Moniker.com’s live auction last month at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference. Westerdal also stated that T.R.A.F.F.I.C. co-founder Rick Schwartz was the winning bidder on one of the domains in question but had reneged on payment. Those are extremely serious charges to make so if you make them you have to be absolutely certain your facts are right. As it turned out Jay’s facts were wrong leaving him with quite a mess on his hands. The fact that he directly competes with both Moniker (in the live auction space) and T.R.A.F.F.I.C. (as producer of the Domain Roundtable conference) made a bad situation worse as it opened him to charges that he was deliberately trying to harm their businesses by publicly posting false information.  

Jay Westerdal

brouhaha and his retraction later in the day after he learned his statements were not true, Rick Schwartz’s comments on his personal blog (scroll down to the Update section and the comments that follow) and Moniker CEO Monte Cahn's comments made in a thread about the situation at the DomainState.com forum. 

I don’t think anyone will ever convince Cahn and Schwartz that this was anything but a deliberate attempt by a competitor to boost his own business at their expense. However, having seen this kind of mistake happen several times in my decades as a journalist I don’t think it was deliberate as no writer in their right mind would post such charges unless they were convinced they were right. Otherwise, they are begging to be sued into oblivion. I do however think Westerdal was too quick to believe the worst about Moniker and T.R.A.F.F.I.C., largely because they are competitors. 

Having said that, even professional journalists are human and do make mistakes - including the best and most experienced of them (Dan Rather of CBS-TV being among the many examples). When they are wrong they will, normally, print a very prominent retraction – but depending on the severity of their mistake that may not be enough.  

Rather’s mistake ended his network career (though he has resurfaced on a seldom seen cable channel). When I was a TV reporter our weekend news anchorman got a tip that a local law firm was involved in some illegal activity and had gotten busted. Since it was the weekend, the law office in 

Moniker CEO Monte Cahn

Rick Schwartz

reporters/observers are  even more susceptible to such grievous errors. It’s one reason traditional outlets say they are still relevant. They would argue that a professional reporter or his editor would have stopped this kind of mistake from happening and most  of the time they would – but even as a product of that system, the endless variety of unfiltered views found in the blogosphere are an improvement in my eyes. However, incidents like this underscore the fact that even though blogs give everyone a platform that wants one, shooting from the hip can have serious consequences.