Podcaster pulls hoax; claimed he was replacement for Imus in the Morning

Ed Kohler, the Twin Cities resident behind Technology Evangelist, is admitting he was fibbing when he blogged about how his podcast was going to replace the fired Don Imus.

So, I made up the Technology Evangelist temporarily replacing Imus thing. This was a subtle, but key line to the story:

Wow, it feels like we're running 11 days behind.

As in, 11 days behind on April Fool's jokes.

Kohler fooled some people. Popular blogger Robert Scoble, for example, bought the story. Because lots of bloggers link to Scoble, the bogus story wended its way through the blogosphere. Kohler fooled some nice people on Twitter, where he also made the false claim. (UPDATE: Scoble blogs about being taken in)

Kohler received lots of congratulatory comments on his site:

"What an amazing opportunity. It's really been neat watching the site develop. I am sure that CBS listeners will love the show just as much as your internet fans. Good luck with your new venue."

"This is amazing news -- can I be your first groupie?"

"Congrats! That rocks."

I saw his announcement last night on Twitter (Kohler is one of the people I "follow" on Twitter). I knew it was garbage, but I couldn't figure out his angle, so I just stayed far away.

UPDATE: I just interviewed popular blogger Robert Scoble, who fell for the prank: Listen here.

UPDATE: I just recorded a call with Kohler. Listen to his explanation of the Imus prank here. If anyone has idle time on his or her hands, feel free to transcribe the interview for posting here. I would be eternally grateful. My hands hurt from too much typing. Mr. Kohler himself transcribed the interview. Here it is:

Kohler: A local blogger in Minneapolis, Chuck Olson, had posted on Twitter that his blog had picked up Don Imus now that Don Imus had been let go by CBS. After hearing that, I thought it would be fun . . . I started thinking about, "If Don Imus is gone,someone's going to have to replace him, right?" and I thought, "well heck, why not us?"

So, I decided to have some fun with it and throw up a post, and it turns out that I managed to get up that post about three hours before CBS had their official announcement. It was just enough of a window to make news, on the blogosphere, at least.

Gordon: Yeah, you did. You got picked up by a pretty big blogger in Robert Scoble, and whatever he does, people link to, so it kind of traveled out there.

Kohler: Yeah, it certainly did. Looking at the time stamps of his blog post and mine, somehow he got his blog post up three minutes before I even published my post. I have no idea how he managed to do that. He's a regular reader, but he reads thousands of blogs, I think, and once he throws something out there it can really take off. He can amplify a conversation in a big way.

Gordon: How do you feel about having fooled people?

Kohler: What's cool about this to me is that we managed to make it plausible enough that people were willing to believe it, which I think speaks highly of our content - that people would believe that even for a day we could substitute on a national network like CBS. That was encouraging, from our perspective.

Gordon: I think some people who were tricked might feel bad about being tricked. Do you worry about that?

Kohler: That's a possibility. I don't think it's going to be the end of the world for anyone. But I do have a few emails to follow-up with this morning that came in over night from people congratulating or wanting to partner with us in some way. I'll have a busy day today.

Gordon: As a technology journalism site and podcast, you want to deal in what's true, and you want to deal in facts. Did you take into account that there may be a possible reputation issue or anything like that if you . . . I mean, if you were doing it on April first, the people, I think, would just go, "ha ha." But April 11th? I wonder if you wonder about reputation stuff?

Kohler: I did put in a hint at the end of the post which was ignored for around eleven hours before someone actually, finally, figured out that I'd . . . I mentioned that we were eleven days late. I think people like little quizzes like that. Technology people, I think in general, are pranksters maybe more so than in some other industries. I don't think there are going to be any long-term repercussions. With most of the content we write, we're citing stuff continuously throughout the post. We're linking out all the time. You don't have to take our word for it on every thing we write. You can also link out and view all the additional sources that are tied to something we're writing. I think that lends to the credibility where it's not just our word for it.

Gordon: It's funny that you got all sorts of emails from people asking you to partner. That didn't take long, did it?

Kohler: No, it didn't. It's a huge opportunity. It's funny to see the blogosphere . . . There are a lot of people who are ripping on the mainstream media all the time, but then, when someone has their big break where they're going to be in the mainstream media now . . . that's congratulated. It's despised and admired at the same time.