's RSS feed so that it doesn't appear on the blog, only on the feed?—
Mike Butcher (@mikebutcher) July 28, 2009

oops…

Yeah, great huh. With that Tweet I was trying to figure out a way of running a Freebie Friday comp on RSS only

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/07/17/freebie-friday-check-out-the-samsung-i8910hd-and-win-one-with-a-tweet/

As one of the people “harassed”, I can confirm that what Mike said is true. I tweeted about it, Milo asked politely if I’d mind removing it, and I did. As Mike says, James’ job could have been at risk from something which (if you read it) clearly had no input from him.

I’ve got to admit that that temptation to snark it was pretty great, given some of the personalities involved. But if you want other people to act like grown-ups, I think it’s always best to start by acting like one yourself. TechCrunch/Milo/whoever made a mistake, were on it pretty fast, and *politely* did their best to retrieve the situation. No harassment involved.

I was just looking through Mike’s Twitter feed for that exact tweet, John.

Doesn’t exactly bring confidence to your apology, Mike.

Just to add that I don’t actually think Mike did this deliberately.

Just sticking my oar in where it isn’t welcome for my amusement

‘inexplicable’ = letting that idiot Milo near your CMS. Nice bit of distancing yourself from him in the first par, by the way. Is that a clue to what the ‘new practices’ will be?

You might think that but I’m still going to use that mechanic this Friday, if you’d like to win gadget

So, nothing to do with the fact that Milo is a turd of a journalist who can only justify his professional existence by using sensationalism, then?

(For example: “Men perform better in many technology jobs. Must we apologise for that?” -> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/miloyiannopoulos/9596437/Men_perform_better_in_many_technology_jobs_Must_we_apologise_for_that/

Come on, we’re decades passed the era of “the computer made an error” – especially TC readers will know that things don’t just magically appear in RSS feeds, or get pubished without intervention – “Unfortunately the post went out on RSS without manual intervention for some inexplicable reason” and “We’ve now established that no-one hit publish manually” – can you share with us what happened then? If it’s a bug in the system I think most of us blog and would love to know what that was.

Also agree wholeheartedly with Liz above – I didn’t know about this and I’m sure most other people didn’t too, but once you blog it on TC and ping a Twitter out about it, you’ve exploded it madly. Did you ask James if this was the outcome he wanted? James is a cool guy, I seriously hoped you asked for his input before sending this story global.

To me, this smacks of poor sensationalist journalism from Milo (no change there then), a good attempt at an apology from Mike which although commendable, has poured petrol on the flames, and all round left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m sure plenty of others. Feels way too tabloid, and I know most of the TC writers and employees are way better than this.

Very unfortunate. Whatever the reason how it happened – clicking something by mistake, some tech issue with the blog platform, server, whatever – it highlights the risk of writing drafts online.

For that reason, especially with something sensitive, you ought to consider writing all your content offline using a tool like Windows Live Writer where a server-side issue like this just couldn’t happen, because your draft is offline.

A good solution unless you all collaborate on your drafts and don’t use Windows

Thayer – No we didn’t ask James as the post was never meant to go live anyway. That’s the point of this apology. We believe it was a bug and I actually do have our tech guys in the US looking into this. You can ignore me if you want, but that’s what’s happening.

No, you misunderstand me, I was asking if you asked him about if he wanted the public apology, thus fanning the flames much further…?

It could be viewed that this was done to protect the TC brand, not James… If you were a cynic. Afterall, this has just made it even more public for him, but made TC look like the the victim and getting the public pat on the back for apologising. just you know, sayin.

If you want to believe Milo when he tells you he didn’t press publish that’s fine, but I’ll bet you Techcrunch’s reputation (such as it is) that that’s what happened.

But you’re not removing it? You guys can’t expunge?

Sure, OK, then, I’ll just let it ride next time, no apology, no statement from TechCrunch on why a half-arsed post made it online and why we tried to protect a guy’s job who didn’t deserve to have this written about him without carrying any statement from him, despite the fact it was half way round the web inside 20 mins. OK?

Given that James Whatley has been in the difficult position of having to handle most of the comms related to this breaking story – PROs haven’t exactly been taking a high-profile here – there’s an interesting “SpinGate” discussion on this aspect going on over at MIR (Mobile Industry Review). Ewan MacLeod (of MIR) has commented above, but was sensitive enough to not pimp his own link in this discussion, so allow me to do that:

http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2009/07/spingate_an_accurate_summary_of_why_spinvox_is_screwed.html

An interesting discussion around what factor comms (be that PR, social media meddling, etc) has in this SpinVox story.

More generally, some links to assist those interested in reading more around this breaking SpinVox story:

http://delicious.com/spinvox

http://www.silobreaker.com/spinvox-ltd-11_24054142

Too long, didn’t read.

Found the original post suitably bitesize though. Best of luck in your new job James.

[...] Update: The Techcrunch apology to James Whatley. [...]

In that case you’ve either got some very strange WP plugins (which wouldn’t surprise me), or a writer who isn’t telling you the truth.

