I remember reading this article in the Seattle Times about the limo driver who got taken by a real estate agent for a 1.5 million dollar condo.
Now Seattle Bubble is claiming that it’s full of holes:
Claim: Danil Kasimov is “a limousine driver, earning little more than minimum wage.”
Reality: Public records show a Danil Kasimov as the owner of a limousine company named Action Towncar.A simple search of Washington State business licenses reveals that Mr. Kasimov is in fact the owner of Action Towncar, LLC, a Redmond-based limousine company, not merely a “limousine driver,” as stated in the article. Of course, this does not tell us how much Mr. Kasimov is earning, so it is possible that the “little more than minimum wage” part could be true.
If that’s true, it’s really embarrassing.
Newspapers: make sure your staff knows how to do fact-checking online. Databases are plentiful and cheap (or free), and fifteen minutes could save you a lot of embarrassment.
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And don’t most major metro newspapers – if not all papers – have a fact-checking department and/or library? I know the P-I has one and their librarian seems to know where to find just about anything.
Beware of assumptions; you should learn something about the industry before you make generalized statements. Most limousine operations are single-operator, owner/operator sole proprietorships. That Mr. Kasimov is the owner ssays nothing about his financial capability. It does, however, say a lot about his entrepreneurial spirit.
Chris – that little factoid does indeed throw things in a different light (at least for that one point – the others seems to still stand).
It still strikes me as odd that I haven’t seen a public response from the Times (maybe there is one and I just haven’t seen in), but if I were them, I’d want to either admit my mistake or back up my reporting…