LinuxWorld Editorial Machinations

James Turner writes "The editors of LinuxWorld Magazine have been fighting a quiet war with the publishers (Sys-Con Media) for half a year, trying to get hack-journalist Maureen O'Gara purged from their site. Well, with O'Gara's recent vile attack on Pamela Jones (which I won't give any more free publicity by linking to), enough is finally enough. In my latest blog, I've basically told Sys-Con that it's either her or me. I suspect, given the amount of page views O'Gara's tripe brings to the Sys-Con sites, that they'll choose her." James isn't the only one either.

Link to the offending article...

[Chicane-UK]

http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/read/83267.ht m [sys-con.com]

I don't wish to publicise this to be honest, but people should read this and see just kind of trash is being referred to in the article.

I don't see how this could even be considered journalism to be quite honest - and i'm NOT just talking about Slashdot! ;)

Some background

[Sanity]

Can be found in this [corante.com] article.

Re:Blog??

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not telling the employers, he's telling the readers. That way, when Sys-Con management fires him and the new editor gives us a line of BS about how happy he was here, but has left for bigger and better things, we will know the truth.

as much text as I could get...

[aendeuryu]

A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.

The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.

304 North Central Avenue, Hardsdale, NY[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]

Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.

Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.

See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.

Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.

Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.

[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]

But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."

He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."

She was also missing and had been for weeks.

Nobody there knew where she was.

She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.

Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.

The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.

Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten spooked again because "people were getting hurt around [my] stories" and had lighted out for Canada.

[Photo: May 7, 2005 2:24 PM - 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut. Mom's house, where PJ's car was last seen on this driveway.]

Odd, the subject of my stories - or any

Sys-Con isn't slashdotted.

[bmo]

It's been down since somewhere around 2am.

--
BMO

Re:A little background?

[radish]

Here - without advertising revenue [slashdot.org]

Re:LinuxWorld Magazine

[czei]

Point One: Maureen O'Gara doesn't write for LinuxWorld, but another Sys-Con publication. People just assume because she writes on Linux topics and works for Sys-Con, that she writes for LinuxWorld, which isn't the case.

Point Two: No one on the LinuxWorld editorial staff is paid, its all volunteer because they love Linux.

PJ's Take - Lets Move On - Dont Feed the Monkey

[WillRobinson]

from http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20050507193419581&title=&type=article&pid=311460 #c311509 [groklaw.net]
PJ's take lets move on:

Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 08 2005 @ 10:45 AM EDT
I agree. The person who originally suggested you all
go and look used a Long Island, NY, IP address, and
guess where you-know-who lives?

If we make the above assumption, we may deduce that
this was done for one of the following reasons:

1. to get you guys mad so you would act like "extremists" so
MOG and the mob can attack you again;

2. to get me mad so I sue her for slander, thus revealing
where I really live;

3. to set me up for the next "suicide" -- over my
"distress"
over "losing" my privacy. I have had some, including one
ex SCO employee, suggest this latter scenario as being
plausible. It seems not everyone in Utah thinks the
"suicides" were suicides.

Just in case 3 is true, let me state for the record that I
couldn't care less what MOG thinks of me, even if what
she wrote were true. I also don't care what anyone else
thinks. I'm proud of who I am and the choices I've made
in my life. I don't even care if Groklaw came to an end
tomorrow. I have no ambition, never have, didn't do
Groklaw to become famous or rich, so I truly don't
care. I would never commit suicide over anything, because
I think it's wrong, and I surely wouldn't over anything MOG
wrote, for I hold her in the deepest disdain, when I'm not
laughing at her.

Re:misuse of the word hack

[Bill Dimm]

Why is it that common people always use the word hack in a negative sense?
From a dictionary [reference.com]:

hack writer - n : a mediocre and disdained writer

Those silly "common people"...

Re:Blog??

[Anonymous Coward]

"When my employees are ready to leave, they tell me face to face, as opposed to writing it on some virtual diary that nobody reads"

Er, well, considering that the LinuxWorld editorial staff is unpaid and all work independently, with no "Sys-Con" offices, it's quite difficult to actually resign face-to-face, as you suggest.

You expect James to fly to New Jersey just to tell the publisher this?

redacted article (no addresses)

[dominux]

mods, please can you nuke the copies of the article posted with addresses and phone numbers.

