Great Moments In Business And New Media, Part Two...

Here's a perfect example of why nobody takes Roger L. Simon seriously anymore...

From pages 136 and 137 of Blacklisting Myself:

Now, of course, we'd called ourselves Pajamas Media from the outset internally, as well as to the ninety or so bloggers we had assembled. We were aggregating these blogs into a news and opinion plus advertising network. And, yes, we were well aware that the Internet was filled with success stories of companies with goofy names - Yahoo, Google, Amazon, etc. Why not Pajamas? Yet still we thought to choose something more official and corporate sounding, and came up with Open Source Media, which was an at best perfunctory bow to our roots.

How wrong we were. In the midst of our fancy, overpriced debut at the W Hotel in New York, replete with press conferences, panel discussions hooked up to Spain and Iraq, cocktail receptions and a keynote speech by journalist Judith Miller - just emerged from her recent incarceration for refusing to divulge the sources of her New York Timesstories on Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame - we were informed that a tiny online radio station called Open Source was accusing our new Internet behemoth of plagiarizing its name. The World Wide Web erupted. News of our arrogance sailed to the top of Technorati in a number of links, passing even Paris Hilton for a couple of days. The new and presumptuous OSM had taken the name of a poor honest innocent little "netizen" podcaster.

As it turned out, we had done no such thing. The podcaster had no legal claim to Open Source Media. But we were embarrassed. Never mind that much of the criticism came, as it usually does in such circumstances, from envy. Charles and I felt terrible. Everything our critics had said about us was true. We were The Man.

We tried to turn lemons into the proverbial lemonade by going back to as quickly as we could to our roots. We publicly apologized and gave the podcaster back his name. We would be Pajamas Media once again...

You know, it isn't so much that Simon is a baldfaced liar; it's that he's a remarkably bad baldfaced liar. You'd think the dumb bastard would take, at the very least, enough care to tell his falsehoods in such a manner that some batshit crazy internet denizen (especially the one he names on page 141) couldn't easily prove them to be outright lies. At least that's what you and I would think. When you're Roger L. Simon, veracity isn't the issue... Your ego is the issue.

Simon would love you to think the whole Open Source Media dustup was a product of there being (a) a podcaster too tiny to register as a internet life form, and (b) a bunch of envious bloggers bent on destroying OSM/Pajamas Media out of, well, envy. That is, of course, pure bullshit. Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

This is my November 15, 2005 post regarding Pajamas Media's announcement of the change to Open Source Media.

This November 16, 2007 post is where Dennis' deranged minions spot the fact that OSM and Open Source Media are already trademarked.

This November 17, 2005 post reproduces Roger L. Simon's first attempt to lie his way out of Pajamas Media's trademark infringement.

Here's my November 18, 2005 post reproducing (the real) Open Source Media's letter to Simon regarding Pajamas Media's trademark infringement. Read Seth McGrath's description of (the real) Open Source Media and tell me if that fits Roger's description of a "tiny online radio station".

Here's my November 18, 2005 post reproducing several emails from (the real) Open Source Media. Both emails demonstrate to what extent Roger L. Simon willing to lie to get out of this debacle. Be sure to follow the links back to (the real) OSM's blog.

Here's another November 18, 2005 post regarding another email received from (the real) Open Source Media. Be sure to follow the links back to (the real) OSM's blog.

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to posting a link to Roger's press release declaring Pajamas Media was going to give up Open Source Media. On November 19, 2005, Roger's wife - Sheryl Longin - commenting anonymously as "sj" at rogerlsimon.com, began demanding that Roger "out" me (at that time I was blogging anonymously). On that date I posted my true identity. Then on November 20, 2005 I revealed the sordid details of my business association with Roger L. Simon in a post entitled The Certain Thing. It would appear that I was a busy enough boy to forget to document the OSM fuckup to its conclusion. Strangely enough, Pajamas Media's archives only go back to April, 2006, so there's no way to find the announcement there. I do remember two things about the press release, though:

1. Roger lied about what had transpired between Pajamas Media and (the real) Open Source Media.
2. He actually used the word "groovy".

I think it's pretty clear from the posts provided above that Roger L. Simon is a compulsive liar. Open Source Media (the real one, that is) wasn't some unknown blogger podcasting in pajamas from the basement of his house. It's also obvious that Roger L. Simon and Pajamas Media didn't just magnanimously grant (the real) Open Source Media the right to continue using the name... Open Source Media (the real one, that is) had Simon and Pajamas Media dead to rights on trademark infringement.

So why is Roger L. Simon peddling this sort of bullshit? His ego, of course.

Blacklisting Myself is, to the extent I been able to force myself to read it, a love letter from Roger L. Simon to Roger L. Simon. What Simon wants from his reader is acceptance of the extremely dubious proposition that Pajamas Media's failure had far more to do with the incompetence - or envy - of others than anything he actually did. Hence the tone of silly fake honesty that permeates his telling of the saga of Pajamas Media.

