Declan McCullagh

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Declan McCullagh, who described Casey Serin as "the world's most hated blogger."

Haterz™ described Declan as "the world's most beloved reporter."

Declan B. McCullagh (born 1971) is chief political correspondent and senior writer for News.com, a subsidiary of CNET.^[1]^[2]

McCullagh wrote a number of articles on Casey Serin for CNET News.com, taking a critical but balanced view of the Serin story and gaining access to Serin and to other players.

1 "Casey Serin: The world's most hated blogger?"
2 "Notorious debtor Casey Serin shuts down blog"
3 "Hated blogger leaves U.S., threatens lawsuits"
4 Casey Serin Reactions
5 References

[edit] "Casey Serin: The world's most hated blogger?"

McCullagh's first article on Serin, Casey Serin: The world's most hated blogger?, appeared on May 14th 2007, and focused on Serin's blogging activities and reactions to it. McCullagh interviewed Serin in West Sacramento, visiting Jamba Juice with him, and also (unbeknownst to Serin) obtained comments from Serin's wife Galina.^[3]

The article quoted a number of haterz, including Rob Dawg and Aspeth. It was tremendously well-received in the haterz community, both for the sweet media attention paid to the haterz viewpoints, and for its balanced tone, which many saw as a rejection of the spin that Serin had put on other recent media appearances.

Perhaps most of interest to the haterz was the article's confirmation that Serin plays his audience:

Not all these details have appeared on his blog yet, but Serin seems to enjoy spacing them out in a way that will vex his readers the most. "What happens is I feed off of it," he said. "I know the buttons to press to get those guys going. After awhile, you learn what topics you can mention if you want to get extra comments on your post."

Serin himself was less pleased with the coverage, claiming that "Declan focused WAY too much on that part. Yes, I’ve done a little bit of baitin’ in the past. But most of it is NOT intentional."^[4]

The article's prominent position on CNET, and its subsequent republishing on the front page of MSN, drove a large amount of traffic to IAFF. Predictably, IAFF promptly broke under the strain, denying Serin a very valuable monetization opportunity.^[5]^[6]

McCullagh posted a followup comment on the story to answer a few questions, including "Yes, he showed me the murse. Very fashion-forward."^[7]

[edit] "Notorious debtor Casey Serin shuts down blog"

McCullagh covered Serin's temporary shuttering of IAFF on June 1st 2007, in a roundup article Notorious debtor Casey Serin shuts down blog that linked to reactions on Exurban Nation, Don't Hate Casey, the Haterz-cast, and to CaseyPedia itself.^[8]

After IAFF's subsequent resurrection by Serin, McCullagh apparently was so exasperated with the subject of his prior article that commented on IAFF decrying the credulity of Serin's recent claim that contractual obligations were "forcing" him to reopen IAFF and blog against his will.^[9]

McCullagh's original article was well-sourced, and relatively objective, but this direct commentary may serve to illustrate just how difficult it is to deal with the facts or persona of Casey Serin and still try to remain 'objective' in the sense of believing there are always two plausible sides to every story.

[edit] "Hated blogger leaves U.S., threatens lawsuits"

On June 12th 2007, McCullagh's third article on Serin, Hated blogger leaves U.S., threatens lawsuits, focused on Serin's flight to Australia and on the aftermath of the outing of his publisher Marty Stewart.^[10]

The article was accompanied by a recording of a telephone interview (transcript) that McCullagh conducted with Serin and Stewart.^[11]

[edit] Casey Serin Reactions

In the shout box on CH.C during his first posting on the 26 July 2007 Casey stated that he was not aware Declan was going to use material from an off the record conversation with Galina, his comments were:

[CaseySerin] declan was making small talk with my wife after MY interview and she thought it was gonna be off record but he used a bunch of stuff that was supposed to be private

[CaseySerin] and put a slant on it

[CaseySerin] oh well