The question we have to ask is this: were journalists just traipsing about the country side, fabricating quotes and anecdotes merrily for years without repercussion or something? For all the old media bleating about uneducated, unethical punks on the internets who care naught for objectivity or investigative rigor, there seems to be a rash of alleged impropriety of late. Latest victim: New York-based freelancer Michelle Delio, who recently had articles pulled or amended in Wired, MIT's Technology Review and InfoWorld. D'oh!

Seems the Katamari Damacy (that's nerd for "snowball") got rolling when somebody from Hewlett-Packard called into question Michelle's piece "Carly's Way" in the Technology Review. Susan Rasky and a team of plucky grad students at Cal Berkeley's School of Journalism indepedently reviewed Michelle's stories to confirm with quoted sources that they exist, talked to Michelle, and were quoted correctly. Not always, as it turns out. InfoWorld and Wired then did their own reviews of her work -- both amending some of her pieces and calling for help in verifying sources in others. According to Wired, Michelle stands by her work. We're wondering if this qualifies as an interesting segment on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" or "All Things Considered," where she has appeared before to discuss technology issues.

Uncredited photo of Michelle Delio from Lucent.com.