I’ll allow the person with whom that bet was made, the soon-to-be-gainfully-employed-after-majoring-in-journalism (yes, they do exist!) Danielle Curtis, to give you the backstory.

Earlier today, Tom, myself (Danielle Curtis, TNH News Editor), and a few other members of TNH were on the T in Boston, making our way to the NEFAC (New England First Amendment Committee) luncheon honoring longtime New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis.  At some point during our trip, the always confident and forever cynical Tom proclaimed that he is the only Thomas Gounley in the entire world.

Of course, I quickly retorted that that was impossible.  With 6 billion people on this earth, there is no way that the Executive Editor of TNH is the only Thomas Gounley walking around.  But, since Tom is so convinced that he is right, he bet me $5,000 I can’t find another (living) Thomas Gounley (that was born before 10:15 a.m.this morning, the time the bet was made) by the time I graduate on May 21, 2011.

Yes, I most definitely bet Ms. Curtis $5,000 that she could not find another living person sharing my name. Yes, I made sure to note that said person had to exist at the moment the bet was placed, so as to shield myself from fraudulent claims stemming from someone legally changing his or her name in order to allow Ms. Curtis to collect. Yes, I did write up a contract in legal speak in my reporter’s notebook and have myself, Ms. Curtis, and a witness sign it (all of this was very much to the amusement of the few scattered other people sharing our car, I might add). I have no doubt that said contract would have held up in court, if our contract ever moved into litigation.

That said, it is unlikely that it would ever do so, given that this was a one-way bet: if Ms. Curtis succeeded at finding another Thomas Gounley, I would give her five thousand dollars; if not, then there were no repercussions.

Why am I writing this now? Well, our contract expired with the conferment of degrees on Saturday, and I did not have to endure the loss of $5,000. Having taunted Ms. Curtis with the impossibility of her task all semester, it seems wrong not to do it one final time.

For the record, my determination that I am the only person named “Thomas Gounley” in the world largely stemmed from vanity Googling and a quick search on the website howmanyofme.com.

As far as I know, Ms. Curtis’ only real searching took place the weekend of our bet, as detailed in the blog post excerpted above. Apparently, she came close to collecting.

I started the search tonight with the obvious: I typed Thomas Gounley into Google.  I knew that a lot of TNH articles, Tweets, and blog posts from Tom would show up and sure enough, they did.  What I didn’t realize, however, was that our very own Thomas Gounley would take up not only the first couple pages of Google results, but would continue to fill pages 10-15.  Seriously, what the hell.

Trying to get over a sudden overwhelming sense that I was going to lose this bet, I decided to type his name into Whitepages.com. I figured Tom had already done this since he was so cocky about being the only TG in the world, but to my surprise two Thomas Gounleys came up in my search.  One Thomas Gounley from Newport News, Virginia (that would be the one whose existence I am already aware of), and another Thomas Gounley from Silver Springs, Maryland.  Not only was this TG from a different state, he also had a different middle initial!

My heart started pounding as I thought of $5,000 (note to self: when I win, the first thing I want to do is spread the bills on my bed and roll around in them laughing a very evil laugh).  I clicked on the entry, and what did I find?  Sure enough, this person existed…until 2007.   He died at the far too young age of 56.  It’s sad for him and his family, and it’s sad for my wallet.  Perhaps if he had simply eaten better, worked out more, or taken better care of his cholesterol I would be on vacation in Hawaii right now.

In doing my own search on whitepages.com months later, I presume this is what she saw:

Although it doesn’t really matter now, I actually think that this entry is a misspelling, and the man’s name was actually “Thomas Gownley.” You’ll note that the entry even n0tes that the name frequently appears as that, and my Google searches have revealed a lot more traces of Gownley family in the Maryland area than a Gounley. So, even if this man were alive, it may not have mattered.

I plan on winning this bet, so to all you Thomas Gounleys out there-  You can run, but you cannot hide.

Well, apparently you can hide, as I’m not out $5,000. But I would like to take this opportunity to expand the scope of this wager. I still think that as of February I was the only person with my name in the world (middle name not being included), but on the off chance that anyone, anywhere can demonstrate otherwise, and I can make contact with said person (that was a provision of the original wager), I would be glad to enrich your fortunes by $100.

So get on it.