Given the needs of his ego, it shouldn't surprise anyone that in the end Roger L. Simon blames none other than Aubrey Chernick for the Open Source Media fiasco:

We tried to turn lemons into the proverbial lemonade by going back as quickly as we could to our roots. We publicly apologized and gave the podcaster back his name. [That is an outright lie - DtP] We would be Pajamas Media once again. Indeed, we are Pajamas Media, or PJM, to this day, and now Pajamas TV as well. But the damage had been done. Our critics chortled. In the midst of this, Aubrey was blamed, perhaps more than he should have been, for pushing the bloggers toward pompous corporate respectability. [My emphasis - DtP] The fault was at least as much as mine. But the solution wasn't simple, either.

Catch that? Read between the lines and... Now it's all Aubrey Chernick's fault. I don't recall anyone criticizing Aubrey Chernick from the OSM debacle. And given that I was Pajamas Media's leading critic at that point in time, I'm pretty damn sure if somebody had publicly blamed Chernick, I would have heard of it and posted about it.

So the bottom line is this: Roger L. Simon is using Blacklisting Myself as the vehicle to suggest that it was Chernick, and not he, that screwed the pooch. I wonder how that went over with Chernick? As I've said more than once, Simon will sacrifice anything and everything on the altar of his own ego.

Two Slightly Off-Topic Questions: Can anyone out there think of a single blogger who has been more ridiculously pompous about blogging, the blogosphere and "new media" than Roger L. Simon? If not, why would anyone buy into the idea that it was Aubrey Chernick (and not Simon himself) who was pushing Pajamas Media towards "pompous corporate respectability"?

Update: The estimable - and invaluable - Tex McRae, who was very much my (silent) partner in crime back in November, 2005, managed to find an archived copy of Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson's November 21, 2005 announcement of Pajamas Media's decision to drop Open Source Media and OSM and revert to Pajamas Media. Here's the link and text:

Once upon a time, some friends who met in the casual atmosphere of the blogosphere (us) got together and decided it would be groovy to start a blog company. "We could call it Pajamas Media," we said, referring to the now-famous quote by whatshisface, who disparaged bloggers as a bunch of guys sitting around in their sleepwear. Well, we were as surprised as anyone when we managed to raise a significant amount of capital to form said company.

 At our swanky launch party in the Rainbow Room at New York’s Rockefeller Center on November 16, we changed out of our "pajamas" both literally and figuratively. We went from being http://web.archive.org/web/20051126024300/http://www.pajamasmedia.com/ to OSM™ Media, LLC, the OSM being short for Open Source Media. And oh, what a drubbing we took. Many, many readers pointed out to us that OSM™ was an oxymoron; the open source tech community expressed concern; and a very fine gentleman named Christopher Lydon at Open Source (http://web.archive.org/web/20051126024300/http://www.radioopensource.org/) politely pointed out that we might be trampling on his space. (We’re sending him a pair of warm, fuzzy slippers, a heartfelt apology, and his name back, as we speak.)

All of which, as it turns out, has led us to make a change for the better. We are re-assuming our identity as Pajamas Media. (Just give us a few days to sort the technical issues out.) In short, the whole experience of being caught with our pajamas down has been a bit embarrassing, but in the end, when we realized we could get our beloved name back, we were overjoyed. So a warm, hearty thanks to all of you who expressed your displeasure with our phony identity.

So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople--we did as we were told.

Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company. What followed is still a bit of a nightmarish blur, but it involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names, and such probing questions as, "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" (Which is how we almost ended up as Jellyfish Media.)

Enough said. So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy revenue.

UPDATES: OpenSource graciously acknowledges our name change (or re-assumption of our old name).

See, I told you he used the word "groovy" in a business press release.

What a putz.

Also note that in the announcement, Simon acknowledges that Lydon owns Open Source Media and OSM. In Blacklisting Myself, he tries to sell the reader on the idea that he graciously permitted Lydon to use it because he (Roger) is just, well, a really swell guy...

What a putz.

Comments

[Phoenix Woman]

Oh, Dennis! If you can pull yourself away from your passionate affair with Amanda Marcotte, do check out how Roger blew $100k of his backers' dough:

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/02/internet-company-for-people-who-thought.html

[Johnny Coelacanth]

Dennis, in the second-to-last paragraph, you have 'alter' where you mean 'altar.' Otherwise, good stuff. You're at your best when taking down PJM. Too bad that the inevitable happened but at least you'll always have Roger to kick around.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Phoenix Woman-

Scott and his crew picked that up from me! Their link comes back to my post.

Thanks for the heads up anyway!

[Dennis The Peasant]

Johnny-

Corrected. Thanks.

[Allen]

I used to think the most powerful human activity was compound interest. The Raj has changed my mind, it's self-delusion. I wonder if he realizes that the opposite of gave, is took. To me, if something is taken from me and I scream bloody murder the return of the thing is not a gift, it's restitution.

Do you think this is the prequel to the final flush? It seems like he never had a business plan. So, he's taken the other option, this is his death poem.

