At about 6:11 am, when I couldn't get to the site in one tab even though I had another BayCitizen article open in another tab, I checked GoDaddy's WhoIs server and it said that your domain registration had expired yesterday. It now says the expiration date is 2/2/14.

This is a really remarkable post, Peter. I, like NAParish above me, noticed that TBC was down and checked the GoDaddy WhoIs information, where I, too, saw that your organization had neglected to renew its domain.

Everyone makes mistakes! And a post saying "oh, rats, the reminders went to a defunct email" (or whatever actually happened) would have been met with, I suspect, applause for your transparency and understanding from most. We are all human! Errors happen.

But instead to see this cutsey, spin-filled post of "its incoming traffic forgot its name" and "the offending server has now received a software transfusion" leaves me with only a few options:

1) The Bay Citizen's new managing editor is being lied to by the tech team, and lacks the basic understanding of the internet to see through these lies.

2) The Bay Citizen's new managing editor is lying to its readers, and believes WE lack the basic understanding of the internet to see through HIS lies.

If this were some other small site, I wouldn't think this was that big a deal. But this is a site that markets itself as being somehow above the BS of other local news orgs, applauds itself for its transparency, and is constantly asking for money from its readers and from foundations/journalism funders like Knight.

So seeing this post that's full of lies and BS makes me wonder: what else does the BC lie about, to sources, to its partner the NYT, and to potential and actual donors and funders?

If the BC is this comfortable putting a post full of lies up in public, what kind of deception do they pull privately?

If I were a donor to or funder of the BC, or if I were the NYT, I'd think long and hard about this.

And if I were whomever hired this new managing editor, who appears either ignorant or a liar, I'd think even harder.

PS: GoDaddy? Seriously? So much for all that "the Bay Citizen is on the internet's cutting edge" marketing. (shakes head)

Alex Hennesey writes:

"And if I were whomever hired this new managing editor, who appears either ignorant or a liar, I'd think even harder."

The head of technology at The Bay Citizen says our domain name registration was set up for automatic renewal, and that an apparent glitch in the GoDaddy system was responsible for the expiration. We were unable to reach anyone at GoDaddy to confirm or deny his explanation, but felt we needed to post a message to readers as quickly as possible acknowledging the system problems. Hence the phrase "for reasons we’re still trying to sort out." It was not an attempt to mislead.

"... a post full of lies and BS ..."

Ouch!

I too rolled my eyes upon learning that our domain was registered through GoDaddy, but surely Mr. Hennesey understands that the choice of domain name registrar is far less important than the choice of the hosting service, which in our case definitely is not GoDaddy. GoDaddy simply provides the name server, which allows people to type "baycitizen.org," for example, instead of the numeric IP addresses that correspond to our server hardware and software, which are hosted on an entirely different system. I've used at least a dozen different registrars, dating back to the mid-1990s when I first registered nytimes.com. It's a trivial element, except in the possible cases where the registrar might upscrew automatic domain renewals.

If it turns out that our momentary disconnection from the DNS system yesterday was, instead, the result of someone at The Bay Citizen forgetting to pay the bill, we'll say so. Right now we don't know. We're still trying to sort it out.

"If I were a donor to or funder of the BC ..."

I sure hope you will be, Mr. Hennesey. Your tax-exempt contributions will help The Bay Citizen pay its web-hosting fees....

It happens to everyone at one point or another. Nothing to be ashamed of, really.