Mr Wonderful does not think our data center reporting is very wonderful at all

Kevin O'Leary is very upset with the Verge over our coverage of his data center in Utah. Let's talk about how a big story comes together and the process by which we make sure we're all buttoned up when billionaires get mad at us. So, our reporter Josh spent 5 months investigating Kevin O'Leary's data center project in Utah, which is called Stratus, but which Kevin of course calls Wonder Valley. This project came together really fast. There was a lot of state level approvals, there was a military agency involved that pushed this through and people on the ground, the locals, didn't know this was happening. They got really upset, they pushed back. O'Leary accused them of being Chinese agents and this all fell apart into defamation lawsuits and threats and eventually O'Leary had to apologize. The project is much smaller now, although the fight is far from over. Now, the thing most people don't see about stories of this scale is that right before we publish them, we usually send what's called a no surprises email, where we list all of the factual claims in the story, all of the things that are being said about one of the principals like Kevin O'Leary, and invite them to respond. We want the story to be fair, we want their point of view to be shared. The funny thing here is that at the beginning of the reporting process, the CEO of O'Leary Enterprises told Josh that he would be, quote, in open kimono. But, 5 months later, the end of our reporting process, we sent that no surprises email and during that time things had so changed for the project that instead of wanting to talk about it, O'Leary and his CEO responded by having a lawyer reply to us and say that while they hoped the story would be fair, if there were any inaccuracies, they would be forced to hold us accountable. We just put that in the story, we think that is a relevant response from O'Leary and his team. Our stories of this scale go through a fact check and legal review, we're very confident in what we reported. It is dead ahead, again, I encourage you to read it, but that is the backstory of how we make sure our stories are fair, we invite all the principals to comment, and how we respond to legal threats here at the Verge.