From the Google cache of the original page:http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:t5F0lsD5UW sJ:jdj.sys-con.com/read/83267.htm+read/83267.htm&h l=en&lr=&client=firefox&strip=1

Exclusive: Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net?
Pamela Is A 61-Year-Old Jehovah's Witness Who Lives In A Shabby Genteel Garden Apartment In Hartsdale, New York
By: Maureen O'Gara
May 7, 2005 09:15 PM

A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.

The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot. [address removed], NY[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - [address removed], New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]

Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.

Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at [address removed], New York. [removed] is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.

See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.

Pamela has lived in apartment [removed] for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.

Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - [address removed], New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]

But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."

He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."

She was also missing and had been for weeks.

Nobody there knew where she was.

She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut. Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to [address removed], Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.

The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.

Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela

Re:one way to counter-act that...

[Anonymous Coward]

The advertisers on the page are:

www.revelation.com (advertising openinsight)
contact: [e-mail]

oracle (get your free oracle database dev kit)(

Microsoft (Windows Server System)

Parasoft (parasoft automated unit testing and best practices)
contact: [e-mail]

Perhaps a note to each of these containing the url of the offending storry and asking if they want to be associated with the story.

Fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

CONTACT US

SYS-CON Media
135 Chestnut Ridge Road
Montvale, NJ 07645

Departments: Customer Service
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Advertising
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Accounting / Finance
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Production
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

SYS-CON Events, Inc.
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
JDJStore.com
Toll Free: 888-303-5282
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Editorial
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Credit and Collections
Toll Free: 888-679-7266
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Web Services
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Circulation
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Re:Link to the offending article...

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Domains in the same netblock, according to Netcraft:

sys-con.com
linuxworld.com
linuxbusinessnews.c om
linuxbusinessweek.com
java-buyerguide.com

And various sub-domains of these. These will be added to my /etc/hosts mapped to 127.0.0.1 shortly.

Re:Fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

Registrant: Make this info private
Sys-Con Publications Inc
135 Chestnut Ridge Road
Montvale, NJ 07645
US
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Domain Name: SYS-CON.COM

Administrative Contact :
Diamond, Robert
[e-mail]
135 Chestnut Ridge Road
Montvale, NJ 07645
US
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Technical Contact :
Network Solutions, LLC.
[e-mail]
13200 Woodland Park Drive
Herndon, VA 20171-3025
US
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Record expires on 05-Mar-2006
Record created on 04-Mar-1996
Database last updated on 07-Jul-2004

Domain servers in listed order: Manage DNS

SCOTLAND.SYS-CON.COM 207.178.67.100
NS2.FCC.NET 63.250.9.50
DNS0.N-ARY.COM 81.2.69.3
NS1.FCC.NET 63.250.0.50

Show underlying registry data for this record

SCO & private detectives behind it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linuxtoday editor thinks so

Editor's Note: Screed Attempts to Silence Voice Against SCO
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2005050900926 OPBZ [linuxtoday.com]

Re:Fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

Maureen O'Gara, (Long Island, NY) [e-mail]
516-759-7025 Ext. 109; FAX [phone]

Don't click it!

[Groo Wanderer]

Don't give them the hits. Above is a text copy of the info, read that instead.

-Charlie

Re:PJ's Take - Lets Move On - Dont Feed the Monkey

[Kalgash]

For those not in the know or those needing a refresher...

The suicides referred to are those of Val Noorda Kreidel (daughter of technology entrepreneur and Canopy founder Ray Noorda) and Robert Penrose (Canopy Employee). See this blog [smallworks.com] entry for details and links.

Also:
http://sltrib.com/business/ci_2617160 [sltrib.com]
http://management.itmanagersjournal.com/print.pl?s id=05/03/28/071212 [itmanagersjournal.com]
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143850&cid =12055828 [slashdot.org]

for-profit journalism...

[sum.zero]

is not journalism at all. it is commercial advocacy.

now that we have that cleared up, journalists , like everyone else, do have biases. however, it is their job to report objectively despite their personal bias. in other words, they have a duty to report the story accurately even if it goes against their personal bias. and no, accurately does not mean simply picking two sides and giving them equal credence as is so common these days.

what mog does is not journalism, as noted above, and any publisher that drives their periodicals with her tripe is not a news organization, but rather an entertainment tabloid or propaganda machine.

as for blame?

you can easilly frame an objective piece so that it has hooks and intrigue and whatnot. it is not necessary to abuse the process to generate revenue based on what you think your readers might like to hear.

clearly mog is has to take the responsibility for what she writes, especially if she wants to continue abusing the notion that she is a journalist. the established and verifiable facts do not correlate with mog's reporting and too often she resorts to personal insults, threats and innuendo.

