How the electronic rumor mill affects business and investing
"Over the course of the past year, industry gossip Web sites and message boards have all but become semi-official news outlets. These sites often break stories long before the major newspapers or television networks, and they are increasingly the primary lead generators for reporters. Indeed, underground media sites like DotcomScoop.com and F---edCompany.com are doing brisk business peddling rumors of layoffs and bankruptcies.
While efficient market theorists and freedom-of-speech advocates might applaud this developing trend as the inevitable evolution of news media, investors and companies who've been burned by it clearly feel otherwise.
Over the course of five days beginning Monday May 7, our panel of industry experts will examine the implications of this shift in the media landscape in our first SiliconValley.com Roundtable discussion.
Peter Delevett writes Wiretap, a column that offers up an insider's view of the business and technology sector. Wiretap is featured twice weekly in the Mercury News.
Nick Denton co-founded news aggregation venture Moreover in 1998 after eight years as a writer with The Economist and Financial Times. Nick also helped launch First Tuesday, a networking organization for the Web community that developed into one of Europe's most closely followed startups, hosting events in over 80 cities around the world. He is co-author of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings bank in 1995.
Alison Diboll founded Diboll & Associates Marketing and Public Relations in 1997 specifically to partner with growing, dynamic technology companies creating new niches in the technology world. As public relations counsel Diboll has stewarded a number of clients through the management and containment of news leaks.
Bill Mitchell is online editor and marketing director at The Poynter Institute, a non-profit school for journalists in St. Petersburg, Fl. Bill's career has included stints at the Universal Press Syndicate where he served as editor and director of development for the syndicate's new media unit, the Detroit Free Press where he served both as reporter and editor, Time Magazine where he served as Detroit Bureau Chief, and the Mercury News, where he served as the first director of Mercury Center.
Ben Silverman edits Dotcom Scoop, a widely read under-the-radar news service covering the Internet and technology sectors. Ben also authors a technology column for the New York Post.
Steven Sprague oversees secure digital infrastructure and services developer Wave Systems as both its President and CEO. Wave Systems has long been the subject of one of Raging Bull's more active bulletin boards.
A brief, but very important, word about the Roundtable:
While public access to this conversation has been restricted to read-only, we encourage your participation. You may offer up your questions and opinions for publication in the Roundtable by posting to the Roundtable forum. Public submissions will be added to the conversation only after they have been reviewed and approved by an editor. "
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