Before Newsweek went ahead with publishing Leah McGrath Goodman's blockbuster article identifying the creator of Bitcoin, Goodman asked her editor an important question.
"Leah actually said to me, 'Are you ready for this? Are you ready for the shitstorm?'" Jim Impoco, Newsweek's editor in chief, recalled in a phone interview with Mashable on Friday. "And I said, 'yes.'"
See also: 'Newsweek' Claims Bitcoin Creator Is 64 and Lives With His Mom
For the first few hours after the article was published online Thursday, Newsweek enjoyed the kind of attention that most publications would kill for. The Bitcoin story dominated the conversation on social media; 700,000 readers had viewed it as of 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, according to Impoco. It has since topped 1 million views.
"We broke Twitter," he says. "I love it."
Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, however, the man that the publication portrayed as Satoshi Nakamoto, the mastermind behind Bitcoin, stepped out from his humble house in Temple City, Calif., and started telling reporters that he hadn't even heard of Bitcoin until three weeks earlier.
"I got nothing to do with it," Nakamoto told the Associated Press in a sit-down interview after a slow-speed car chase on Thursday.
With that, the chorus of Bitcoin enthusiasts and general skeptics who raised doubts about the story suddenly grew much louder. A number of articles were published wondering whether Newsweek had just outed "the wrong Satoshi Nakamoto."
The controversy and debate surrounding the story grew loud enough that Newsweek felt compelled to publish a lengthy statement on Friday to defend itself:
Newsweek stands strongly behind Ms. Goodman and her article. Ms. Goodman’s reporting was motivated by a search for the truth surrounding a major business story, absent any other agenda. The facts as reported point toward Mr. Nakamoto’s role in the founding of Bitcoin.
Impoco remains confident in the story as reported and says he did not see a need to have framed the article with greater skepticism. "Basically, we shaped it according to our level of confidence," he says, adding that there is "some hedging" in the way the article is worded.
No publication ever wants to have one of its stories proven wrong, but for Newsweek, there's much more at stake. The publication decided to make the Bitcoin article its cover story for the first relaunch of its print edition this week.
For our first return-to-print cover story, #newsweek unmasks the inventor of Bitcoin: @truth_eater rocks. http://t.co/tjl7w4gLxE
— jim impoco (@jimpoco) March 6, 2014
As Felix Salmon put it in a Reuters article Friday, "Either Nakamoto is lying through his teeth, or Newsweek has made what is probably the biggest and most embarrassing blunder in its 81-year history."
Tina Brown, the former editor of Newsweek, went so far as to tell Bloomberg TV that it would be "rough" for the publication if the story turned out to be wrong. "All I can think of is I'm so glad I'm not the editor of Newsweek." (When told Brown said she didn't want to be in Impoco's shoes, he responded: "I don't want to be in her shoes.")
Impoco tells us that there were "three or four" other stories contending for the cover spot for the big relaunch in addition to the Bitcoin story. Once Goodman got what appeared to be a doorstep confession from Nakamoto — something that Nakamoto is now refuting — Impoco says he had "no doubt" the Bitcoin story would be the cover.
"Did we realize that we were making a gutsy move? Yes. We could have put a Putin cover on," Impoco says. "It was a bold cover."
He adds: "Go large or go home. This is Newsweek. We are raising the dead here. And you know what? People are aware of it now."
That much, at least, is hard to refute.
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