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Comment by jsnell | Hacker News Reader

But he did actually do the boots on the ground research, not just copy other stories:

> I spent a week seeking out his family, friends, and coworkers and imploring them to talk to me.

> I went to the tunnel control center, and to the local ‘Carabinieri’ post, where I spoke to managers and cops who must have known that the accounts published in 1999 were exaggerated. But all the witnesses and officials were under gag orders, and records – including security video and recordings of radio traffic – were sealed due to ongoing criminal and civil investigations.

> As I write this, I’ve spent the last week going back over 76 pages of handwritten notes I made on that trip.

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>But he did actually do the boots on the ground research, not just copy other stories:

He tried to. And when that didn't turn up anything, he decided to go on ahead anyway with no evidence of his own.

He found no evidence contradicting the story, but none supporting it, either. There's a big risk in equating the effort expended with the quality of the final product, a lesson that applies as much in software as in journalism.

I'm very frustrated with the author for not crediting the New York Times. I don't think it's a coincidence that the story fell apart when he was commissioned to do a piece for an outfit with journalistic standards. It's possible the NYT's name opened some doors for him, too, but he doesn't describe experiencing any frustration or serious misgivings in his original investigation. He just says "in hindsight" and "I suppose a part of me always worried" but that's fifteen years too late. Clearly he approached it more critically this time, but he leaves the reason for that completely unexamined.

EDIT: Also, "He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno. And maybe that is enough," clearly thinking about himself, clearly not taking responsibility.

Dude, he wrote a detailed postmortem of his own mistakes. That is taking responsibility. You're projecting, for whatever reason. The sentence about the quiet man is clearly referencing the original hero of his story, who might not have saved 10 people but did try to save another man's life while risking his own.

I think the parts you‘re quoting are referring to his actions after he was asked to do a 20th anniversary write-up not for the original story.

No, this is referring to his original 2003 trip:

> Four years later, in 2003, I was living in France. And my curiosity finally got the better of me. I traveled to Val d’Aosta on my own dime to write a story that I eventually came to call “Searching for Spadino.

> I spent a week seeking out his family, friends, and coworkers and imploring them to talk to me. Through them, I felt I got to know a subject who was so self-effacing that his closest friends could barely even find a snapshot of him.

Right, I got that mixed up. Thanks!

> ... all the witnesses and officials were under gag orders, and records – including security video and recordings of radio traffic – were sealed due to ongoing criminal and civil investigations.

So it seems one of the lessons for journalists is: when you encounter witnesses that behave as if under gag orders, there is a real story underneath, and you must catalogue it as a story to return to repeatedly to pressure the unsealing or reinvestigate after unsealing... I also think it's quite perverse that witnesses are under gag orders...

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