Harsh to blame Milo. I’d bet it was Arrington who pressed the button. Obviously if he hadn’t have done it, another site would, then it’d be out there anyway, etc etc etc. He breaks big stories, you know.

Arrington? Are you kidding? No, this was a plain and simple cock-up by a blogger.

[...] reach. News can spread like a wildfire across the Internet, leading to the humbling kind of apology that TechCrunch Europe had to issue this [...]

“There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about”

But “don’t become the story” is the first rule of spin, isn’t it?

In this case, it seems there’s nothing James could have done about it. And it’s not even a story.

All of which is pretty unfair on him, given that all he seems to want to do is the right thing for his troubled company.

Not sure which is funnier the wit of Gill Helfer and Matt E or the fact that Mike Butcher and Bob Andrew completely missed their points so spectacularly I wondered if the comments were getting mixed up from another post.

For what it’s worth I wouldn’t normally be so cynical but TC have of late not only been lax in doing any sort of in-depth research or balanced reporting, but also seem on a quest to drive traffic their way at any cost; the pre-twitter leak post and this one, being the latest.

On its own I would believe it was just a mistake but the tide is turning and cynicism has taken root. The tweet last week as pointed by John Ward does look suspicious. The context of the question at the time may have been for a different purpose but that doesn’t mean once the method was established it wasn’t usurped for this incident.

The suggestion that it was an RSS only competition seems dubious at best. The point of a competition on a site like TechCrunch is to drive traffic. The argument could be made that the reason is to increase their RSS subscriptions. As a strategy this might have some validity but it is a strategy from someone who has a long term view and TC seem to lack that vision of late in their sacrifice for cheap sensationalism and self-aggrandising over substanantial, thoughtful and well researched articles.

Nor am I sure that an Arringtonesque sulk by Mr. Butcher to Thayer Prime’s poignant question is reasonable. The appropriate thing to do would have been to ask James Whatley how he wanted TC to respond. Perhaps he did want this public apology and that’s fine. The editor having a pout, however, isn’t very becoming .

It may appear to the contrary but this isn’t intended to be some hateful comment against TC or Mike Butcher, I would dearly love them to get their game back.

Armitage shanks (what a great name, sounds familiar… – I love the way people are reading so much much shit into an innocent attempt to give some fricking gadgets away on a Friday some time. “The suggestion that it was an RSS only competition seems dubious at best.” Absolutely, I agree – I’m off to fire myself, I’m totally dubious. Sorry, was that too poutish for you? BTW, there was no moon landing, and Princess Di was killed by the CIA, hired by MI5, hired by my not-yet-born son. You heard it here first.

As for getting our game back. We’re off to do just that.

People seem to be very swift to poke, insult and draw unfair conclusions in comments. I am quite shocked how quickly people become cruel, when surely it is equally possible to express an intelligent idea maturely and with respect.

My own opinion is that of course TC and most bloggers write posts they think people will read, and they often do it in a tone of voice that makes it a little juicy to read. Surely it is why we read TC rather than other dryer publications.

However, I also have come to know and like the UK TC team, and not for a millisecond do I think this was intentional. Frankly I find it ludicruous and tantamount to conspiracy theorism to think they did it with any ulterior motive in mind.

I’d like to see commenters on TC lift their game up. If you want your journalists to be less sensationalist (not that I think they are comparatively), then perhaps it needs to start with us, the vocal members of the audience.

@Alicia Navarro

Comment sections are for people to comment and provide their opinions on articles. Whether that is in a positive or negative light regarding the piece.

Contrary to how it may be perceived, my comment was not a hateful attack. It was a reflection of my own opinion and several of my friends who follow TC; some of which have met Mike before.

There is no grand conspiracy theory abound (so there is no reason for any over-reactions where a debate will suffice); but in light of a recent trend of articles that have been below par (in my opinion), opinions will be affected. I do not see anything wrong with providing some insight to Mike and TC on how peoples perception may have changed, even if that includes ‘conspiratorial’ comments.

Mike can choose to ignore it if he wishes, that is prerogative as editor, although he may just as well be interested in the views of some his readership. And I would point out that if there was no value at all in TC then this comment wouldn’t be here as I wouldn’t be visiting their site at all.

Being friends with Mike or the TC crew doesn’t have to just mean fawning dedication, thoughtful criticism, when sincere and heartfelt, are not insults nor are they cruel.

As a final reiteration, the expression of dissatisfaction and suspicion is sincerely intended to be constructive.

TC have built a strong brand, if and I others (who are ultimately fans of TC) feel it has of late been devalued for various reasons (we think what we think) then perhaps it isn’t so sensationalist to bring it up with Mike. If Mike wants me to shut up then he has my blessing to delete my comments. They’re not entirely here for my benefit.

@Mike Butcher – My plume de nom is obviously from where I do my best thinking

@Mike Butcher

In July 1969, I was on a film set in an undisclosed location in the Nevada desert with a chap called Neil. Just saying.