sys-con clearly have to take responsibility for what they publish and have an obligation to accuracy if they are going to continue to abuse the notion that they are a news publisher. the attitudes of sys-con's owners regarding the veracity of mog [they don't feel they are responsible as they are just a "publisher"- this from an email response] and their emphasis of mog's articles despite widespread and vocal fcat correction from their own readers shows that they lack the integrity needed in a news publisher.

blaming the readers for a person or company's lack of journalistic integrity is incredibly weak. this is journalism and you really shouldn't apply market-force supply and demand arguments to discussions about it [that would be propaganda].

sum.zero

Re:Our response to Linuxworld should be

[DrJimbo]

# Here are the lines for your /etc/hosts file
# to boycott sys-con sites

127.0.0.1 coldfusion.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 dotnet.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 eclipse.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 issj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 itsolutions.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 jdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 linux.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 linuxbusinessweek.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 mxdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 pbdj.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 symbian.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 weblogic.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 webservices.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 websphere.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 wireless.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.tv
127.0.0.1 xml.sys-con.com
127.0.0.1 www.linuxworld.com
127.0.0.1 www.sys-con.com

Simple - Complain To Google and other Ad Networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother writing to individual advertisers, until you have gone after the after networks (which show many different ads)

For example: If you go to www.google.com and look at the info on their AdWords and other advertising programs, there should be a page which has terms of service for publishers (i.e. sites like LBN) displaying their ads.

Nearly always the terms of service will include clauses forbidding show of sites that are intended to be hateful, **invasive of privacy**, violative of laws, libellous, etc.

If you find a term of service that you believe LBN violates, then write directly to Google, citing the relevant term, and why you believe LBN may violate it, and asking them to investigate to have their publisher compliance team review the situation.

Repeat as necessary for any other network ads that you find ads for on LBN. In most cases, you can tell an ad is from a network by doing View Source on the web page, and reviewing which domain the ad links to, or pulls its image from.

Some other major advertising networks (I don't know which if any LBN uses) are:

doubleclick
burst
247media
fastclick
valuecl ick

Anybody who wants to research this properly, please post which ad networks you see on LBN, as well as which specific term of their service, you believe LBN may violate. So that others may write similar emails to these ad networks.

Re:Similar case for Clear Channel Radio

[tomhudson]

If you read what the editors of the print mag have been saying, they've been trying for 6 months to get the ownership to dump O'Gara, for among other things, openly biased reporting, etc. The same stuff we've been complaining about.

I'd say give them a bit of time to decide between O'Gara and integrity.

Re:Link to the offending article...

[slcdb]

Google's cache text only [google.com]

Contacting Sys-Con

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an editorial board contact number listed on the following website:
(http://www5.sys-con.com/general/contactus.htm [sys-con.com])

It has a listing under "Departments" that looks like this:

Editorial
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
I am going to be calling this number and complaining about the lack of journalistic integrity by Maureen O'Gara.

I doubt it will accomplish anything.

Mod parent up, and some comments

[rewt66]

Well, he's anonymous, but from the writing style and thorough detail, I'd say that this is certainly sounds like Quatermass from Groklaw.

It occurs to me that if O'Gara really is a sock puppet for SCO, that would certainly explain the venom toward PJ and Groklaw in her articles...

Another one : JBoss

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is another one : JBoss (http://www.sys-con.tv/read/77512.htm [sys-con.tv]). JBoss is the most famous open source J2EE server. Someone (with a better written English than me) could contact them and explain who they are doing business with.

Re:Here is how you help.

[dcam]

I have emailed a number of the advertisers about this. I got back a response from Devon IT:

David, thank you for your email.

Devon IT has received many emails regarding the articles written by
Maureen O'Gara, editor-in-chief of Maureen O'Gara's LinuxGram. We have
reviewed and voiced our concerns regarding the editorial content of her
recent article, "Who Is 'PJ' Pamela Jones of Groklaw.Net?" directly to
SYS-CON. We have encouraged them to stop distributing articles which
contain personal attacks and private information.

If SYS-CON fails to act in an appropriate and forthright manner
regarding this matter, Devon IT will cease its support of SYS-CON and
halt all advertising with their media properties. We believe that Linux
World magazine and LinuxWorld.com are valuable sources of information
for Linux technology and hope that SYS-CON will act in good faith and
put an end to this reprehensible form of journalism.

Regards,
Paul Mancini
Devon IT