Groklaw shutting down in May

Groklaw shutting down in May

Posted Apr 11, 2011 21:41 UTC (Mon) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583)
In reply to: Groklaw shutting down in May by pboddie
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

The Economist is a pretty interesting example in that few names are given and many of those are pseudonyms. I would imagine that the authors of some articles, and almost certainly the sources in such articles, would be in personal danger if their names were made public.

For the record, the Economist rarely runs a by-lined piece. Almost all of its articles are written anonymously.

The principle reason is that they are written collectively by the Economist's editorial staff, not because the authors would be in danger (and sources can remain anonymous without authors being anonymous).

It can be quite difficult to discover who the editorial staff are. (It's less true now, but for many years the Economist authors I knew were graduates fresh out of Oxford or Cambridge.)

I think it's entirely fair to be distrustful of something because it comes from a completely anonymous source, but names are really just pseudonyms to which we gradually attach a reputation. I have a pretty clear idea of how much I would trust the Economist, PJ, Dan Lyons (and Dan Lyons when he is writing as Fake Steve Jobs) and Florian's opinion, none of which really come from some magical platonic "ground truth" of knowing the "real" person behind them.

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