Bob Conrad's Reno Bystander Effect Story Is, Sadly, Painfully Right

Bob Conrad over at The Good, The Bad and The Spin just ran a series of posts on The Bystander Effect with the provocative subtitle "Why Reno's Free Speech Champions Don't Have Your Back."  And, like a good storyteller, he spread the article out over four days. That would be very important, at least in my case, in how it played out and my daily reaction.

His first post hit Friday and was an explanation of the unfortunate phenomenon of The Bystander Effect, where crowds essentially do nothing when action is needed.  With that tidbit, and the post title itself, it left the reader to wonder what would come next.  Would it be Reno war protesters, politicians, or something of that ilk?

Saturday arrived and the reveal was the story would be about the Terri Patraw vs. Ryan Jerz battle, where the former UNR soccer coach threatened legal action against the MrJerz.org blogger if he didn't remove some posts about her that she didn't particularly care for.  In the end, Jerz lost his site host, when Joyent said they didn't want to fight for him, and ultimately removed the posts to avoid a pile of legal fees.  Reading that round-up again prompted a "Damn straight, he got shafted!" response.  Apparently I had forgotten the prior day's set-up.

Sunday arrived and part three raced out the gate with "The public response to Ryan Jerz’s situation, despite it being well known and well documented in the Reno area, was little to none."  Again, I nodded in agreement and thought "That was a travesty."  A sentence later, Conrad wrote "But nobody – journalist, blogger or any number of free-speech activists – publicly came to Jerz’s aid."  I started a knowing nod again, but then suddenly realized "Hey, I'm a blogger."  Had I done nothing?  Impossible.

So I quickly went to my site and ran a search for "Patraw," certain it would pull up at least three or four posts.  Nada.  Not a single story.  Thinking perhaps I just went with "Jerz" I did another search.  Quite a few stories but, except for this lame mention near the end of this recent Cash4Gold post, nothing in 2008 regarding his problems with Patraw.  Then I started searching post by post through the spring and summer of last year, hoping beyond hope I had had the guts to actually say something.

Finally, I found it in an April 29th post.

I hadn't.

Oh, I used "Cyber Bullies" in the title, but it was one of those "bullet" posts where you just combine a couple various topics into one lazy article.  In this case it shared space with a "stupid California laws" link and a couple observations on the neverending 2008 presidential election.

This was the extent of my defense for Jerz.  A lead sentence and one bullet:

Cyber bullying isn't just posting gossip on Juicy Campus, it can also involve blowhard lawyers threatening the little guy.

• How to close down a blogger -- The local version of the flipside to cyber bullying. We would mention names, but not sure how strong Google fights lame DMCA threats.

I didn't even have the stones to name names.  Not even Ryan's.

Needless to say, suddenly I wasn't so eagerly awaiting the final posting in the series.  In it, Conrad talks to Jerz and reading it now is uncomfortable.  I mean, up until Sunday night I would have swore on a stack of bibles a mile high I was out there publicly making a stink about what was happening.  But I wasn't.

I think your mind sometimes plays tricks with you as far as history goes.  I clearly remember emailing Jerz in support and even launched an ill-fated plan where I would eventually convince Patraw that attacking a blog wasn't the way to go (it didn't work, as the only real result was a snippet of a line I had written her ended up on one of her sites as coming from a "supporter").  But publicly, I was pretty much a bystander.