Email Exchange Between Andy Wang And Annika Toernqvist

From: Toernqvist, Annika
Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 11:15 AM
Subject: Credit to On the block in the Twitter story?
To: sf@curbed.com

Hi, we noticed you wrote about our story on the penthouse on fourth street that is for sale (owned by twitter co-founder Evan Williams.) that is great, thanks. We assume you got it from us?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ontheblock/detail?blogid=58&entry_id=48679

Then we also noticed that both Gawker and Wall Street Journal wrote about it, both referring to you instead of us as the original source. Would have been good maybe if you have mentioned us in the intro text already, not just at the bottom as the source?

Thanks for a great blog!

Kind regards
Annika Toernqvist

From: Andy J. Wang
Date: Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: Credit to On the block in the Twitter story?
To: "Toernqvist, Annika"

Ms. Toernqvist,

I appreciate your getting in touch, and I appreciate SFGate looking for credit where credit's due. After all, blogs like Curbed often get short-shrifted in this area.

If I may, I'd like to explain briefly why I linked to On the Block at the bottom of my post-- a fair choice, in my estimation, given the brevity of the post. Most of the information and photos came from a multiple listing service, already accessible to the public, and On the Block's contribution was in linking the property to Evan Williams. No small point, granted, but Curbed's post was very brief, and ended with a very visible (in my judgment) link to On the Block.

That said, it would have been easy to credit On the Block in the text, and I should have done so. I sincerely apologize for that, and I'll make sure you get more visible credit on scoops in the future.

If I may, though, since we're on the topic of credit-giving... I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds in asking if SFGate is willing to return the favor? I see that On the Block links to other blogs from time to time, but the same can't be said universally of other SFGate blogs, or for Chronicle stories in general. Earlier this year, the controversy over American Apparel in the Mission erupted largely online -- on blogs like Curbed SF, Mission Mission, and SFist -- before spilling out into the streets and community meetings. We didn't just follow the story. The story began ostensibly on our pages. And yet, the Chronicle's reporting of it went without a single mention of any of the above blogs. For anyone who followed the trajectory of the whole story, the omission was both conspicuous and puzzling, not just in terms of credit-giving, but in terms of reporting.

While I sincerely respect your desire for receiving credit for your work, I hope the Chronicle's leadership recognizes that others share the same legitimate desire.

As for Gawker and the WSJ blog linking to Curbed-- they could have linked to SFGate had they chosen to. Our link to On the Block was very visible. (In fact, it's the first link in the post after the link to the listing itself.) That they, or at least the WSJ, chose to link to Curbed instead could, if I may humbly speculate for a moment, have more to do with the fact that Curbed posted all the pictures available, rather than just two. Pictures that, again, came from the listing itself, rather than from SFGate.

Thanks again for reaching out, and please don't hesitate to contact me over any future concerns.

Andy Wang
Curbed SF