IvyGate, Fake News? For Shame!
A week ago Jacob Savage ran a piece about how Antonio Villaraigosa Jr., the son of the mayor of Los Angeles, decided to share some stories on Facebook of his adventures partying and drinking with other members of the Princeton class of 2011. While a fun story, I wouldn't be writing about it again if questions about its credibility hadn't been raised by fraudsters elsewhere online.
Other blogs picked up the story, including Mayor Sam's Sister City, a blog authored by Michael Higby, LA resident. All was well until late Tuesday night.
That's when someone sinister fraudulently presented himself to Mayor Sam and other blogs as Jacob Savage and claimed that the story was "a light-hearted jest," fabricated. The worst affront? This impostor described IvyGate as an 'Ivy league version of the Onion, with sometimes real news to confuse.' As our readers know, the IvyGate and the Onion are both characterized by hard-hitting fact-based journalism.
Now, the timeline: Higby proceeded to 'correct' his posts on Thursday with this new information without first verifying the identity of his 'Jacob Savage' contact. He then accused IvyGate, a "wannabe Phil Hendrie of blogs," of having "clowned the old, dead Republican mayor." We here at IvyGate felt it was important to correct these untruths and set the record straight. We have had limited success in contacting Higby and less success in getting him to retract his Thursdsay item badmouthing IvyGate. Nick first e-mailed him on Friday; there have been many more since, and for all these efforts, we've gotten but one in return before he disappeared again.
Rather than let his post fester, I am writing this now to inform all interested parties that the story as originally run remains true. Again, it's not our goal to single out Villaigarosa any more than we already have, but we had to clear our good name on this. IvyGate is and will continue to be an accurate and well-reported source.
UPDATE 7/17: Describing it as an 'Ivy League Blogging Lesson,' Mayor Sam has admitted his mistake.
--SAM JACKSON
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
July 16th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
this needs to be said. the onion, ivygate is not. the antonio jr. story is completely true.
July 16th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
What is happening to IvyGate? There is nothing remotely funny about this post. I count exactly one joke–the one about IvyGate and the Onion–and it sucks. Is IvyGate turning into a real blog or something? What’s up with that?
July 16th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
I preferred the viciousness of the two Princeton guys.
At least the Unofficial Stanford Blog is starting to get snarky.
blog.stanford.edu
July 16th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
as a pton student, i can attest to the veracity of ivygate’s original post on villaraigosa, jr. i stumbled upon the group on facebook, and i couldn’t believe a high profile politician’s son would do something so dumb as post how much fun he had drinking underage.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:21 am
why are there so many stanford kids hanging out here all the time now. and why are you plugging your blog? we dont care about stanford.
July 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
The poster of the post in question is “Antonio Villaraigosa Jr.” The user name of Antonio Jr. is actually “Antonio Vee.” Antonio Vee still has posts up in Socal Tigers. Princeton Party Crew ‘11 blog is now gone. A few of Antonio’s posts are now gone but you can see the responses. Antonio did drink beer on the beach. He did get drunk at a party in Princeton and start singing spanish songs. Here are photos of the beach party that were in the facebook page
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antoniovillaraigosa/