Did anyone else get called by Lauren Lipton from the Wall Street Journal?

Hi,

I got a call this morning from a woman claiming to be Lauren Lipton from the Wall Street Journal. She said that she was doing an article for the Weekend Journal section on mother-daughter fashion and had found a thread I had posted about making matching outfits for me and my daughter at this NG.

She was very nice and sounded legitimate, so I answered her harmless questions. I'm curious, did anyone else get called? When she first said she'd read my post on Usenet, I was worried about which NG post she was referring to. :) Luckily it was an innocent sewing one.

Sheila

Reply to
Sheila
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Reply to
CNYstitcher

How did she get your phone number? Sounds odd to me.

ttfn patty

Reply to
Patty

She said that as a reporter, she's good at 'finding people' and to not worry. :) She was really nice and didn't ask anything personal outside of my opinions about mother/daughter clothing. But I realize now how easy it is to get people to talk: "Hello, I'm reporter for the Wall Street Journal." As long as questions were based on opinions, I think it's safe. Plus, she was a woman. If she showed up on my doorstep, I could take her. :)

Sheila

Reply to
Sheila

Sheila,

How funny. but still be cautious.

ttfn patty

Reply to
Patty

I did a google and found a WSJ reporter Lauren Lipton. I suggest you contact her at: lauren.lipton.wsj.com. That's the email addy on google. Next time I think you ought to check though before you answer anyone's question on the phone. You just can't take people at their word because they sound nice.

Reply to
JJ

I know, I know. I think I was just bored this morning. I was ready to hang up if she asked me what I was wearing. :) I did email her and am awaiting a response. I'm starting to wonder what bad things people could possibly accomplish by keeping you on the phone for a few minutes. She did give me her work number and a company directory phone number so that I could double check. I only worry that if she is legit and quotes me, that I'll end up sounding stupid. :)

It sounded to me like she might contact others at this group. I'm a bit miffed that she hasn't as I got a lot of responses to my original post about doing a matching mother/daughter outfit. I don't like that I was singled out. Her first question was whether or not I actually made the matching outfits. If the caller was a fraud, the most she can be guilty of is being interested in something so minimal. Maybe she liked the sound of my voice. ;)

Sheila

Reply to
Sheila

Well, I sent an email to the address you found and the one she gave me: " snipped-for-privacy@wsj.com and the one to l.lipton bounced. Recipient not found. Interesting. Now I'm worried. Maybe it's a technical glich...

Sheila

Reply to
Sheila

Patty murmured while asleep:

what on earth are you posting about? It would be at least a little polite to quote the original post as not all servers get all the posts...

Penny S

Reply to
Penny S

Don't panic just yet. I'm a journalist and I find people all the time by doing just what she said she'd done. But you do need to check. Why not phone the Wall Street Journal and ask them if she's bona fide - you can probably find the website by Googling and there'll be contact numbers for the editorial department.

:) Trish

Reply to
Trishty

Hi Shiela, It's always wise to be cautious and to check things out, but everything and everyone is not always fraudulent. Some years ago my husband got an email from a book editor who claimed she reads the computer newsgroups to see who is knowledgable about some subjects and how well they express themselves, to see if they would be possible authors for her publisher. She wanted to know if he would write a book on a particular subject that he had addressed in one of the newsgroups. At first he thought it was just another scam or get-rich-quick scheme, but finally he did check it out, and the short version is that he ended up making a career change, and he is much happier now than with what he was doing. Instead of programming and data base management, he now writes and edits full time. If you do a google search on Jonathan Gennick, you will see that he has written a lot of books and articles, and it's all because of that one email that he had actually deleted once, then decided to check further.

So yes, always be careful and a little suspicious, but if something truly interests you, it might be worth checking out. Always do the homework. Now, back to the sewing machine for me!

Donna G. Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Reply to
Donna Gennick

I confirmed that it was her. :)

Sheila

Reply to
Sheila

Patty murmured while asleep:

what on earth are you posting about? It would be at least a little polite to quote the original post as not all servers get all the posts...

Penny S There ya go Penny.........but one would assume that the subject line would tell you what the email was about.. which mine did. If you are getting this thread then why wouldn't you have gotten the other posts in this thread also? That is why some of these posts are so big......20 people answer one post and all of them leave all of the other answers in their email. How quaint. ttfn patty

Reply to
Patty

Patty murmured while asleep:

not all servers show all posts just as the nature of the best, and mine dropped the original... I only got the follow ups. It's mistake to assume that everyone gets all posts... news servers are generally somewhat but not completely reliable. As a long time news users, and keeper of the netiquette and posting FAQ for alt.sewing and rcts...I find it very annoying when proper quoting is not used ( not trimming is another discussion) Especially when the subject line is somewhat intriguing.. what happened? What did she want?

To stay on topic, I have industry people contact me all the time based on my activity in various forums. Malden, McNett, Epic, NF, are just a few. There are many lurkers in newsgroups, you never who is reading and taking note.

Penny S

Reply to
Penny S

I received a request by email from a reporter on the Wall Street journal asking me some questions about the anthrax scare a few years ago. She had gotten my email from a newsgroup because I had posted an email stating that I lived just 5 minutes from the post office from which the letters were mailed. Since the WSJ was also near me, I called the company to verify that she indeed was an employee. You could do the same. I'm sure they have a 800 number.

Mary Ann in central Florida (formerly central NJ)

Reply to
Mary Ann

No wonder he was suspicious! We are up to our kneecaps in bogus "literary agents" and scammers pretending that Stephen King got his start at a vanity press. (Honest vanity presses print books for people to hand out to their friends and relatives; dishonest vanity presses pretend that they will market them, but can't.)

There is a simple rule that filters out all the scams: in publishing, money flows *toward* the author. If a "publisher" or "agent" asks for a single penny, you don't just run, you call the cops.

(Well, there are scientific journals, self-publishng, and other descendants of letter-writing, but in these categories, *you* initiate the call.)

Joy Beeson

Reply to
joy beeson

My first thought too. Scary that anyone can find any ng user's number.

another Sharon

Reply to
Life Experience

Life Experience found this in the back of the refrigerator:

you guys never heard of the white pages? Any search engine will give you a phone number with a name.

penny s

Reply to
Penny S

There are a few exceptions to the vanity press rule. I have a coffee table book of photos of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania that was self-published and is sold through bookstores in western Pennsylvania, but it is an amazing collection of photos from the earliest times to near present. Another is Charles Law's Encyclopedia of Antique Sewing Machines, which Charles has published by a vanity press, but which sells out rapidly each edition, and is "hard to find."

Commercial publishers generally offer the author an advance against future sales to get the publishing rights to their work, so Joy is essentially correct. Unfortunately, publishing houses have merged and merged until there are really few left (although they may still use several names) and what they are willing to contract is becoming more and more of the same. They are much less willing to take chances with new authors, but want to stick to established writers, even if their current work does not live up to previous work. This is why we pick up a new book by a known writer, only to be disappointed with it. Sometimes it's an early unpublished work, before the craft of writing was mastered, sometimes it's just that the writer has already written what there was to write. Oooops!

Reply to
Me

Many ng users mention where they live and you can then find most of them in the phonebook quite easily.

:) Trish

Reply to
Trishty

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