No Easy Answers From Inspired City, Site With Contributor List That Wasn't

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As I reported yesterday, Alex Hisaka, who, in her Linked in profile, describes herself as Founder / Chief Creative of a site called Inspired City, contacted several local luminaries, asking them to contribute to "an online magazine featuring unique and prominent artists, innovators, thinkers, and creators from all around San Francisco."

As part of that pitch, in several cases she attached a list called "LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS" that, as it turns out, was not actually a list of people who had agreed to contribute to the site. Amazingly enough, the list made its way around the "world wide web" and several folks on the list said "hey, wait, I'm not involved with this!"

When some of those people called Inspired City out on this, they were sent another list of contributors, a list she described to one as "the people so far that have said 'yes'" to participation with the site. But we discovered that the new list contains at least seven names of folks who had never agreed to be part of the site, and in some cases, had never even heard of the thing. (This is just a summary of our story to this point, you can read the whole damn thing here.)

Based on the emails I was shown yesterday from Inspired City to writers they were attempting to woo, accounts from people they approached at SF Weekly's Web Awards party, from Inspired City's impressive description on Linked in, and from the Inspired City twitter feed, all external signs suggested that they were, at least, presenting themselves as an organized start up business.

"Oh, they've definitely been presenting it as a business," agreed one person approached by Inspired City. "Another way to add legitimacy and get people to take them seriously, I guess."

Why would any start up do such an odd thing? Was it naivete, disorganization, confusion about the definition of "contributor" and "yes," or something less ethical?

After all, as I noted yesterday, when one cannot offer either pay or the name recognition/visibility of an SF Gate or SFist, the opportunity to "rub digital shoulders" with folks one admires can be quite compelling. Was this list of contributors (who actually aren't) an effort to convince others to join for some of that shoulder rubbing?

If the bogus list was, indeed, a strategic move, it seems to have worked in at least one case -- SF Indie Fest's Jeff Ross, says in a comment on the Appeal that "I was approached to contribute and agreed to when I saw who they had involved. No big drama on my end except that now I see that those folks were just their wish list." adding that "I suppose its nice to be on someone's wish list."

As I was writing yesterday's article, I of course emailed Hisaka with questions, but didn't hear from her before publication time. I did hear back, eventually -- but her responses left us confused. She told me things that contradicted her own statements, statements from others, and emails and documents I was sent by trusted sources.

As my email interaction with Hisaka went on, I started to feel like I wasn't actually dealing with a business, just bullying a person who might have gotten in a bit over her head. And that's not cool, I think we'd all agree.

When confronted with the contradictions she was offering in her emails, Hisaka responded not by email but with a comment posted on the Appeal which was apparently also emailed to potential contributors.

In the comment, Hisaka says that Inspired City is "not a start-up company nor are we an established business." In addition, Hisaka, by day a copywriter at PR agency Edelman Digital, says that the list of contributors was a "miscommunication."

In the interest of fairly representing the perspective of Inspired City, here's our correspondence, in its entirety, and Hisaka's final comment is here.