Pen-Elayne on the Web

Yan Can Cook

Back when I did my last LC Blogaround, I happened to mention, as an aside to plugging Keith Kisser's blog, that I hadn't seen any corroborating evidence outside of the blogosphere that TypePad and Blogger were banned in China, in addition to the government cracking down on local services like Blogbus and blogcn. Well, if you check the comments section of that entry, you'll notice that Yan of Glutter, who claimed to me to be a freelance journalist but seems to be more of a fiction writer and poet and just all-around Jane of all trades, got very upset at my use of the word "misinformation" to characterize her news about this ban. She actually broke the story, as certainly happens on many blogs, so I had little reason to question its veracity other than Yan's lack of journalistic cred. And hey, I'm not a journalist either but I've broken a few stories as well. So at Yan's request I deleted the word "misinformation" from that blog entry and did a little update in brackets, which still sits there. I also promised Yan, with whom I'd probably be friends if I weren't so pigheaded and she weren't so initially rude (probably with good reason - in retrospect I certainly should have e-mailed her about her news, but I didn't because I'd mentioned it as a completely by-the-way aside to my plug of Keith's blog) that, when she found a report in the non-blog media corroborating her scoop, I'd post a retraction in a new entry to update everyone on the situation. Well, she found one - China's blockage of TypePad blogs and SlashDot (although apparently not Blogger) has now been reported on by the very respected group Reporters Without Borders. So there you are, the blockage is real, Yan had it first and correct, and I'm sorry I ever linked to her page using "misinformation" rather than "as yet uncorroborated news" or some similar choice of words that would have better bridged the language gap that apparently still exists between us.