So bigshot Wired reporter Fred Vogelstein landed what he thinks is a huge coup. While reporting a story on Microsoft, he received by accident a copy of Microsoft's PR prep notes on him -- some PR flack made a mistake and sent it to him. Fred runs the whole thing here with a kind of breathless Woodstein and Bernward glee. I guess it doesn't occur to him that in the description of how he handled his interviews he comes across as a total moron and a rude prick to boot. Best line in the Microsoft memo: "It takes him a bit to get his thoughts across, so try to be patient." Ha! Classic.
Anyway, we've dealt with Fred too, but he's usually been very kind to us, as in this story where he said Apple controls the living room. But in the spirit of "radical transparency" our PR people thought it would be a good idea for us to share some of Apple's dossier on Fred. The following notes come from the prep memo I received from our PR folks before Fred's last visit, a couple of years ago, when he was still at Fortune.
TO: SJ
FR: Steve Dowling
RE: Vogelstein visit
* It's STINE, not STEEN. Get it right! He's sensitive.
* Fred is physically unattractive and kind of a schlump. Try not to stare at him or make him uncomfortable. Do not make fun of his clothes or his haircut. NB: You will be tempted!
* Fred, like many reporters, suffers from "The Curse of the Schwartz," meaning he's not very bright but thinks he's super super bright. Pretend you're interested in his opinions.
* Fred's SAT scores: 450 verbal, 420 math. Just FYI.
* Fred lost his virginity at age 27, on a vacation in Thailand, and has taken LSD once. He has never brought a woman to orgasm.
* Fred drives a 1998 Toyota Celica and doesn't realize it's a "chick car."
* Fred, while traveling, runs up very large bills for hotel room on-demand porn. He tends to buy the all-you-can-eat 24-hour packages rather than ordering a single film.
* Fred has been at Fortune for a couple of years. We expect he'll suck up to SJ big-time in order to curry favor with Kirkpatrick and Schlender, both former concubines to SJ.
* We predict Fred soon will leave Fortune and end up someplace less prestigious, perhaps Business 2.0 or Wired, where he will do pretentious faux-HBR articles about radical new "trends" in business that aren't actually happening.
* Fred tends to "blow with the wind." He'll sing the praises of a company one day, then turn around and savage them the next. We predict in the future some blog like Valleywag will take him to task for this. Just remember, if he's been nice to you in the past, that doesn't mean he'll be nice to you now.
* Fred's mind works at a "majestic" (read: glacial) pace. He rambles. He says, "ah..." and "um..." a lot. For an idea of what to expect, zip into the future and view this video clip which Microsoft will post on its web site in early 2007. You will probably need Internet Explorer to view this, however.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Our secret dossier revealed
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9 comments:
rotflol. awesome.
Money quote from the Wag Ed memo on Vogelstein:
"We anticipate an advance draft of the piece by mid-March with the final hitting newsstands at the close of March for the April edition."
This suggests that Wired reporters are in the habit of sharing advance story drafts with their sources. No reputable journalist that I know would EVER do that, except of course if FSJ asked them to. Either Wag Ed is on crack or Wired is more fucked up than I thought.
UNCONTROLLED BUBBLING TEAPOT
DANGLING PRETENTIOUS REPORTER
MISSING SENDER ENVELOPE
So who reads Wired Anyway? I just get it for the pix of Jenna
the original ANon on the Ashram
Yeah, Fake Steve, you've so sold out! *cough!*
And it takes a lot of guts for you to take on Fred V by name, go after his looks because you yourself are totally up front about your name and picture.
You gotta be a Brit. Or just a bitter American cunt. How do you sleep at night?
I've been reading all the blogs off and on today, and I just thought that I could add something at this juncture.
Since I lve with Jeff, I've heard nothing but good stuff about Fred and how well things were going - since last October.
Jeff was very much wowed when he went to have lunch with Chris, and yes, up until it came to him (before the magazine hit the stands, with his pics in it, the whole thing) he actually thought Fred was writing a good article on this new phenominon (transparancy) that Microsoft really believed in.
He was really happy about that, and then, when it showed up. Well, you can probably imagine the sharp stab in the temple that it was.
After the Kathy Sierra stuff this week, and my 11+ years of being on the internet, I thought I'd seen it all.
I was wrong.
I dont know how my husband keeps such a good attitude about people when they do things like this.
Fred, I dont know you, but you are part of the reason why Americans hate the media. I think we've almost hit the bottom of the barrel now.
Isn't "bigshot Wired reporter" an oxymoron? Is FSJ going just a wee bit too far with Wired magazine product placement on his blog?
Uhm ... FredV is no different from pretty much ALL the "reporters" who cover high tech. What we see here is not an inside peek into the relationship between MSFT and FredV. We are seeing how it works EVERYWHERE in tech coverage. There isn't a tech rag out there that isn't staffed with self-important peoans who call themselves journalists, but in reality shovel product drivel and non-news news at a sleeping public, share their drafts with the PR flacks who often edit them or even WRITE the pieces, then file their dog-crap copy to editors who barely read past the headline before pushing the content through to the art dept.
* It's STINE, not STEEN. Get it right! He's sensitive.
Radical Chic. If Wolfe were twenty years younger, I'd say you and he were one and the same.
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