Ryan Block, the writer who broke the iPhone delay spoof email on May 16 and in the process broke many an iPhone investors’ heart, has come out with a profuse explanation of his blogging blunder. It’s hard to imagine the temptation a blogger of one of the most popular blogs in the entire World Wide Web receives during rumor season, especially an Apple rumor season, especially an Apple iPhone rumor season. Just to recap, the iPhone and Apple’s Leopard OS is on schedule for a June and October release respectively (see our post about it). But for about 30 minutes during May 16th’s trading day, it wasn’t the case - or so Block and Wall Street traders believed. Billions of AAPL stocks were sold short resulting in losses from investors, mostly day traders.

Here’s how Block described his feelings: “For a reporter, this kind of thing — an internal memo to a company’s employees — is solid gold. You don’t often get inside information more sound than a memo stating plans — and it is not uncommon to see these sorts of internal emails quoted in mainstream newspapers and magazines — but we are still aware of precisely how dangerous it would be to leave any story at that.”

Block asks himself, “Could things have be done differently?” and answers, “Definitely.” In fact only an hour and forty minutes after he posted the story, the second memory, this time an official one from Apple, denied any delay. What would happen if he’d waited an hour and forty minutes?… “Well, maybe we would have done a story about a planted internal memo at Apple.”

Yet, despite Block’s apologetic tone and an assurance in the last paragraph that he and Engadget “have learned a very serious lesson,” we cannot help but notice the stream of denial flowing below his words. “Credibility and trust is the currency of our realm, and it’s clear we lost some of that” But from reading how he chose not to wait for a confirmation on such a big story and opted for the quick gratification of being first, credibility and trust does not seem to be his likely currency. Maybe immediacy is. He’s a blogger after all, and an hour and forty minutes is such a long time.

["Regarding Yesterday" by Ryan Block]