Despite my frequent jabs at Wired, they were (and I mean “were”) considering doing an article on TechCrunch and the upcoming TechCrunch20 conference. Fred Vogelstein (a very well respected journalist - this is the guy Microsoft was keeping a file on) was pinging people to get their perspective. Dave Winer and Jason Calacanis refused to talk to him by phone (email only), and blew the issue up on their blogs. This is now the top story on TechMeme. Let’s just say that the smart money is saying the Wired article is now history. Not because they wouldn’t talk to Fred, but because the whole story about TechCrunch is little more than a backstory now on this much more interesting fight against mainstream media.
Jason and Dave are both friends and business colleagues (Jason is my partner on TechCrunch20, Dave is on the advisory panel for the conference and in the past I have represented him as an attorney).
I’m not sure why this riled Jason up enough to post on it. Generally when a reporter contacts me about a story I consider that sacred ground and don’t mess around. I certainly don’t write a blog post about the conversation until, at least, after the reporter has written her or his piece. If he doesn’t want to talk to him other than via email, cool. But why post on it and blow the (my) story?
And I think Dave read the Wired blog post on the matter incorrectly (or didn’t read it at all). It was clearly just poking fun at the whole situation - “we may not be as conversant with this newfangled “e-mail” and other cutting edge technologies as you, Mr. Calacanis, but that does not mean we are slow or dim-witted. In time, we even hope to make our RSS feeds available to the wider world by telegraph machine.” Dan Gillmor is similarly clueless.
Thanks guys, I’ll get you back next time around (and that is a joke, Dave).
I actually thought the Wired blog post was pretty funny
Mike, you said ‘Jason Calacanis refused to talk to him by email’. Wasn’t it the other way around? Jason said he wanted to do the interview via email, and Wired refused.
Jason’s got a long standing history of posting interview questions sent to him on his blog afterwards.
yeah, i need to fix that.
Mike, you also have to give the reporter some of your grief, what business did he have telling Jason that I had turned his request for a phone interview down? And who made the mistake, the reporter or Jason — cause I didn’t offer to do an email interview. Some people seem to be missing that.
Also, fear of retribution is another reason I turned down the interview. Let’s work on the friendship thing a bit — because I could imagine you getting 100 times more pissed if the reporter misquoted me or quoted me out of context in an interview in Wired about you. That you took issue with this is confirmation that my intuition was correct, better to just bow out of this one, too dangerous.
Aside from that, I don’t care if Wired covers your conference. I understand that you do, but since I’m not making any money on it (by design, a good thing) I don’t share your concerns.
Yes, Dave, I agree with everything you said. And I still think the fact that you and Jason posted on this was wrong. If reporters can’t have a confidential conversation with you, then they’ll stop calling you. And that’s something you’ve complained bitterly about over the years.
I think it’s sad that the only thing that would interest you in having your friend covered by Wired is if you make money from it.
[...] As evidenced by the comments on several blogs today (calacanis.com, CrunchNotes, Wired) , there are pros and cons to conducting an interview via email. Personally, I prefer having some time to think before responding to a question (not that I am asked to do interviews that often). Here is my comment, as posted to the calacanis.com conversation. An email interview is the only way to go, unless of course it’s a video or audio segment that requires voice. For written pieces, the continuity and flow of the conversation will be provided by the writer. Besides, they are going to just take portions of the responses anyway.A commenter here suggested that email interviews are easy to spot. That might be true if the reporter just prints the electronic communication in its entirety without adding connecting fodder to the various points; or if she doesn’t use transitional language well in the piece. [...]
[...] Lastly, Mike Arrington brings up a good point. [...]
I thought the Wired response post was pretty good, funny.
Saw Janson’s post and like you couldn’t quite understand the why but then again, Jason’s always been something of an arrogant loose canon.
Mike, why are you posting this?
Who cares?
The “Wired won’t do email interview” just scrapes through as a relevant story (although I can see both sides to the argument). The fact it’s made TechMeme is representative there are no other echos going on today I guess…
This post isn’t up to your usual and unfortunately adds nothing.
You’re twisting my words in some very weird way that I don’t want to even try to understand.
I suspect Mike already knows this, and I hate to break it to Jason, but… you guys are journalists.
I read Jason’s post as an “us vs. them” sort of thing… but you’re all more or less on the same team. Blogs, especially A-List blogs, are now part of the journalistic establishment.
(Come to think of it, maybe this comment belongs on Jason’s blog… hmm.)
[...] To begin with, I agree with Mike - I still fail to see the reason why Calcanis had to blog about this incident. Ok, probably his mastery at linkbaiting is to blame. But then, whats wrong with these A-listers ? Are they unaware of how big a linkbaiter Calacanis is ? From a stupid rant, the incident unfolds into a major topic of discussion - email over phone. [...]
I don’t know any of you personally (Mike, Jason, Dave) - only by reputation (all good); but I’m astounded at the degree of childish behavior exhibited by the Wired reporter and, particularly, you, Mike. Do you really need the coverage so badly that you’d sacrifice your the legitimate concerns of your friends on the altar of your own publicity? So what if they blogged about it? How old are you people? The Wired reporter’s feelings are hurt so he drops the story? That’s almost as ridiculous as you taking your friends to task for standing by their policies. I really thought you were more of a pro than this behavior suggests.
Mike: I spoke with Fred and so did Scoble tonight. It looks like they are doing the story. Fred seemed very cool and wasn’t miffed at all by the blow up on the whole email thing…
Why would Wired’s Fred Vogelstein’s feelings be hurt? I bet you the only thing hurting are his sides from laughing at the silliness.
Ah — I guess we are living in the attention economy.