In the midst of a mildly productive studying session  (one exam tomorrow, one exam Friday), I logged on to Twitter at 5:02 p.m. today. At the top of my newsfeed was this tweet from the Poynter Institute’s Steve Myers.

Follow @myersnews@myersnews
Steve Myers

Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, Bill Keller has journos atwitter w/this tweet: @nytkeller: #TwitterMakesYouStupid. discuss.

May 11, 2011 5:07 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

I immediately looked at the profile of @nytkeller, the executive editor of The New York Times, and saw that he had indeed tweeted what many saw as fighting words. I did a search for “@nytkeller” on Twitter, saw that things were indeed blowing up, and decided that I needed to do a Storify story.

Now, I’ve done a few Storify stories before, and I love the site. The response to Keller’s tweet seemed to be a natural for the platform (indeed, in the half hour or so that I was putting it together, I was convinced that there were at least half a dozen people out there with the same idea and that they were going to get it out first).

I literally had the Storify page open before I’d read more than a half dozen responses (again, the aforementioned paranoia), so I quickly had to decide how I was going to do this. I didn’t just want to pull out a bunch of responses without adding some context or value of some kind. Too many Storifys just list tweets; if I just wanted to read a ton of responses, I’d just do the Twitter search.

I figured that the best way to add value was to find the unifying factors behind the responses, to organize them into categories. I scanned the responses, pulled the best ones into the story side, and looked for similarities. In the finished product, I settled on:

1) The Bill-Keller-Just-Got-Hacked Conspiracy Theory

2) Meta (this was a pretty weak category, but it had some promise early on…there just weren’t many people who continued with the theme)

3) Humor (there was less of this early on; this would come to dominate later)

4) Polite Disagreement

5) Not-So-Polite Disagreement (this dominated early on, with people releasing their unfiltered thought’s of Keller, but gave way to humor later)

Eventually, I published about 5:40 p.m. I shared it on Twitter.

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

Because I don't want to study…my @storify piece on @nytkeller's "#twittermakesyoustupid. discuss." tweet: http://bit.ly/lprMnI

May 11, 2011 5:41 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

And…nothing happened. I refreshed my bit.ly page and after two minutes approximately one person had read it. Then I remembered Storify’s notification feature, which sends tweets to everyone you “quote,” and which is the way that stories on the site truly spread. So I sent out a bunch of kind-of-obnoxious but highly-effective tweets like this one.

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

@nytkeller @myersnews @david_rosenberg I've quoted you in my @storify story on @nytkeller's tweet, check it out: http://sfy.co/8Mr

May 11, 2011 5:46 pm via StorifyReplyRetweetFavorite

After a couple minutes, @Storify retweeted me (they do a great job recognizing important and/or fun stories on their site). Then a couple people I’d quoted tweeted the story.

And things took off. Here’s the people who had shared the link via bit.ly as of 9:30 p.m. (judging by the number of clicks, it was accounting for about a third of the traffic to the story). Click for a much larger view.

Needless to say, the response was more than I ever could have anticipated. Not to mention what it is that people were saying about it. Here’s a few personal favorites.

Follow @lexinyt@lexinyt
Lexi Mainland

Nice. Studying makes you stupid anyway. MT @tgounley: Because I don't want to study… my piece on @nytkeller's tweet: http://bit.ly/lprMnI

May 11, 2011 6:13 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

The first NYT employee to tweet me…

Follow @ljthornton@ljthornton
 

Was about to @storify #Twittermakesyoustupid when I saw @tgounley already had. Yay! http://bit.ly/mKngDD

May 11, 2011 6:36 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

I knew that paranoia was justified!

Follow @craigtimes@craigtimes
Craig Pittman

Hilarious @Storify version of the Twitterverse reax to @nytkeller & his #TwitterMakesYouStupid meme: http://bit.ly/lprMnI

May 11, 2011 7:25 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Follow @lomonur@lomonur
Lolla Mohammed Nur

This will probably go down in tweet history-@Storify collection of responses 2 @nytkeller's #TwitterMakesYouStupid tweet: http://ow.ly/4SzZv

May 11, 2011 7:51 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Of course, the highlight was probably being responded to and subsequently followed by Bill Keller’s wife (who uses Twitter much more than he does).

