Rebbeca Flemming wrote a fantastic article for The Globe and Mail about how she wasn’t the start of the Gordon Lightfoot death hoax. You can find it here. She deals with the situation with a fine wit and a literary flare. Although, one portion has slightly too much artistic license for my taste.

Specifically, I feel compelled to respond to this:

“By the time I went back online, Gordon Lightfoot was officially undead (phew!) and the witch hunt was on (uh-oh!). Media guru and sleuth Ian Capstick was hot on my trail, and even had my picture and the dreaded tweet in question on his blog. Commenters were gleefully posting personal information about me: my full name, where I lived, whom I worked for. So I did what anybody in my situation would do. I opened a bottle of wine, and began to drink.”

First, it’s not a “witch hunt” when you are trying to explain, analyze, and investigate the start of a hoax.

And, let me be very clear: While I had all of Flemming’s personal information moments after I sorted out she was the first online to declare Lightfoot dead; I only posted her then-deleted Twitter account handle. I also did not allow the posting of her name, GEDS information, or other personal data that was not connected to the @fleminski Twitter account (two commenters referenced the Google cache of @fleminski that revealed her full name). The photo mentioned was her Twitter avatar snapped via the Twitter search.

I received over 10 comments that I didn’t post that day because of their personal nature. Until today, I hadn’t had Flemming’s full name on my blog. Just wanted that to be clear that it’s never my intention to drive people to drink–unless in celebration.