The firestorm ensued last weekend as the Lonely Planet editors began frantically checking the other Lonely Planet books to which Kohnstamm had contributed.

It's not new for writers to violate this agreement without telling readers (cf. Stephen Glass, James Frey, Clifford Irving, to name just three). But the new and more insidious twist that Kohnstamm brings to the groaning table of hoaxes is that he was, in fact, publishing a travel guide, a book written for the specific purpose of giving readers actionable intelligence and advice about its subject. And if its subject is an especially politically fraught or dangerous country--such as Colombia--well, then it's all the more important that the facts bear the closest possible relation to ground truth.

This is not about plagiarism or fabrication. This is about information. 

Compared to Kohnstamm's betrayal of his readers, those of Glass and Frey were cushy, weepy, armchair-academic backstabbings. Kohnstamm's transgression is of an entirely different caliber, meaning that if the guidebook contained the right sort of inaccuracy--a very high probability, given the fact that he did not do his reporting--the trusting reader could wind up with a very real AK-47 pointed at his head. Or worse.

There is a further problem, which Kohnstamm also does not acknowledge: that of the locus of his crime. Lonely Planet guides are a big force among the hip, knowledgeable, risk-friendly travel community.

With their competitor, the Rough Guides, the Lonely Planet editors have built their reputation on taking travelers into countries that require more than a little care and grit to visit. Their practical security and medical information was resolutely careful. One had the sense that the Lonely Planet writers and editors wanted you to have the adventure, but that they also wanted you to be as smart as you could be about safety. In many tenuous places--from the Caucasus to Burma--it helped to have them at your side. 

The very fact of a Lonely Planet guide to Colombia would mean that the readers who bought the book between its publication and last week's revelations would be trusting the validity of its security information--and thus testing it with their presence in the country.

Which is why Lonely Planet's response to the fact-checking debacle is gratifying. They're taking their position in the marketplace seriously. One of the guidebooks to which Kohnstamm contributed, Brazil (6th edition), is out of print and has been fully re-reported, according to the Lonely Planet Web site. They are at this writing sending on-the-ground author teams to re-report the -- alleged -- reporting Kohnstamm did for them in Chile & Easter Island (7th edition), Caribbean Islands (4th edition), and South American on a Shoestring (10th edition).

Basically, the security question in Colombia boils down to this: Was Kohnstamm's then-girlfriend, the "intern" in the San Francisco consulate, a trustworthy source on the occasionally deadly lines of demarcation between the various drug families, rebels, narco-terrorists and the government-controlled areas of Colombia? 

Colombia's patchwork is notoriously difficult to parse. Outside Cartagena, let's say, did she know where the rule of law stops? If she's the main source, who was she?   

Second question: If we Lonely Planet readers are lucky enough for Kohnstamm's girlfriend to have been a good security source, was Kohnstamm astute enough to have accurately transcribed the pillow talk? Kohnstamm's also an admitted drug dealer--his excuse for that was that Lonely Planet wasn't paying him enough--but that's not such a great problem with his reporting. The problem with his reporting is that he is too self-absorbed to do any reporting.