The debate -- a debate about journalistic ethics I consider really interesting, by the way -- is about whether I should have publicized the outing, whether I overstepped boundaries in reporting, and whether I should have published additional details that were not common knowledge.
I'm completely receptive to the criticism of my treatment of the public persona / private person question -- as I wrote before, I expected it and appreciate everyone's insightful comments here.
But I'd just like to push back on the idea that my reporting somehow constituted harassment, rather than straightforward reporting on a public figure – and one who had unfortunately already been outed and whose offline identity was widely known.
We're talking about a phone message, an email forwarded from his office's receptionist, and a note, spaced over the course of a few months. I don’t think that constitutes harassment. My central objective was just making sure he had the opportunity to respond, if he wanted to, and would not be surprised when the piece came out.
I did extensive interviewing among Rubyists and other programmers for the piece, and would often ask them about _why's work, his guide's influence, his work's influence on them, etc. A bunch delightedly brought up old war stories about him, some of which made it into the piece. The back channeling about his offline identity came, unsolicited actually, from those conversations.
At any rate, I do appreciate all of the comments and criticisms of how I treat it in the piece. And am very appreciative of everyone’s compliments of the article as well.
Hi there, raganwald, Annie here. I think this is a completely valid criticism, and it's one I largely expected. But for what it is worth, here are my thoughts.
As a journalist, I think it would have been irresponsible not to inform _why of the article and not to try to interview him. (As a general point, you don't write articles about public figures, and he was absolutely a public figure, without giving them the chance to respond.) I didn't expect him to get back to me, and certainly did not stalk him. And my hope is that the article approaches the infosuicide in the most humane way possible.
The debate -- a debate about journalistic ethics I consider really interesting, by the way -- is about whether I should have publicized the outing, whether I overstepped boundaries in reporting, and whether I should have published additional details that were not common knowledge.