Cleveland.com duped by hoax website

No argument here. I simply find it interesting that this fell under the "this is big news, let's get it out ASAP without double checking" category. If it were that big of a news item and necessitated getting it out fast, it should have been easy to find a second publication or source confirming the information. If there isn't a second source, well, then perhaps it's not true or maybe it's not that big a news item, after all. It was clearly one of the two.

 

Doesn't matter if it's big news. Only matters if it will drive traffic.

 

BTW, PD not sending beat writers to all Indians away games:

A Fake NBA Story, A Weird Commenting Experiment, and Tribe Reporters At Home — Cleveland.com Did Not Have a Very Good Week | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog | Cleveland Scene

 

Should be a fun couple of months in Cleveland with the NBA playoffs and then the GOP convention. Maybe they had to roll the Tribe travel budget over to riot gear.

 

Keep going to Deadspin for your news, guys. And linking to it. This is where it leads.

 

Absolutely true for a major-metro newspaper. However, I'm not so sure that Advance Ohio, the "digital marketing and advertising company formerly known as Northeast Ohio Media Group," would agree.

Advance Ohio is new name of company that runs cleveland.com, reflects company's growth

Note that the word "news" doesn't appear until the eighth graf of that story. "Journalism," not at all.

 

How much does it say about the business that 10 years ago, a thread like this would've been blowing up?

Now it's merely eye roll-inducing. How far we've plummeted.