Journalists vs. Bloggers

So yesterday I stumbled upon this piece by Scott M. Fulton covering our Windows Live Search client annoncement.  Seeing so many blatant inaccuracies compelled me to send feedback (since the site lacks comments) correcting them.  Blogging has gotten me into this habit, as blogs by their nature give me the opportunity to post comments and point out something that the original poster got wrong or simply missed.

A few things I pointed out were:
-Windows Desktop Search is not in beta (as he claimed)
-WDS is a free Windows component (something he questioned)
-WDS is NOT an Office 2007 product (don’t know where he got that idea)
-The Windows Live Search web and client teams do in fact know about each other and are quite close, not seperated by vast organization divides as Fulton erroneously suggested.

My suggestion to Fulton was that he correct the more obvious errors (like calling WDS a Beta when it was released over a year ago), and that he talk to Microsoft PR before posting erroneous information about MS products.

Instead, he posted a follow-up that takes pieces of my private feedback message (without my consent) and blog entries and makes it sound like I granted him an interview or something.

It’s not so much that I mind anything he posted, as everything I said was true as far as I know and all publicly available information.  What bothers me is that he posted this without my consent or even awareness.

So what’s the lesson for today?  Journalists aren’t bloggers.  The bloggers I know would have asked before they posted anything mentioning my name or quoting my private e-mail or feedback message.  That’s because bloggers are real people.  They have principles.  They have souls.  Journalists, well… that’s another story.