{"id":13043,"date":"2015-06-16T16:11:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T20:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=13043"},"modified":"2015-06-18T00:45:23","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T04:45:23","slug":"rottenreporting-the-10000000-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/06\/16\/rottenreporting-the-10000000-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATED: RottenReporting: The $10,000,000 Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE<\/strong>: The Register & Bee corrected the article within two hours of this article being published. Behold the power of SouthsideCentral.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

I did my best to avoid writing this edition of RottenReporting, but the Register & Bee wouldn’t modify their story.<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Register & Bee reporter Vicky Cruz watched drones fly into the air last week at KSI Data Sciences.<\/a><\/h4>\n

(Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through it.)<\/p>\n

Well, apparently numbers were flying into the air that day too. Let’s take a look at the part of the article that’s 100% wrong.<\/p>\n

The data management start-up was given seed funding in the amount of $250,000 by The Launch Place in 2013 in exchange for agreeing to headquarter in Danville. It also received a five-year $10 million grant from Danville Regional Foundation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No. No. No. KSI Data Solutions was not given a five-year\/$10 million grant by the Danville Regional Foundation. The Launch Place was given that $10,000,000 DRF grant.<\/p>\n

Common sense should have told Cruz (and her editors) that $10,000,000 would have been a ridiculous amount of money to be given to a startup company like KSI. Knowledge of how the Danville Regional foundation works would have told Cruz (and her editors) that the DRF doesn’t fund startup companies. That’s not their mission.<\/p>\n

I really didn’t want to honor Cruz with two RottenReporting articles within one week<\/a>, but I’m forced to because I made a nice, polite comment on the article’s webpage saying that The Launch Place got the DRF grant and not KSI. My comment was deleted and the article never changed. So much for trying, eh?<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, there was one other technology part of the article that didn’t make sense…<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple. All you got to do is match the shape of your cable. Plug in your antennas, flip the switch on the back and you\u2019re streaming videos securely into the cloud. It\u2019s totally encrypted with a battery,\u201d Barton said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I spoke with KSI’s founder, Jason Barton, and he confirmed what I already knew. Batteries don’t have the ability to encrypt data. The battery on the drone provides 20 hours of data transfer power, and the software does the encoding. Perhaps Cruz and her editors should run technology factchecking past the Register & Bee’s IT department. They’d have spotted that mistake instantly, too.<\/p>\n

Vicky Cruz wrote a claim that just didn’t make any common sense on either the dollar amounts or who the DRF grant actually went to. She should have known that the Danville Regional Foundation doesn’t make grants to companies like KSI and definitely not at the $10,000,000 level. Her editors should have had that knowledge as well in the factchecking process. Somebody at the Register & Bee deleted my correction of the facts and failed to get that information to someone who could verify the error and correct it.<\/p>\n

It’s a team effort for sure, but that’s RottenReporting.<\/p>\n

\n

UPDATE #1: Within two hours of this article’s publication, the Register & Bee corrected the article. Here’s the corrected version.<\/p>\n

The data management start-up was given seed funding in the amount of $250,000 by The Launch Place in 2013 in exchange for agreeing to headquarter in Danville. The Launch Place received a five-year $10 million seed funding grant from Danville Regional Foundation for this purpose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?<\/p>\n

\n

\"sclogo\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: The Register & Bee corrected the article within two hours of this article being published. Behold the power of SouthsideCentral.<\/p>\n

I did my best to avoid writing this edition of RottenReporting, but the Register & Bee wouldn’t modify their story.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rottenreporting","category-updated","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-3on","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12407,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/04\/20\/rottenreporting-oops-we-missed-that-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":0},"title":"RottenReporting: Oops. We missed that meeting.","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"April 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Danville Register & Bee says that Danville Public Schools new school requests are \"expected to come up for discussion\" at Tuesday night's Danville City Council meeting. That's wrong, and good reporting would have discovered that. Oh yeah, delinquent tax fees aren't going up either. School budget, fee and rate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/Dmk8rat.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17773,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2016\/03\/28\/rottenreporting-smearing-danville-utilities\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":1},"title":"RottenReporting: Smearing Danville Utilities","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"March 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Technically, this is RottenEditorialWriting but that's just too long and stupid looking. Danville Utilities has done a good job getting rid of the problems that they had with employee corruption, but that doesn't stop the editorial board of the Danville Register & Bee from attacking them with reckless rhetoric. Let's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/nlOgE4X.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14799,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/25\/rottenheadlinewriting-santa-gives-cancer-to-a-child-surprise\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":2},"title":"RottenHeadlineWriting: “Santa gives cancer to a child. Surprise!”","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"December 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"After a discussion on our last Danville Register & Bee headline writing disaster, we learned that all the headlines are written in the Lynchburg office and not on Monument Street. Well, the headline writers in Lynchburg really blew it this time... Get ready to cringe when you read this disaster.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/JrqaqlJ.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/JrqaqlJ.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/JrqaqlJ.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11668,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/29\/rottenreporting-machine-machines\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":3},"title":"RottenReporting: Machine Machines","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"December 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Department of Redundancy Department is on Line 2. Most people have glaring English mistakes that just grate on their nerves. For some people it's your\/you're or to\/too\/two. Here's mine. Retiring CEO saw bank through \u2018major\u2019 success, growth (Register & Bee article, paywall may apply unless you break through) Presented\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "RottenReporting"","block_context":{"text":"RottenReporting","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/rottenreporting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/Ek7wmNn.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/Ek7wmNn.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/Ek7wmNn.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14587,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/11\/27\/thumbs-112715\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":4},"title":"Thumbs! (11\/27\/15)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"November 27, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"What? Five weeks since our last Thumbs! article? Let's get that fixed right now. UP! is good. DOWN! is bad. That's easy enough to remember. Let's bring on the Big Board! Thumbs UP! to Michelle Bush and Embracing Danville's Positives! Michelle is a person filled with unbridled optimism, and she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Thumbs!"","block_context":{"text":"Thumbs!","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/thumbs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.imgur.com\/7aTEWad.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14786,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2015\/12\/20\/rottenreporting-the-scanner-in-the-manger\/","url_meta":{"origin":13043,"position":5},"title":"RottenReporting: The Scanner in The Manger","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"December 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This isn't really RottenReporting because the reporting was the usual excellent John Crane writing, but RottenHeadlineWriting takes up too much space and sounds stupid. So late last night, I decide to take a look at the Register & Bee's website to see what their Sunday feature story is. 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