[Dennis The Peasant]

I think it's a prequel in the sense that he knows PJTV is doomed as well and is now angling to become some sort of Republican operative/stooge in the mold of David Horowitz.

[Eric Blair]

Horowitz actually did something once. I don't know anybody (besides maybe Glenn Reynolds) who actually links to anything Simon writes/whatever. As soon as that dries up, so will whatever abortion Simon is trying with this TV thing.

I'm thinking Allen is spot on.

[Guesst]

I wonder if that damned dog is still alive.

[markg8]

Au contraire Dennis at his own blog you can go back in archives to July 2004.

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/

[markg8]

July 11th 2004 to be precise when he adopted registration to keep opposing opinions out.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Mark-

If I remember correctly - and I always do, you know - the announcement that PJM was abandoning OSM and going back to PJM was made at PJM's web site. At that time PJM had not incorporated the blogs in the network at the site. The other reason I'm sure they posted it at PJM was that both Roger and Charles Johnson signed the announcement.

[TexMacRae]

KK, it was on osm.org. Remember that phase? Here it is on archive.org:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051126024300/osm.org/site/story/copy_of_11212005namechange/

[TexMacRae]

Oh, good lord, it does say groovy. I'd forgotten that.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Tex-

It's been a long time!

Thanks for the link... I had indeed forgotten the osm.org phase.

[TexMacRae]

Gee, I wonder if Roger knows about archive.org? They ran this under "Errors and Corrections" for months:

Errors and Corrections

November 18, 2005

Due to a miscommunication, OSM inadvertently wrote on our site that Christopher Lydon of Radio Open Source "graciously agreed" with us to give up the URL opensourcemedia.net. This is incorrect. He gave up the use of that URL entirely of his own volition and after no discussion with us. We had never contacted him before he took his action.

We apologize to Mr. Lydon for this error on our part.

CORRECTION (11.19.2005): Again we must apologize for another misstatement. The domain name opensourcemedia.net is still owned by Mr. Lydon, and although he doesn't use it as his primary domain, it does redirect to radioopensource.org.

http://web.archive.org/web/20051126215316/www.osm.org/site/articles/errorscorrections

****************

opensourcemedia.com was unavailable as well. That was why they ended up with osm.org, which is really an unsuitable domain for a for-profit (supposedly) media company. So, they knew about Chris Lydon back when they secured their domain name, but they tried to just bullshit their way through it.

[markg8]

It wasn't on his own blog? I thought everything he wrote wen to both. I stopped paying attention to him long before PJM or any of that crap anyway. Life's too short...

[markg8]

You really ought to check out some of the lesser lights he signed up from the blog world Dennis. I ran across one kid thru Memeorandum who was a complete whackjob. Can't remember much about him now but he thought he was a history maven of some sort and he must have learned it from reading Newt Gingrich alternative history novels.

[Eric Blair]

C'mon Mark, you never read those Newt Gingrich alternative history novels, so you wouldn't know what's in them.

[markg8]

I've read reviews, a particularly scathing one was at Brad Delong's site criticizing Newt for making some nonsensical claims about the civil war's role in ending slavery if I recall.

But frankly if I'm gonna read alt history I prefer Harry Turtledove's "lizards from outer space invade the planet in the middle of WW11" series. Extrapolating from their own slow societal evolution the lizards figured earthlings wouldn't be able to effectively resist their invasion because their last probe showed knights on horseback as our most advanced fighting force. Needless to say they are quite put off when we nuke one of their armies outside of Moscow in 1942. After 20 years of partial standoff and occupation in the 1960s their lizard women start getting uppity. Seems they get tired of being raped by any old lizard dude while in heat.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Brad DeLong? Someone in an alternate universe criticizing someone writing alternate history strikes me as somewhat odd.

[ema]

"Well, we were as surprised as anyone when we managed to raise a significant amount of capital to form said company."

Good to know.

[markg8]

Whaddya got against Brad DeLong Dennis? He's a fine upstanding member of the reality based community. Better to spend time reading him than a shallow poser like Da Raj. I don't know how you stand it. He's so creepy you ought to get that guy on Dirty Jobs to devote a whole show to you.

[Dennis The Peasant]

Brad and I had a moment a few years ago.

Not a good moment, either.

[Phoenix Woman]

By the way, here's a list of what are purported to be The Twenty-Five Most Valuable Blogs: http://247wallst.com/2009/02/23/the-twenty-five-most-valuable-blogs/ (I'll spare you the suspense: No, PJM is not among them.)

[David N. Scott]

Hah, I remember Open Source. Open Sores, too.

[Lexecon]

OK, completely gratuitous, but it is a former PJMedia member. I just cannot stop linking this photoshop I did...and I don't even know who the fucking Cheetah Girls are. Anyways, I just thought you might like it, Dennis. Here's Atlas Cheetah Shrugs.

[markg8]

Oooh ya got a link to that moment Dennis? I can imagine how a dustup between one of first ranks of the shrill and you went but I'd like to see it for myself.