Armitage – Seriously, I’m up for the debate. If you’d like to engage with me further, then my email phone number and Skype are all published, so feel free to get in contact, without fear or favour etc etc

Appreciated! I already have them though, as you have mine. Our last private exchange was my apology and explanation regarding being “brusk”.

@Armitage Shanks I agree that comments should be for debate and, well, ‘commenting’, and rereading your posts, I concur they are well put opinions. I think I have more issue with other commenters who seem to sink to personal insults and misinformed wild conjecture, which I would hope we are above.
I agree that being friendly with the journalists shouldn’t affect our view of their content, and conversely shouldn’t affect their view of our businesses, just that knowing them makes it clear to me there was nothing intentional or vindictive in their actions. The apology was incredibly well done, and although we could all possibly say what we would have done given time and lack of panic to think about it, Mike and team’s reactions have been exemplary.

I agree – they were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.

If they had just tried to privately ‘hush it up’ that would have created a stir and the story would be that TC UK were trying to sweep their mistake under the carpet and not being transparent.

To reiterate what someone said above – you either have some very janky plugins or someone did accidentally press publish instead of preview (so easy) – and may not even have realized it even now.

I’m sure there is a WP Plugin that makes you type a captcha or similar in order to publish – it might be a good stop gap… Or perhaps find a plugin that creates a more formal journalistic work-flow where journalists submit stories for proof read and publishing by editors.

Hey everyone – So I think we found the culprit that gave rise to this whole episode. Our best guess at the moment is that a problem occurred involving the XML-RPC protocol when the draft post was first submitted to our site using the ‘WordPress for BlackBerry’ software. For whatever reason that set the post to go live without us knowing, causing us to be taken unawares. We are, in fact, now in contact with Automattic, the company behind WordPress, to isolate the bug so hopefully other sites won’t fall victim to this kind of accident. Thanks to all for this great discussion. We’ve learned lots. Mike Butcher.

[...] the attention of TechCrunch, when he retweeted a message on Twitter regarding a story that was pre-emptively published unedited and incomplete. The story concerned James Whatley, community manager at Spinvox. [...]

The name rings a bell. I read about him on the BBC’s tech blog – ‘digital marketing consultant James Whatley, who has been taken on by the voice-to-text company Spinvox, in his words, “to listen to the web and encourage conversation around Spinvox.” But in a previous life he was “whatleydude”, a blogger about the mobile phone world, and he still uses that persona in his new role.’

I thought Whatleydude worked for Lucozade

http://www.blogherald.com/2009/06/30/lucozade-energy-challenge-picks-james-whatley-as-social-media-reporter/

Mike, you are too nice.

[...] were nervously exchanged glances and bad jokes from senior staff. A smartly-dressed James Whatley eyed me reproachfully. But the guys managed to hold it together for long enough to usher us in to a conference room and [...]

Thanks for your responses, Mike, Ewan & Ben…I didn’t know that the story had been so widely distributed & published. TechCrunch was in a position I do not envy.

[...] were nervously exchanged glances and bad jokes from senior staff. A smartly-dressed James Whatley eyed me reproachfully. But the guys managed to hold it together for long enough to usher us in to a conference room and [...]

Mike, once again kudos to you for the way you’ve shown personal ownership of this episode. It’s obvious you’ve put in a lot of effort over the past few days – not just replying to comments on this post and investigating what happened, but also by engaging directly and pro-actively with the tech community via Twitter.

Your efforts are noticed and, I’m sure, appreciated. Looking forward to seeing how you move TCE forward from this.

Um is it me – or does anyone else really NOT care? God – either way this really is tittle-tattle & anyone outside a handful of people won’t give two-ticks about it. Get with the program people!

Well he’s left SpinVox now so you were correct, but was he fired because you revealed his disloyalty? Or did he quit of his own accord?

[...] we learnt our own harsh lesson about this recently, but now other media are finding they just can’t “pull [...]

[...] we learnt our own harsh lesson about this recently, but now other media are finding they just can’t “pull [...]

[...] coming some time ago. Indeed, we even wrote a pre-emptive story about it in anticipation of the news which was accidentally posted, no thanks to a bug in the WordPress for BlackBerry software. (We apologised to Whatley at the [...]

[...] coming some time ago. Indeed, we even wrote a pre-emptive story about it in anticipation of the news which was accidentally posted, no thanks to a bug in the WordPress for BlackBerry software. (We apologised to Whatley at the [...]

[...] some time ago. Indeed, we even wrote a pre-emptive story about it in anticipation of the news which was accidentally posted owing to a bug in the WordPress for BlackBerry software. (Naturally, we apologised to Whatley at [...]

[...] An RSS slip and Google Reader catches Techcrunch Europe releasing this pre-emptive piece. This must be the first ever apology I’ve ever seen on Techcrunch. [...]

[...] too. First the tweets started flying in, then the blog posts followed and then, two hours later, an apology from TechCrunch Europe (a career highlight I promise you [...]

[...] http://eu.techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/an-apology-for-an-accident-of-publication/ [...]