Real Dan Lyons gets it right on the Real Steve Jobs health question
Amidst all the back and forth about Steve Jobs’s health, and whether it matters, Dan Lyons - aka Fake Steve Jobs - has hit the nail totally on the head by pointing out (on his real blog) that calls like Jobs made to Joe Nocera of the New York Times aren’t accident. They’re totally planned. And for Jobs to demand that the conversation’s content should be off the record is more control:
How many times do you think Jobs rehearsed that opening line before he dialed (or had Katie Cotton [queen of Apple PR] dial for him)? I’d say he practiced it one hundred times. And I’d say Katie was definitely on the line with him, though she probably pretended not to be. Furthermore, I’d bet a signed dollar bill that Apple recorded the phone call, just in case Nocera decided to run the stuff that Steve gave him under their “off the record” agreement.
And more:
If down the road it turns out Steve was [purely hypothetically, you understand] lying and someone from the SEC or some lawyer in a civil suit wants to find out what was said in that conversation, they’ll have to subpoena Joe Nocera, and the New York Times will fight that request. Even if Joe Nocera wants to tell the world what Steve Jobs told him, he can’t. He made a deal. He went off the record. Even if Steve turns out to be lying, Joe Nocera is stuck.
Thus Steve Jobs gets to protect his stock price and give Wall Street the message that he wants them to hear, and should any of this turn out not to be true, well, Steve and Apple now have Joe Nocera and the legal department of the New York Times to act as their ally and firewall.
It’s really well-argued and to the point. He also asks: what would happen if Steve Ballmer were to do the same? He’d get roasted in the press. So why does Jobs get an easy ride? Because there are tons of unthinking Apple fans who will descend on any site that they think doesn’t accord their beloved company the vast amount of praise they think it deserves. And that can be a pain to deal with.
And John Gruber is, for once, totally wrong, because he’s not a professional journalist. Lyons is, and he knows the ins and outs. Gruber says:
Lyons is implying that if Jobs is actually fine, then there’s nothing he shouldn’t be willing to talk about on the record regarding his health. But that’s only true if the full story isn’t the least bit embarrassing or private. In Jobs’s case, it seems clear that whatever it is that’s been bothering him this year, it is related to his digestive and intestinal system. Even if he’s recovering fully from this problem, set to live a full life for decades to come, is it any wonder he might not want to speak on the record about digestive problems like, say, extreme diarrhea? diarrhea? Fuck that.
But that misses the point about why Jobs made the call at all, if he didn’t want to explain it. If you want to tell people, tell them. Don’t do it in this off-the-record sneaking about way.
Plus, you’re wondering how Jobs knew to call Nocera? Because Nocera had obviously been calling Apple asking for its response. Word filtered up. That was totally planned.
Couple of other interesting things: Lyons says that Apple was always completely closed off to him:
For what it’s worth, [John] Markoff [at the New York Times] may be one of the only hacks left that Apple PR can count on. A couple of the guys at Fortune used to be considered friendly until their colleague Peter Elkind produced a botched hatchet job on Steve Jobs earlier this year. It’s likely that Apple has now gone dark on everyone at Fortune as a result. Goatberg is friendly to Apple but he’s a gadget guy and doesn’t do news, and anyway the Journal went after Jobs on options backdating so they’re likely on the Katie Cotton shit list too. Forbes? Um, right. Even before I created Fake Steve, Apple wouldn’t let anyone at Forbes do any interviews with anyone at Apple. We had a whole bureau in the Valley, 30 miles from Cupertino, and for ten years we didn’t set foot inside Apple. They’d send us review units and that’s it.
Two things from that: how is Lyons going to fare reporting on technology - including Apple - at Newsweek, where he’s replacing Steven Levy, who used to get stuff ahead of time? Will Apple be able to hold its nose and give him the early interviews and time to play with the gadgets, or will he be stuck in the outer darkness like, I don’t know, the most-viewed online paper in the UK?
And secondly, I can imagine it could be pretty dispiriting being a journalist in San Francisco trying to get an interview with Apple. Imagine it just going on and on like that. It’s a company with serious PR issues - and the weird things is it thinks it’s doing just great.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Ooh, feel the anger: Fake Steve disses Lotus Notes (25 January 2008; score: 74.13%)
- My review of "iCon" - the latest biography of Steve Jobs (20 May 2005; score: 67.78%)
- Steve Jobs piece in The Independent magazine (29 October 2005; score: 55.34%)
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July 29th, 2008 at 10:06 am
But then, if you look at their sales numbers or their stock price, doesn’t it look like they’re doing just great too?
