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Leaked Microsoft Dossier on Journalist
Ludvig A. Norin writes "Wired journalist Fred Vogelstein blogs about how he accidentally got hold of a dossier on himself produced by Microsoft's PR firm, Waggener Edstrom. While it's not unusual for PR people to create background files on journalists, it's notable that this one leaked, and got commented by Waggener Edstrom's Frank Shaw and Wired Magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson. Makes for an interesting read — there's lots to learn from the inner workings of the Microsoft PR machinery." Someone please send me mine? I bet it's really friendly!
But, CmdrTaco, the summary (no I didn't RTFA) is about journalists?
In your Microsoft "Dossier"...
10. Does not know what "checkdisk" is for.
9. Thinks WINNT is still useful.
8. Very Cheap: (s)he likes White Castle. Buy hamburger and get a nice article.
7. Cheap: (s)he likes Wendy's. See above. A tad more expensive.
6. Reminds me of RMS, only cleaner.
5. Reminds me of ESR. Gun nut.
4. Has a fanboy penguin T-Shirt, talks about Gentoo. Still uses WinME.
3. Steve Jobs byotch.
2. Dines with BillG and SteveB regularly. Treat with caution.
And the number one thing you don't want to see in your Microsoft PR Dossier:
1. Open Source Communist Agent. Terminate with extreme prejudice.
[Yes, this is a shameless attempt at being funny. Mod down accordingly.]
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I'm not seeing anything sinister here.
I can only *wish* my PR and markettings guys did this good a job on their briefing materials before sending me into a room. I don't do much press, but I do the occasional analyst and a fair number of customers, and knowing the lay of the land before you walk into that room is critical.
Who in there is friendly?
Who in there is looking for an excuse to hate you?
What are folk's pet issues?
The more information you have, the better a job you can do with your pitch (and fundamentally most corporate to press communications are a pitch at some level or another). Once you reach a certain level in an organization though, you're sufficiently removed from the ground game that most pitches you walk into largely cold. The local rep knows what's going on, but you don't, so they have to brief you. All you know without a packet like this is that you've been flown out to Akron to talk to John Doe from ACME inc.
My underlying point being, I don't see anything remotely sinister here. Rather I see an efficient PR organization doing its job.
I don't see the big deal here. Microsoft needs top notch PR people, they have an image issue as can be seen by the blatant anti-MS posts which consists of half the comments on any article dealing with Microsoft. Knowing this, no company wouldn't do their utmost to prepare their executives for an interview. As far as I could tell the summary was fair and provided in depth coverage. I'm somewhat amazed at the level of preperation that goes into these interviews and would like to know if they did it any time someone talks to the press but talking to someone from Wired and getting a positive article out of it surely is worth the effort that you hit on the right points. Not every company can afford it but I don't think Microsoft can afford not to.
Now if they'd put that much into their security...
Oh shit, that's going into my file isn't it?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
It'd be silly if the PR people would ignore Slashdot. They don't. Lots of folks at Microsoft read Slashdot. I frequently see Slashdot on people's notebooks when they are 5 minutes early for a meeting. We're geeks, too. Especially us in the product teams. If /. thinks we suck we want to know why so that we can keep fixing the parts that suck. We're doing a lot better here than we did 5 years ago. Heck, there are even threads where the firm clearly comes out on top in the /. opinion these days, even though lots of the contributions start with "I hate Microsoft like the next guy, but ...". That's perfectly cool. I think that being skeptical about a big corporation as a whole is not a bad thing; as it happens, we're doing lots of good stuff in the details and that's increasingly being recognized.
5 years ago "Windows BSOD buwahhahaha" was common and rated funny (or even insightful); nowadays the average Slashdot "Windoze" user (the majority, mind you) knows that that's just not happening anymore unless they catch a sucky driver; and the replies on the occasional "BSOD" post reflect that.
Security? Again, lots of sentiment that reflects our sins from the past, but the reality is that we're not only "pretty serious" about security but are also leading in many areas. Do we still have malware issues on the client? Yes; but it's dramatically improving. XPSP2, IE7, and Vista were a big steps. We're taking hits because some old software doesn't run at all or the experience is littered with UAC prompts. We've never done that. We've never ranked anything above backwards compatibility. Vista does. Vista ranks security higher. We're getting flak for it. Ok. Does that make the experience nice across the board? Allow/Cancel? No. Does is go back to normal once apps are written to comply with the new rules? Yes. Sorry, we had to break stuff to force apps (even our own) into compliance with security principles. It'll take a while until that all levels out. It will.
Does our security track record still suck on the server-side? No. (You can come out and cite security fix volumes for SQL Server, IIS, Sharepoint Server, BizTalk, ISA or the Windows Server core; that's fine)
As far as tracking individual users goes: That would be as silly as not reading Slashdot. What would anyone do with that data? What would YOU do with that data? I can't think of anything useful to do a detailed tracking of foobar876's posts. Besides, if I were interested in that ... Slashdot keeps that log for me. Talk to CmdrTaco :)
What surprises me about this PR analysis is that none of it -- not one word -- is dedicated to selling the journalist on the quality of Microsoft's products. Not their web products, not their development environments, nothing. At a minimum, they could have said something like "Channel 9 will help us show developers how we make the best development products."
If you're going to make a video blog for developers, I'd think you would focus on the quality of your development products.
Instead, it's all a bunch of internal politicking about transparency and alleviating fear. Is that how Microsoft makes money these days? Selling transparency? Alleviating fear?
I think I've got some synergy and some new paradigms for sale too, guaranteed to be content-free.
CmdrTaco: Mostly Harmless
What exactly is this whole: 'Slashdot's dead' stuff all about? I'm really interested to hear what's so wrong with this place that you still grace it with your presence. As can be guessed by my userid I am new here, and really like this site.
/. seem to fall into a few categories. You've got the pro troll, whose sole job is to talk shit everywhere, so he can be easily ignored. You've got the old-timers who got pissed off when this site grew from a chummy little linux hangout into what is is now. These people can safely be ignored as well. While you can easily argue that /. has changed, it's a lot harder to say whether or not the 2007 edition is any better or worse than the '97 version.
/. got sold off to VA (or whoever it was), nothing on this site can be trusted, the editors are all paid shills, etc. Some of these criticisms have some actual validity, but bitching about them constantly on main page articles is just wasting everybody's time.
Beats the hell out of me. I like it here too. The people that bitch about
Last, but not least, you've got the idiots who seem to think that ever since
I'll take this opportunity to welcome you here, as well as mention that we're not all crazy, there are a few pools of sanity in the great ocean that is Slashdot.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!