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.
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.)
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.
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.