E-Mail Snafu Sparks Spam Attack On Journalists

TFGeditor writes "According to an article at Editor & Publisher an e-mail mistake by the Casey Journalism Center at the University of Maryland wrongly invited hundreds of journalists nationwide to the university's prestigious 'Casey Medals' awards. The goof also launched a perpetual e-mail whirlwind as those who responded to the incorrect note unwittingly sent their feedback to everyone else on the recipient list. The e-mail was an electronic invitation to attend the organization's annual board meeting and awards lunch in Washington, D.C. on Aug, 8, according to Carrie Rowell, conference coordinator. She said it was meant only to reach the center's 11 board members, who are invited to the event where 18 journalists will be honored with the press-related awards. Rowell said she did not know how many people were affected, but did not dispute that it was likely hundreds."

Re:Not sure this is news

[Seumas]

No kidding. Like this doesn't happen in every corporation every day? It happens to a bunch of journalists who are full of themselves and suddenly it's newsworthy?

How long until Slashdot starts linking to Page 6 celebrity gossip articles?

But they're all friends so it's okay!

[Whafro]

I didn't expect to RTFA and find that people actually thought it was funny/beneficial.

I mean, it might have been news (or at least interesting) if people were pissed. Then they "rekindled friendships" and all sung campfire songs, and I ceased to care.

In other news, I left my vacuum cleaner in the hallway and my brother stubbed his toe. He was going to be pissed, but decided not to be, so it was all good. He actually thought it was funny eventually. Just so you all know.

Re:It's time to change your e-mail client

[Takara]

You'd think they could come up with some confirmation dialogue.

Yea, yea. So you work at Microsoft. We don't want to hear about it anymore!

Re:Not sure this is news

[BlueTooth]

yeah and this one time, in college, the RA sent an email to all the people on my floor, and then some guy replied to everyone and so some other guy replied to him saying "hey, don't send it to the list," but he was a total idiot because he replied to everyone too...

Breaking News!

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: somebody made an email snafu! Can you believe it!?

Coming up after the break: pornography breaches the Internet, a heated debate breaks out in comp.os.vms, and somebody's grandmother installs "the America Inline" from a floppy disk.

Re:Not sure this is news

[Linus Torvaalds]

Oh my god! Did you submit the story to Slashdot?

Re:Not sure this is news

[jacksonj04]

"It looks like you want to send this email to somebody! Are you really, really, 100% absolutely certain that you're sending it to the right people?"

"Are you really sure?"

"Have you double checked?"

"Are you still sure?"

"Just a final check, you do want to send this don't you?"

And so on.

Accidental article

[kurzweilfreak]

This wasn't really news for nerds, but TFGeditor accidently hit reply-to-all instead of reply when including this article in an email to a coworker, and Zonk's email addy happened to be oin there, and it was mistaken as an article submission.

Me Too!

[theguywhosaid]

Student services at my school set up a list for all employees, and I got to laugh for about a week while people sent messages to the list telling people to stop sending messages to the list. Over 90% of the messages read something like "Come on people, stop sending stuff to the list, you are just adding to the problem". Some people just cannot comprehend the irony and hypocrisy of doing that. It was the Best Week Ever.