Gerry McGovern once said that "Fact checking is an essential content skill.".
In his latest newsletter "Web content management is not data management" (23 May 2005) Gerry states "Peter Drucker has said that we’ve spent the last 30 years focusing on the T in IT, and that we’ll spend the next 30 years focusing on the I.". When I tried to check this fact, I found that this quote came from the 1999 book by Drucker titled "Management Challenges for the 21st Century". The only problem is that Gerry uses "30 years" whilst the other references use "50" years. After further investigation I found another article by Gerry where the figure of "50" years was used - "Do you manage a website or a warehouse?". Gerry also used 50 in his article "Avoid Santa Claus approach to content management" from 2003.
So what's going on here? Has Gerry changed the years from 50 to 30 because it makes a stronger case? Has Gerry just made a mistake and mis-remembered the quote?
Or perhaps Gerry is performing an experiment to see how many people will repeat his use of "30 years" without checking their facts.
In the article ("Get your facts correct - July 23, 2001") Gerry told the story of how Lester Bangs invented a story about Lou Reed's real name being "Louis Firbank". This false story got repeated by other people and if you do a search for "Lou Reed" and "Louis Firbank" you will get links to hundreds of sites that repeat this false fact.
It's interesting to note that Wikipedia report his real name as "Lewis Allen Reed" and not "Louis Firbank".
So, if you are ever in a pub quiz and someone asks the question "What is Lou Reed's real name?". Remember to answer "Lewis Allen Reed" instead of "Louis Firbank". If the quiz master thinks that Firbank is the correct answer then tell them that Lester Bank, Gerry McGovern and Wikipedia disagree with that.
As to the question of Gerry and his missing decades, we'll just have to wait and see.
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