2004_12_27_12:43:
Alek sends the following Email to the Channel-7 contact ... I pulled
the person's name to save them any possible embarrassment.
Just an early heads-up that I'll should be making (for me) a major announcement
about my Christmas Lights Webcam soon. I hope you enjoyed it as much
as bazillions of people around the world did (the chopper ride we did was
absolutely great - would love to do again), and stay tuned at:
http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/xmas_webcam
Happy Holidays,
alek
2004_12_27_12:53:
Looks like Charles already contacted 'em as they quickly respond and I send
the following notice to 'em (with their note to me at the top):
Alek--
I already got a call from the Wall Street Journal. Anything you want to
tell me now since I've already had to call my supervisor and the station
manager today.
FYI: I dropped you (and other media contacts) a courtesy heads-up as soon
as I got the news this was going to run. I have NOT released this publically yet,
so I would ask that you "hold" it until the WSJ goes public, but since you are in
the "know" allready, here's what I have written about it:
http://www.komar.org/christmas/hoax/
Pls note the "special message to the media" which I hopes your bosses read;
and I'm sure some of the media will never talk to me again (!) ... but I sincerely
hope there is no hard feelings.
alek
In hindsight, it was a mistake to share my statement to 'em (regardless of
their subsequent coverage) because I should have waited for the WSJ story to
go live ... which was my response to the rest of the media. I'm a geek,
not a PR guy, so my boo-boo ... I'll know better if there is a next time! ;-)
2004_12_27_shortly thereafter: They sent a one-line response asking "Why" ... since I had already answered this question in my release, I saw no point in replying, plus I was pretty darn busy letting other media outlets know. Plus I was telling all media that I could not comment on the story until after the WSJ article went online. I deleted this last message, so I don't have the exact timestamp and wording. Ironically, they had my statement over an hour before any other media outlet, but their story had a major factual error in that the Wall Street Journal did NOT "uncover the ruse" but I approached them (plus they spelled my name wrong - it's only all over my web site) ... but I'm sure they were in a rush to get the story out - they were first on the AP Wire and many other media outlets ran their story - will we see a correction to the correction! ;-)
While I responded fairly promptly to all media folks who Emailed me or called my house, Channel 7 did not Email or phone me any more in the next 5 hours before they reported on the air that "[Alek] did not respond" So I guess I'm puzzled by their on-the-air statement on the 6:00 News to hundreds of thousands of viewers. I guess they could claim they are factually correct - I truly did not respond to their specific followup question ... although I had just sent them a fairly complete statement that DID answer the question ... and oh yeah, by 6:00, that statement had been downloaded 4,533 times - gosh guys, it was all right there for 'ya! ;-)
Oh yeah, one last thing ... Channel-7 setup an online "poll" where they asked
"Are you mad to find out the Christmas lights were faked" - and I was
heartened to find that when I first checked it, 412 votes (81%) said
"No, because it's funny" and only 98 people (19%) said "Yes, becuse he
duped me" ... and as the evening wore on, those numbers went up and when
I checked back a few days later, the numbers were 3,519 versus 665 - i.e.
84% of people thought it was funny.
In reviewing some of the correspondance a week later, I again came across
this note "From: Wayne Harrison
(wayne@pinecam.com) ...
Date: Mon Dec 27, 2004 12:56 pm ... Subject: fake internet lights? ...
I'm just hearing something about this all being a big ruse and that your
lights aren't actually controlled by internet users. Apparently
the Wall Street Journal is doing a story on it. Is that true?"
and I replied to 'em a few minutes later saying a
"major announcement was coming soon" as was already noted on my web site.
I remember thinking at the time that it was odd someone from "pinecam.com"
would be contacting me about this, since the story wasn't out yet ... but
there's a good explanation -
Wayne
Harrison is a Senior News Editor at ABC-7! ;-) Very clever of
Wayne to go "fishing" for information without identifying his affiliation! ;-)
BTW, the 9News gang did a much nicer job with their
modified AP online story and very classy on-the-air correction by Ward on the 10:00 News - nice job guys!
Here are the actual web server logs from ABC-7. The IP address 198.45.19.20
resolves as gw2.mcgraw-hill.com which is their parent company.
198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:12:54:48 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 200 18629 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:06:37 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:08:48 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:12:48 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:14:47 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:22:50 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:35:43 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:13:48:54 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:15:18:56 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 200 18630 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 198.45.19.20 - - [27/Dec/2004:15:45:12 -0700] "GET /xmas/hoax/ HTTP/1.1" 200 18890 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;)"