My thought is that he went wrong when he “erased” his error as oppose to sucked-it-up and acknowledged his error directly in the original post. Had he just acknowledged his error in his original post and explained why he made the mistake, I’d be much more supportive of his cause.

Amen.

Second – I’d argue that we all have an obligation to the truth. Journalist, Realtor, blogger, whatever.

While I don’t blame you a bit for wanting to hold Lucas up to the same standards as journalists, I’m just not sure that’s appropriate. And while I agree that his comments were tortured, that just makes him a bad spokesperson, and doesn’t necessarily indicate that bloggers should be held to the same level of scrutiny.

Here’s a thought: What if in his original post he had said, “others have told me he went bankrupt in the past”, as oppose to “he went bankrupt”? It takes a little bit of the “punch” out of it, but would have been factually accurate… and reminds me more of current smear-style presidential campaign politics!

My thought is that he went wrong when he “erased” his error as oppose to sucked-it-up and acknowledged his error directly in the original post. Had he just acknowledged his error in his original post and explained why he made the mistake, I’d be much more supportive of his cause.

Bloggers are going to continue to say things that they believe to be true based on conversations that they had… As long as there is no malice, I think it would be bad for us as a society if each of these slip-ups turned into multi-million dollar lawsuits.

I wish we had met at RE Connect b/c you obviously have a good story to tell!

Like Todd, I am very careful about what I write about. Oh, it is tempting some times, but really not worth it.

Is that WEB 1.5?

It was great hearing you speak when I was at the Real Estate Connect conference in NYC. I wish we could have met.

The interesting thing about this case is that I did not have my license hung with EWM when I wrote that post. They are coming after EWM because their parent company is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. I have no ill feelings against EWM. I fully understand their position on the situation given that they are owned by a much larger entity.

The reason why I wrote the post is because I was receiving a lot of phone calls from contract holders of the development telling me that they had no intention on closing. In my opinion, a blog is a vehicle to share opinions, thoughts and concerns. I was sharing my concern with potential buyers that the condo development was too risky to buy in. About three weeks ago, a local newspaper disclosed a story about a class-action lawsuit against the developer filed by contract holders wanting to get out. This topic was an area of concern, and one that I felt that needed to be disclosed to my readers.

I had no malicious intent against the developer nor the condo development. I was merely sharing my opinion with the readers of my blog and the concerns of current contract holders.

In Miami there are a lot of frustrated people, especially developers, that are looking for someone to vent their rage on.

This story made the local CBS news tonight and, if you ask me, the story only highlighted the developer’s previous track record and showed shots of his black and empty tower.

It will be interesting to see, if it does go to court, what the judge decides — and how it affects bloggers and their opinions. Kinda scary.