February 22, 2004

The perils of a dry wit

Doc Searls reports on the case of a credulous business reporter at the Chicago Tribune who picked up and printed -- as if it were true -- a satirical piece on denounce.com about a new FOAF service from amazon.com allowing customers to inspect and manipulate their friends' shopping baskets. A couple of months ago, people curious about the history of Harvard University were being sent by Google to this Language Log post. On the web, caveat lector.

Posted by Mark Liberman at February 22, 2004 07:12 PM