Perhaps it actually isn’t zero-sum, though, and Jason will have gotten some (cleverly) manufactured attention, You’ll get an article written by Fred who will get cred for keepin’ on keepin’ on and writing an article even when the interviewees all are turning the camera around. (No clue what Dave gets, but I found all of this through his blog, so he’s kept *my* attention).
I love it. You add enough Meta, and you can actually *create* attention. Sweet.
[...] This morning tech news is still rumbling with yesterdays top story on Techmeme concerning Jason Calacanis’s response to Wired business journo’s request for an interview. By the end of the day it was a virtual who’s who of the tech A-listers weighing in on the matter. From Dave Winer to Michael Arrington, even Robert Scoble added his voice. [...]
Mike and Dave, you are certainly not acting like friends here (at least it feels that way to me). Dave’s comments about not caring if the article gets written and Mike’s response (among other parts of the exchange) seem like the kinds of things that friends would communicate to each other privately and directly. It seems awfully MySpace-ish to be jabbing at each other on your public forum. Of course, this also stinks of a stunt designed to get traffic and attention, which would be pretty pathetic if true.
This is’nt about TechCrunch1929, it’s all about MIX07.
[...] There’s no better demonstration of this than the recriprocal snipes we’ve been seeing from and around Wired magazine from its attempt to interview people about Michael Arrington. (If you know the tale, skip to the next paragraph.) See Jason Calacanis’ quite reasonable effort to respond to Wired writer Fred Vogelstein’s questions via email and Dave Winer’s equally reasonable offer to respond in public on his blog. Now see the blunderbuss response from Wired in a blog post by Vogelstein recounting the email exchange and his dogmatic rules — “I never do email questions right out of the gate…” — and also in a blog post from his colleague Dylan Tweney, calling Calacanis “cowardly” (it appears to be an awkward attempt to be cute) and in an even clumsier attack from Ryan Singel: “What happens when a top tech figure has an online soap box, a Silicon Valley-size ego, millions in the bank and a grudge against the mainstream media?” Arrington piped in, fearing the fuss would cost him his publicity. And unable to resist any post about Arrington, Valleywag joined the journalism seminar. Vogelstein — who came to Kofi Annan agreement to record an interview with Calacanis — emailed me, too, but I told him I was about to blog about this snit and he probably wouldn’t want me. Finally, Wired Editor Chris Anderson joined in, saying in a comment on Calacanis’ blog, “I don’t impose any one policy.” [...]
[...] The “I won’t do a phone interview” meme made the rounds again this week, via a Wired reporter’s mission to get quotes from Dave Winer and Jason Calacanis on TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington. [...]
[...] There’s no better demonstration of this than the recriprocal snipes we’ve been seeing from and around Wired magazine from its attempt to interview people about Michael Arrington. (If you know the tale, skip to the next paragraph.) See Jason Calacanis’ quite reasonable effort to respond to Wired writer Fred Vogelstein’s questions via email and Dave Winer’s equally reasonable offer to respond in public on his blog. Now see the blunderbuss response from Wired in a blog post by Vogelstein recounting the email exchange and his dogmatic rules — “I never do email questions right out of the gate…” — and also in a blog post from his colleague Dylan Tweney, calling Calacanis “cowardly” (it appears to be an awkward attempt to be cute) and in an even clumsier attack from Ryan Singel: “What happens when a top tech figure has an online soap box, a Silicon Valley-size ego, millions in the bank and a grudge against the mainstream media?” Arrington piped in, fearing the fuss would cost him his publicity. And unable to resist any post about Arrington, Valleywag joined the journalism seminar. Vogelstein — who came to Kofi Annan agreement to record an interview with Calacanis — emailed me, too, but I told him I was about to blog about this snit and he probably wouldn’t want me. Finally, Wired Editor Chris Anderson joined in, saying in a comment on Calacanis’ blog, “I don’t impose any one policy.” [...]
[...] Also See: Jason Calacanis (+), Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, Techmeme, Jeff Jarvis, Wired, Dan Gillmor, Valleywag. Share This Related Posts: Mapping the Blogosphere, Desi Blog of the Day: Saffron Trail by Nandita, Desi Blog of the Day: Deep Thought by TGFI [...]
[...] Ich höre seit einiger Zeit den Podcast bzw. Video-Podcast von Jason Calacanis. Man muss ihn ja nicht unbedingt mögen, habe da auch ein paar Vorbehalte. Trotzdem stets interessanter und kontroverser Content (man denke nur an die Mike Arrington/Wired-Story, die Jason via Interview-Podcast geglättet hat). Jason Calacanis betreibt schon seit einiger Zeit sog. “Fatblogging“. Interessiert mich eigentlich nicht wirklich. Trotzdem scheint das so eine Art Trend zu sein. Wie ich neulich gesehen habe, haben einige “Schwergewichte” der deutschen Blogger-Szene einen Fatblogging-Weblog aufgebaut namens “321 Blog“. Hey….und dabei ist auch unser Flensburger Jung Mike Schnoor, der schon fleißing Fatblogging betreibt und neuerdings mit neuem Mountain-Bike unterwegs ist. Witzigerweise ist zwar Fatblogging bei mir gerade kein Thema, aber zumindest Abnehmen. Nachdem ich im Urlaub täglich gejoggt bin und u.a. mit meiner besseren Hälfte die 10km-Strecke unter 46 Minuten gelaufen bin, ist eine gewisse Grundkondition vorhanden. Am Samstag dann wieder gut 5km in gut 24 Minuten gelaufen. Wollen wir mal hoffen, dass die Motivation anhält und ein paar Kilo verbrannt werden. [...]
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