Yesterday was an interesting day to say the least with the storm of activity around the Wired Article. Folks saw first hand a briefing document that was leaked accidentally by a Microsoft employee and had a view inside the relationship between public relations and a magazine reporter.
I wanted to highlight some of my favorite commentary from the blogs around the story to give some further insight and perspective.
Charles Fitzgerald – What transpired with Wired
Frank Shaw – Radical Transparency Briefing
Jon Udell – In by the barrell
Joseph Thornley – Snafu of the week
Tim Heuer – Has fun writing captions for my photos in Wired
I received a bunch of nasty comments and emails about my previous blog post where folks make the assumption that it was written for me or that it was “approved” to ensure it had the right messaging.
It wasn’t, I wrote it all by myself – bad grammar and all.
I’ve known for awhile that Wired would be posting the briefing document and I had also seen a copy of the article after it went to publication. All of that gave me time to think about what would I write here when the story broke. It is worth clarifying that we never assumed we’d get a “draft” of the article where we could influence the story and Fred only promised us a look at the story once it went to publication. With that information in hand I did put a lot of thought about my post prior to writing it. I believe that is what we call, “blogging smart”, but it did affect the tone of my post.
I think folks should read the briefing document (its not a dossier) in its entirety as opposed to dramatic sound bites pulled out by a few folks. When you consider the story went on for almost 6 months I think its pretty reasonable for us to take notes along the way. Thankfully I have folks from Waggener Edstrom with me along the way. They are great team to work with as they help with logistics, take notes for follow up and really help move things along. (Oh no did a blogger just say a nice thing about a PR team – I’ll gladly take that bullet any day. :-))
A good snippet over on Chris Anderson’s blog highlights some of the things the PR team can do:
So it’s interesting that you and Fred feign naivete. Certainly you must know that a PR firm exists to get stories for a company; their job, if they’re doing it well, is to find a story about their client that they think would interest you and your readers, and then give you access to people who can (one hopes) speak believably and honestly about the idea. And to have those people reasonably well prepared about what they’re likely to be asked, so that they’ll have an answer for you (and, when done well, an answer that goes beyond talking points). This isn’t any big secret.
Without PR firms, think how much time you’d spend trying to find the right people in a huge, decentralized organization like Microsoft who would be a) knowledgeable about the topic of your story and b) reasonably well-spoken on it. The PR firm is doing a service — both for you and for their client — and you know it.
(and no, I don’t work for a PR firm so I’m not spinning for them)
I couldn’t even imagine scheduling all the logistics around this interview on my own. Between on campus visits, phone calls, CES @ Las Vegas and more.
Anyhow, it was fun following the conversations, but there is more work to do here. Time to move my blog back to talking about my life, family and the interesting things happening at work.
Thank you.
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