We Report, You Decide

If Roger L Simon and Charles Johnson aren't just big f-ing LIARS!

From the "we are changing our name back" post on Open Source Media-Media's site today:

So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople--we did as we were told. Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a "branding" company. What followed is still a bit of nightmarish blur, but it involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names, and such probing questions as, "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" (Which is how we almost ended up as Jellyfish Media.) Enough said. So, in the spirit of"open source," we thought we’d tell you the real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy revenue.

So that's the story today. A while back though, Roger Simon wrote on his site:

Some people have criticized the name "Pajamas Media" itself as lacking, shall we say, in gravitas. And, although we enjoy the hat tip to an important event in blog and media history, we recognize that it is perhaps not serious enough to be the long term public face of our endeavor. We had been playing with the title Blog News Service, but that too may not be broad enough for what we intend to do: return media to the citizens - in this case the online citizens.

Both of these accounts can't be true.

Update: Reader NR points out that:

In their witty post marking the return to Pajamas Media, Roger and Chaz [...] claim a "branding company" forced them to change the name to "Open Source Media"; the truth is, Roger had a thread on his site asking for names, and "Open Source" was was a prominent suggestion from many of his commenters:

"OpenSourceNetwork"
"'Open Source Network' was good.
'Open Media Network" was too.
"I do like the stress on open source or independence.
eg.:
Independent News Network
Open Source News Network"
"I like Rick's suggestion of "Open Source Network" - OSN."

Maybe they're suggesting Roger's commenters are a "branding company?"