July 29th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Isn’t that when firms often become unstuck, though? When they’re flying high and believe that they can’t do any wrong and that the good times will keep rolling forever? I dimly recall Microsoft, Sony, record companies, Yellow Pages, Dell and Oasis doing just great in the 1990s… Is there any tech company that hasn’t eventually ballsed things up completely or at the very least made mistakes, lost momentum and suffered from a big drop in share prices? Genuine question, I’m not being sarky.
Part of me finds Apple’s attitude to PR hilarious, albeit a bit playground, but part of me thinks it’s hubristic. It’s like some prima donna actor who demands that extras don’t look them in the eye on set, refuses to do publicity for the movie and demands ever more bizarre things. As long as the movies sell and the movies are fun, the behaviour is tolerated - but as soon as there’s even a hint that the actor’s golden days are over, the entire planet starts going “what a dick!” and the actor soon finds that he can’t open an envelope, let alone a movie.
Provided Apple keeps making superb products (and that Jobs remains at the helm) it doesn’t need the press, because no proper journalist is going to damn a good product out of sheer spite. But if Apple starts making mis-steps (and I think it’s made a few recently; the iPhone 3G firmware feels rushed, sluggish, buggy; mobileme wasn’t a great launch; as Apple expands from a niche product maker into a mainstream manufacturer not just in PCs, but in phones and consumer electronics too, it’s going to be more difficult to keep all its various balls in the air) then a lot of accumulated bad feeling could come down on it.
To make an extreme comparison, look at Ryanair. Ryanair was utterly critic-proof for years despite its utter contempt for its customers, press, regulators, advertising standards and so on. And then all of a sudden customers aren’t flying, and it’s posting a loss (for the first time ever?). I chuckled when I saw that this morning - not because I find companies losing money funny, but because I like the thought of Michael O’Leary crying hot, salty tears.
Then again, maybe I’m just a bad person.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:34 am
PR Rule #1: People who are telling the truth about themselves do not insist on being ‘off the record’
I call bullshit
On the record - I’m a positive, confident and utterly reliable individual with several years’ experience…
Off the record – I’m a bit shy and forgetful but I get the job done to a fairly high standard…
People who are telling the whole truth about themselves are usually only talking to their nearest, most trusted confidant. If you’re telling someone you don’t really know something personal you need the conversation to be ‘off the record’. A bit like when you speak to a doctor.
This could be a PR wheeze but equally it could be the act of a pissed of billionaire who picked up the phone to have a rant.
Also, IMHO - Apple doesn’t *put* you on the PR blacklist, you’re already on it by default.
July 29th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
At the risk of more Real Dan, this is good - particularly with Ian Betteridge’s comment:
http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2008/07/29/why-pr-matters/
July 29th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Apple has been through this cycle before - it was this kind of hubris, helped along by the first personal computer boom, that led to Jobs getting Pepsi man Sculley in to run the company while Jobs got on with the fun stuff. Not long after, Jobs was out, and the company was in terrible shape by the mid-1990s. On his return, Jobs reversed most of Sculley’s decisions (actually, I think it was all of them) and Apple got back into shape. It’s easy to see why Apple shareholders are spooked by the idea that Jobs may have to take a back seat, if not step down from leading the company. It’s an open question as to whether Apple has made the situation worse for itself today by not being open. However, it will certainly cause the company trouble when the wheels start to come off (as they must do one day). Shell didn’t do itself any favours by using similar techniques when it ultimately ran into problems.
@Chris Brennan
Lyons may have overstated the case here, but people are frequently reckless when off-the-record because, as long as it all stays off-the-record (or at least non-attrib) nothing is going to rebound on them. Oscar Wilde’s line “give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth” is only occasionally accurate. People often just lie in a different way.
I can see why Nocera agreed but I also think that Lyons is right in this instance as it was more important for Jobs to see the details of his health put in the best light possible for Jobs. Insisting on only talking on-the-record might have achieved more than the off-the-record in this case. (But, then again, I don’t know the other circumstances around the call).