In my opinion, the most significant event in the blawgosphere in 2007 was the Flea’s live-blogging of his medical malpractice trial, and subsequent exposure on the front page of the Boston Globe, brought to light by the efforts of Eric Turkewitz of New York Personal Injury Blog. Eric, who just came in second for his Marathon effort for Best Blawg Review for 2007 in a nail-biter (with the incomparable Anne Reed winning the Bronze), should have won an award for his Flea posts.
Eric has now posted an extraordinary interview with the Flea, whose true identity is Dr. Robert Lindeman, exposing and explaining the brutally painful lessons from his secret life as a blogger.
If you somehow missed this story, a brief synopsis. The Flea was an anonymous award-winning pediatrician blogger of great skill and humor. One thing the Flea hated, perhaps more than anything else, was lawyers. Eric picked up on the Flea, and attempted to engage his complaints against lawyers and medical malpractice in general, thus subjecting himself to the anger of the Flea and his fans.
Unbeknownst, the Flea (in his secret alter ego) was about to begin a med mal trial for the death of a young boy. Rather than conceal this experience, the Flea decided to live-blog his way through it. His comments about opposing counsel, jury selection, the judge, everything. It was extraordinary to see the world of litigation through the eyes of such a erudite litigant, expressed with such sarcasm and dripping venom.
While the Flea’s anonymity held tight in the blawgosphere, it was a different matter for plaintiff’s counsel in his med mal case, who came at it from the opposite angle with far more information. Well prepared, counsel unearthed the Flea’s secret, which by now Eric was broadcasting loudly across the internet. The Flea’s blog simply disappeared one day, without a trace or explanation. Then the shoe dropped. A story about the Flea appeared on the front page, above the fold, in the Boston Globe, exposing the blog and trial for all the world to see.
This was a remarkable cautionary tale of both the law, the power of the blawgosphere and the passions of one doctor. Indeed, it’s unfortunate that this tale never made it into Dan Solove’s book, Reputation, as the impact to the Flea, Dr. Lindeman, was devastating.
Since May, 2007, the Flea has been silent and we’ve all been left to wonder what became of him and what lessons should be learned by all of us who live in a glass house in the blogosphere. Thanks to Eric, we no longer have to wonder. The Flea, once Eric’s arch nemesis, has now given an exceptional and fascinating interview about his experience and its impact on this life. If you’re a blogger, or have any thoughts of being one, this is a must read.
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I don’t think it’s fair to characterize Eric as Flea’s archnemesis. He may have broken the story, but he was always fair in his comments and he never succumbed to the kind of personal insults that some of the other blawgs did. He also tried to convince Flea to stop live-blogging for his own good (much of this was in comments on Flea’s site, which are now lost). He certainly wasn’t responsible for Flea’s exposure.
You either took notice of the show with Eric and the Flea rather late in the process, or have a fuzzy memory. The blawgosphere existed long before Eric broke the Flea story. The reason why Eric knew about the Flea story was that Eric and the Flea were involved in some rather heated exchanges about medical malpractice, a sore subject for the Flea in retrospect. And in fact there were some personal insults and some very derogatory posts, not by Eric but rather the Flea and his fans. As a little reminder, here’s my post about the Flea going after Eric in the beginning.
There’s two thing we don’t do around here. We don’t indulge in revisionist history, and we get our facts straight.