Follow @EMMAGKELLER@EMMAGKELLER
Emma Gilbey Keller

@tgounley Wow! Impressive job. (@nytkeller)

May 11, 2011 6:04 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

One of her responses was probably one of the best.

Follow @EMMAGKELLER@EMMAGKELLER
Emma Gilbey Keller

@nytkeller I don't know if twitter makes you stupid, but it's making you late for dinner. Come home!

May 11, 2011 6:58 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

Anyway, I updated the Storify once about an hour after I published it to add in a few more responses, and that was that. Oh, the piece also got to be one of eight stories featured on Storify’s home page.

In fact, at about 1 a.m. Thursday morning, the story was both “featured” AND “popular.” (It has since gone back to just being featured.)

And the piece was (without prompting) brought up in #wjchat, that weekly Twitter chat of all things new-age journalism, which was definitely a highlight.

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

Wow, so my Storify (http://bit.ly/lprMnI) was brought up (not by me) in #wjchat. This really is my 15 minutes.

May 11, 2011 9:25 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

As of now, the piece is the seventh thing that comes up when you Google “Bill Keller Twitter.”

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

Google "Bill Keller Twitter." I'm the seventh result: http://bit.ly/jOO4IB #TwitterMakesYouVaguelyWellKnown

May 11, 2011 9:54 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

However, to bring this thing full circle, it should be noted that I lost a lot of valuable study time performing this task for the benefit of society. Sometimes I have honestly question whether college is helping me or holding me back. (This tweet is very outdated; we’re at 1,300 views as of 11 p.m.).

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

Spent way more time today working on Storify piece that 700+ have read than essay that one professor will read. Makes sense to me.

May 11, 2011 9:59 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Update: 1,600 views as of 9 a.m. Thursday

I know a number of people who have done the program and they come back not only speaking positively of the experience, but as absolute Ecoquest evangelicals. Very excited. More to come.

Didn’t think it compared to the original after my first listen, but I’ve been playing it on repeat and it’s growing on me. I still don’t really like the “California Girls” rift, but the rest of it works pretty well. My favorite part starts at 3:28.

Follow @Storify@Storify
 

Sending out more invites to our private beta … and grateful for your positive reactions!

February 16, 2011 10:18 pm via CoTweetReplyRetweetFavorite

Over the course of the fall semester, I noticed more and more references by the journalists I follow on Twitter to something called “Storify.” I perused a few stories made using the service, and the concept was cool and simple: Storify is a platform for telling stories using social media.

I filed that realization away in the dark recesses of my brain, but it came to mind when I wrote this story for The New Hampshire about UNH being named the “druggiest” college in the nation by The Daily Beast. The rankings received a fair deal of attention on Twitter, more so than any other topic I’d written on.

As I perused those tweets, which ranged from the outraged to the comical to the I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-go-to-UNH-anymore, I thought to myself:

“I could really use Storify right about now.”

A quick visit to Storify’s website revealed that I would have to request an invitation, as apparently I was endeavoring to join a sort of digital journalist’s country club.

I filled out the form to request an invitation and moved on with my life. I did put together a post entitled “The aftermath: Top tweets from UNH’s ‘druggiest’ college win” on my personal blog, which I thought turned out pretty well.

Then today I got an e-mail from Storify that contained this:

“Thanks for your interest in Storify! We’re handing out more invites to
the private beta and would love to have you give it a try. Storify is
the way to turn the social media into simple, elegant stories that you
can embed anywhere on the Web.”

And the next thing you know, I was crafting this thing on Storify. Of course, I needed a topic to Storify. What to do?

Well, as one might expect, I wasn’t the only person to get an invitation today, and I also wasn’t the only person to tweet about it. So I decided to use my private beta invitation to Storify to write about people getting private beta invitations to Storify.

Continue reading…

Follow @tgounley@tgounley
Thomas Gounley

Heading to Boston soon w/ TNH staffers to see former @nytimes columnist Tony Lewis get NEFAC lifetime achievement award http://bit.ly/eQ76m9

February 11, 2011 8:02 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Today, several of my fellow TNH staffers and I headed down to Boston for a luncheon in which the New England First Amendment Coalition presented Anthony Lewis, a former columnist for The New York Times and winner of two Pulitzer prizes, with a lifetime achievement award.

