Startup Founder Plays Tech Press Like a Fiddle 135
theodp writes "Steinar Skipsnes came up with a unique way to get more women into tech. Make them up. Posing as 'Sarah Hanson,' a 19-year-old woman who claimed to have auctioned off 10% of her future income in return for $125,000 to fund her Senior Living Map startup, Skipsnes pitched the story via email to generate press coverage. It worked — VentureBeat, HuffPo, Yahoo!, AOL, GeekWire, and others took the bait. But after doubts were aired about the story, Skipsnes fessed up to concocting the too-good-to-be-true hoax about the female teen entrepreneur to appeal to the interests of the tech press. 'I started to think "what if I took the elements of what the press loves and created a story?"' Skipsnes explained. "So I did.'"
There are no more Journalists in this country (Score:4, Interesting)
This country has no journalists left. All we have now are highly-paid stenographers.
I'm having a very "get off my lawn!" moment right now, but I remember a time when journalism had standards and articles were researched.
Sigh.
Re:Wow.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. Clicked straight on through to the first article, and then added my comment.
Allow me to explain how things work here at Slashdot.
First, you read the headline. Advanced users might also make mental note of the Slashdot editor who posted the story (this helps to frame your reactions to the story.)
Now, there are two differing schools of thought as to what to do from here. One camp jumps straight from here into commenting on the story, having already taken in sufficient information at this point to begin forming and expressing opinions. The other camp will read some or all of the summary before commenting. They claim the latter method helps them in identifying and avoiding commenting on duplicate stories.
However, at no point should you ever actually read the articles (this was where you made your critical mistake.)
It's just not done.