I haven’t written anything about the Apple iPhone/Leopard delay fiasco that’s been unfolding over at Engadget & Wall Street because - frankly - it’s really outside the scope of this blog. But today I can’t really not say something about the reaction I’m seeing.

First… a quick recap:

• Engadget received an email from an employee at Apple with what looked like an internal memo saying that the iPhone and the next version of Mac OS X were going to be delayed
• Engadget double-checked with their source who confirmed the email was legit
• Apple could not be reached for an official statement because of time zone differences (it was before business hours)
• Engadget didn’t wait to confirm the news directly with Apple and ran the story
• Apple lost $4 billion in market cap value on the news (it has since recovered)
• The email turned out to be a hoax

Ryan Block of Engadget has posted a fairly lengthy article on exactly what happened and why he chose to run the story. It’s not as much of an apology as a bunch of excuses. And it irritated me just a bit… but I was able to shrug it off.

But then Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (another of the “big blogs”) and had this to say about the situation:

I have to say that I, too, would have posted this news based on the source. […] Whether Engadget screwed up or not will be debated endlessly by the blogosphere, and some mainstream media will pick up the story to gleefully report the inadequacies of fact checking procedures at blogs. The next time Engadget breaks a rumor people will speculate on their credibility, and it will be a long time before they fully recover from this. […] With power comes responsibility. And I think Engadget handled the situation with an appropriate degree of professionalism.

Unfortunately, attitudes and behaviors like this are what will constantly keep the mainstream media “gleefully” reporting on the inadequacies and amateur nature of blogs - even the big ones. Engadget made a woefully amateur mistake… and it looks like TechCrunch would have done the same thing.

If nothing else, this whole thing just goes to show that some people, regardless of the popularity that they’ve achieved through blogging, are simply not ready to wield the power they have. I think it’s awesome that a blog could have the power to affect the economy this much. But I find Arrington’s statement about responsible power-wielding completely hypocritical.

You cannot say in one sentence that you would have run such a major story about a major company without any more confirmation than Engadget had and then talk about using power responsibly. The fact of the matter is that Engadget acted irresponsibly and, by harking their professionalism and vowing to have done the same thing, you’re slapping your own face.

But I digress.  So what does this all have to do with the scope of this blog?

Although Apple recovered from the damage done by this irresponsible bit of journalism, that recovery was not guaranteed. And it did take Apple quite a while to realize what was going on. So every business owner out there - big and small - should take a lesson from this: make sure you’re following the buzz around your company. Make sure there are people or systems in place to alert someone in your company to blogosphere buzz and/or inaccurate reporting on popular sites.

If you’re a blogger or other form of online “journalist”, take your place in the flow of information seriously - and act professionally. If we want the mainstream media to stop becoming “gleeful” every time someone in the blogosphere screws up, we need to make sure we’re giving them reason to. And for the love of Mike, people… VERIFY YOUR SOURCES! And no… I don’t mean with employee #154234 on the ladder.

Every journalist/blogger/media source out there wants to be first. But there’s nothing wrong with being second and responsible.