The opportunity arose when one of UNH’s journalism professors, who happens to be on the coalition’s board, offered a few free seats to interested students. I figured it was worth missing a couple classes to intake both journalistic discussion and a lunch which everybody else was paying $100 a pop for.

In typical fashion, the four of us (Chad- Managing Editor, Danielle- News Editor, Doubleday- Sports Editor) who went from TNH were all in the newsroom putting together the latest issue of the paper until about 1:30 am last night. We left Durham bright and early at 7:30 am, since we were carpooling down with one of TNH’s sports editors (who just happened to be going to Boston to do some coverage of the night’s Bruins game), so we thankfully didn’t have to deal with the awful hassle of being well-rested.

We killed some time in a nearby coffee shop before heading over to the Park Plaza hotel. The luncheon was actually in the midst of a New England Newspaper and Press Assocation convention, so we perused the papers that were up for various awards before heading in for lunch.

Our table was all UNH students, with the exception of one gentleman from Harvard’s Kennedy School, who for some reason had been delegated to the kid’s table. I regret to say that I didn’t get his name, as he left a little before we did and we had sort of skipped the usual formal introductions. Update as of Friday night: That gentleman was David Luberoff, executive director of the Kennedy School’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He was kind enough to send an email to my editor e-mail account on Friday night (which had to take some research, as we didn’t exchange information).

However, we had quite the conversation, as he seemed genuinely interested in the inner workings of TNH (prior to the joining the Kennedy School, he had been a newspaperman) and life in general at UNH. Anyone willing to put up with our candid thoughts on the UNH journalism program and my strong opinions on things such as unpaid internships and movies about print journalism deserves an award of their own.

In terms of the specifics of the ceremony itself, We were treated to some brief remarks from the award-winner himself, as well as a rather interesting address from the current executive editor of the Associated Press, who spoke of recent battles the news service had had with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests around the country. As she noted, it is simply a natural tendency for governments to try to do work in the dark as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean it is acceptable.

Oh, and lunch (which really wasn’t the reason I went, I swear) was chicken over mashed potatoes and ratatouille, followed by coffee and cheesecake.

It was quite a bit of traveling for a luncheon, but it was nice to get off campus and see a brief snippet of the real world. Boston isn’t typically one of my most frequented destinations, so it’s good to get down there now and then.

This is @DanielInnis today:

On Sunday, I published this post concerning the above tweet from the dean’s account. On Monday, Mr. Innis commented on the post and noted that he had deactivated his Twitter account. The comment read:

Follow @DanielInnis@DanielInnis
Daniel Innis

Taking train 135 (a regular train, not an Acela–slumming it) to NYC.

January 29, 2011 1:49 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

Original post: The dean of UNH’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics tried to be somewhat modern in the above tweet from yesterday. In my opinion, it didn’t really work out for him.

Here’s how Urban Dictionary defines “slumming it” (and before you bash the fact that I’m employing Urban Dictionary, consider that it is the only dictionary that would actually have a definition of “slumming it”).

1. To live poorly, or in below-average quality. Lifestyle that is below widely accepted standards, in terms of health, nutrition and hygeine, safety, and intelligence. Often linked with impoverished lifestyle or frugal living.

2. In stasis, or semi-nomadic state, surviving on bare minimum or below normal standards of living.

Please tell me that this guy is joking.

(P.S. It’s very, very good that he didn’t make the mistake of using “slummin’ it” without the “g”)

I wrote an article for Friday’s issue of The New Hampshire (the first one of the spring semester) about House Bill 176, a bill that has been introduced in the New Hampshire House of Representatives that would bar college students from voting in their college towns unless they resided there before enrolling.

It’s probably the most interesting topic I’ve ever reported on, given how controversial nature. House Speaker William O’Brien made some rather interesting comments to a group of conservative activists about the bill, to say the least, and while Republicans think it will pass, others think it is unconstitutional.

Anyway, it was newsworthy enough that the Huffington Posts’ College section, which has a sort of partnership with college newspapers around the country, has it featured on their site (I was on there once before, back in October). It’s primarily just a link to TNH’s website, but it also has a page for comments, and, unlike my previous appearance, it has actually registered a few (there are also a bunch of comments on TNH’s website).

I’m really interested in seeing what happens to this bill.