Wired reporter gets PR briefing doc
We returned from a short sabbatical to hear about Fred Vogelstein’s little moment of awkwardness over at Wired.
The contributing editor got an unexpected e-mail from Microsoft last week while he was buttoning-up an article on the company’s Channel 9/10 developer communities. It contained a 5,500 word “dossier” that revealed the PR strategy behind the Wired story.
It’s kind of like the PR equivalent of Microsoft accidentally dropping its pants.
Waggener Edstrom was the agency that created the document and was facilitating the exchanges. Since then, both sides have adjusted the way the story made it to light.
The reporter posted some background on a Wired blog and then the CEO over at Waggener posted his attempt at accelerating the period of disillusionment.
From the Wired blog:
Should I be flattered that they worked so hard, or should I be embarrassed at being co-opted by their spin machine? I’d like to think I would have written the same story no matter what. But now, through the miracle of transparency, you, the reader, get to decide that too.
The question we raise is: how much different is this versus a reporter interviewing multiple sources, observing nuances, and sometimes working with other reporters to feed story information?
The President of Waggener, Frank Shaw, posted (and it should be noted that the post includes the acronym “POV”) to the company’s blog Glass House and contains a nice breakdown of the steps that occur surrounding an interview and the development of a story. The problem is that it reeks of insecurity and forced nonchalance.
Interesting stuff with a lesson to be learned here: be careful with those internal briefing memos – they might just accidentally end up in a reporter’s hands.
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