How Apple makes journalists part of their PR machine

Dan Lyons' analysis of the Times recent story about Steve Jobs' health — the one with the "This is Steve Jobs. You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong." quote given to Joe Nocera — is a spot-on analysis of the potential pitfalls of Apple's iron-clad approach to public relations:

One of the many ironies and contradictions about Apple is that while the company presents this hip, open, cool image to the world, its PR machine is the most secretive, locked-down, hard-assed and disciplined of any company in tech, including IBM. To get a sense of how weird IBM is, consider that one time, while I was waiting for an elevator with a flack at IBM headquarters in Armonk, I asked, just to pass the time, if the guy ever did any jogging. The guy gave me this panicked look and said, “Why do you want to know?”

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The unfortunate thing about this arrogance is that no matter how hot a company may be, eventually every company stumbles. Someday Apple will need friends among the hackery. I’m not sure it will have any.

PR Rule #1: People who are telling the truth about themselves do not insist on being ‘off the record’ [Real Dan Lyons]

[#1 posted by Rob Beschizza , July 28, 2008 6:45 AM]

Nocera got pwned.

Jobs took a big risk -- giving the NYT a story about how Jobs won't go on the record about his health. But it fell for the "suprise call" like a sack, running the spicy quote instead of the story, which now gets buried in day 2 analysis.

[#2 posted by agraham999 , July 28, 2008 8:39 AM]

Personally this whole episode is silly. Jobs is not Apple...he doesn't come up with every product idea or tinker in his little workshop making toys for all the good boys and girls around the world. There are hundreds of product designers, fabricators, programmers...and on and on...he's a great critic...with good intuition, but if he vanished tomorrow, Apple would survive because it employs good talent...and it's sitting on about $18 billion in cash.

I also think Jobs does have a right to privacy when it comes to his health or family. People need to back off a second and think about this. He's got kids...and he likely wants to protect his kids from the idea that he's going to die...and all these jackasses are running around printing stories about his health and how bad he looks...and how serious it is and speculating on his death. You know he can't protect his kids from seeing that and I gotta say...I'd be really pissed off too.

Yeah...Apple is waaaay too secretive on many fronts...but on this particular case I gotta side with Jobs and Apple.

[#3 posted by dssstrkl , July 28, 2008 10:17 AM]

Apple *needs* the hackery? Why? So they can keep morons like Rob Enderle in business? Sorry, but that's just wishful thinking there...