Following a series of well-reported stories by Technical.ly on a startup in turmoil (including this most recent one), the founder threatened legal action. I’ve been here before.
In fact, I had drafted here a blog post from 2013 (!) that I’m refreshing for these purposes. Once or twice a year, we at Technical.ly get some kind of threat of legal action. Sometimes this amounts to a cease and desist letter, once it was formal-sounding demands for reporter notes and more often it is bluster.
Most usually though, our legal counsel advises us to stay quiet. No use inflaming the situation. But this time, one of the startup founder’s allies posted on social media a criticism of my reporter. That gave me cause to post this video response on social here (and embedded below for ease).
I’ve better learned how to navigate these circumstance. We have more experienced reporters and editors who know how to report responsibly. When it needs to be escalated, we always start simply with: What precisely is inaccurate? Most commonly, despite what someone says, something isn’t actually inaccurate (and certainly not libelous). Far more often, someone just doesn’t like what their story looks like from someone else’s perspectives. More commonly these days, we can squash any threats of action with calm resolve.
When it does progress, my lesson is that real threats can be costly, even if we’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses that typically just amount to paying a lawyer to write a letter back that says “your claim is bullshit.”
For my own purposes then, I want to begin to capture (anonymously) the threats of legal action we’ve gotten over time. I’m sure I’m missing many, so I’ll aim to fill this list in over time. Consider this a partial look at the most prominent legal engagement of each year:
- 2009: Freelance pay dispute: An alternative news weekly editor initially refused payment to me (a then-23-year-old independent freelance reporter) and implied she would take me to court over the incident. This went nowhere but was terrifying to me in my young career.
- 2010: Reporting on stolen website: We reported that a Catholic.org team may have stolen website copy from a local tourism agency. We received a cease and desist letter before the story stalled out.
- 2013: Referencing a comment in a public Facebook group: We received substantial and frequent requests to remove a reference to a Facebook comment in a story of ours about a women’s tech event. It escalated to initial legal action that went nowhere.
- 2014: Startup wanted comments retracted: A founder threatened us with legal action because he claimed we breached an employee’s contract who spoke to us about the company. We stood our ground and nothing transpired.
- 2015: Brand.com debacle: The collapse of a company with a founder with an unsettling criminal record resulted in a series of ceas
- 2016: 50onRed adtech ethical questions: After a series of our own reporting, we co-published a report with Backchannel from our own lead reporter. We had faced mounting legal threats, including a memorably tense drink with a high-ranking company official who actually used the phrase “I wouldn’t want something to happen to Technically” if we pursued the story.
- 2017: Brooklyn reporter subpoenaed: Our journalist’s notes and presence were compelled as part of legal dispute between two startup founders whom we had covered and later investigated.
- 2018: Washington DC coworking community: Our reporting on financial mismanagement inside a DC coworking company spiraled into legal action.
- 2019: Publicly-traded clothing retailer sent threatening letters: In reporting on the ecommerce rollout plans of a publicly traded company, our source said more than he should, and corporate came down on us hard.
- A prominent logistics unicorn sent a series of stern messages around our reporting.