I have had occasion to speak with journos in the past and I know a few these days. Good people. Their blogger bashing notwithstanding. Hell, there was a time I wanted to be one. A journalist that is. Then, it dawned on me that I like to eat. They’re underpaid and overworked.
Every once in a while though we see one that is bereft of common sense or at the very least gets it wrong. Ellen Messmer from Network World got it wrong. She was apparently in the audience at Black Hat to see Chris Hoff give a presentation on virtualization. She quoted his talk (I should note that he did NOT give her an interview) and dropped a word from what he had said thereby generating a completely altered view of what was presented.
Kinda key when you think about it.
One word can make a helluva difference. It can completely take the original meaning and turn it on its head.
From Network World:
Virtualization “will not save you money, it will cost you more,â€
OK, so what’s the problem here? Well, here is what was actually said,
“Virtualizing security will not save you money, it will cost you more.”
A bit of a difference, no?
So, thanks to Ellen’s error, Hoff is now inundated with shark bites lawyer phone calls. Seems like the proper course of action for Ellen and Network World would be to retract the error and publish an apology.
NB. If you run a security blog please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this story. Once you’ve done your homework, please write about it to help out Hoff. (~dave)
Easy to make a mistake, I know well, but you are correct… the appropriate thing to do now is acknowledge the mistake and correct it.
-Nate
Hey Dave — my name’s Angela and I write for Computerworld, one of NWW’s sister publications at IDG. I saw Ellen’s writeup on our in-house wire and posted it to our own site, so I’m particularly interested in making sure it’s correct. I’ve emailed one of her co-writers on the piece to see if I can get some clarity, and I hope to have some answers very soon. So glad you posted this…
@Nate
You are absolutely correct. Lord knows I have made my share of ‘whoops’. But, yes there needs to be a correction here.
Thanks for the comment.
@Angela
Thanks for leaving a comment. I do appreciate you taking a moment to dig into this. At the very least it would be great if someone would reach out to Chris to discuss the article. Thanks so much for your help!
First HD Moore, now Hoff…. it’s happening a bit too often. Made a post myself to help the correction.
@Security4all
Thanks! The more we can get the word out to help him out the better.
cheers mate!
Thanks to all of you for your help and kind thoughts.
I got in touch with Ellen yesterday and we’re working on fixing this in a way that works for everyone.
Again, thank you all for your help.
/Hoff