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May 04, 2007
Things we hate about Apple ... and publishers
You can strike PC World from your list of authoritative sources, after the new publisher, Colin Crawford, decided that the magazine had completely forgotten its primary goal: being nice to advertisers.
Crawford, whose blog tends to indicate why accountants should never be allowed to meddle in journalism, tried to kill a story titled "Ten Things We Hate About Apple". After all, that sort of story would never have been run at Macworld, where Crawford had previously been CEO, and Steve Jobs used to get him on the phone whenever he had a problem with a story. Unfortunately, real journalists regard that sort of interference as a serious breach of their ethics, and it left former PC World Editor-in-Chief, Harry McCracken, no alternative but to resign.
This piece of censorship raises possibly the Eleventh Thing We Hate About Apple: a bizarre form of corporate narcissism that reflects the personality of Steve Jobs. At The Guardian, Jack Schofield - who makes the point that "it's impossible to imagine a similar dispute about an article called, say, 'Ten Things We Hate About Microsoft'"- reflects on the curious fact that "Apple's media coverage often seems to lean towards the sycophantic side, whether it's because of doing exclusive deals with Apple, its advertising clout ("Are you running any anti-Apple stories?"), or simply because so many publications (including The Guardian) are run on Macs".
This uncritical, even perhaps adoring so-called journalism appears even in mainstream publications, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Schofield takes a recent example: "There was a spat at Time, reported in New York magazine, about an exclusive story on the new iPhone, "in which writer Lev Grossman tweaked Apple CEO Steve Jobs about his secretive access to the product ... and suggested that Apple had 'some explaining' to do about backdated stock options". According to New York "When the story hit the Web, Jobs called [managing editor Richard] Stengel to complain (as it happens, Apple is a major advertiser in Time, and Jobs is a good friend of Huey's). Stengel reacted by immediately excising the offending paragraphs from the Web (they have since been restored). Then he had Grossman come into the office to rewrite part of the piece for the print edition. Grossman was infuriated. "
“I feel bad about the whole episode on both sides,” Stengel now says, explaining that the flap resulted from a miscommunication. “I’ll take the blame in the sense that there was an understanding that I had with Steve, which I did not tell the writer and that was an oversight on my part.” The backdated-stock-options part of the story wasn’t eliminated, he argues, just moved into a sidebar that ran in the magazine. Still, Stengel concedes that it was a weak moment for the magazine’s journalism. “Maybe a little bit,” he says.
If you've got the time, and you're interested in the way cosy relationships are affecting journalistic institutions like Time, the New York Magazine story is worth the read.
Posted by cw at May 4, 2007 12:31 PM
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Comments
Apple has been playing these games all along. The issue of backdating of options (formerly known as option repricing) is an art perfected by the company (As Some Stock Prices Sag, CEO wins, Public Loses. USA Today. p.12A. 4/29/1997.)
Posted by: Dividend Inc. Team at May 6, 2007 04:58 AM