
People who are telling the truth about themselves do not insist on being ‘off the record’ - nickb
http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2008/07/27/pr-rule-1-people-who-are-telling-the-truth-about-themselves-do-not-insist-on-being-off-the-record/
======
pg
That is false. I tell reporters stuff off the record all the time, and if
anything what I tell them that way is truer, in the sense that I'm willing to
tell them more.

I suspect if you asked reporters they'd say it was this way with most of the
people they talk to. In fact, I have some evidence already that it is. Steven
Levy told me that he hated it when people told him stuff off the record,
because he couldn't use it. If it wasn't the truth, he wouldn't care.

~~~
nikete
You tell reporters stuff about yourself off the record?

Because that, not off the record generally which Dan spends a whole paragraph
defending, is the relevant bit.

~~~
pg
You know, I was just guilty of doing what I always make fun of trolls for
doing: commenting based on the title without reading the article first. But
I've just read it and I see that I've also done the second thing I make fun of
trolls for doing: attacking something other than what the author said. So I
take back what I said. It's true, but beside the point.

I do still disagree with him slightly. It's not hard to imagine things one
might want to tell about themselves only off the record. Especially about
one's health: there are lots of medical conditions someone might be
embarrassed to have other people know about.

But I was wrong to suggest that he distrusted off the record statements
generally. It should have set off warning signals that I was accusing an
experienced reporter of making such an elementary mistake.

One reason I didn't read the article was that it was so long. That's probably
one reason people so often do this to me.

~~~
anewaccountname
I think the most disturbing thing is that your original post was immediately
modded up very high in spite of the reality of the article.

~~~
mattmaroon
It's PG, on PG's site, being voted on by PG fans who probably also didn't read
the article. Disturbing, perhaps, but not shocking.

------
mattmaroon
"One of the many ironies and contradictions about Apple is that while the
company presents this hip, open, cool image to the world"

Really? I'll give you hip and cool, but open? There's nothing open at all
about Apple. Their OS has to be hacked to work on hardware they didn't sell.
They've done more to advance DRM than anyone. They've taken tremendous
advantage of open source communities while giving nearly nothing back. They've
sued people for blogging about upcoming products ahead of time. They hid
Jobs's cancer (and nutjob idea of fighting it by eating carrots) until it was
over.

Open is the last word that any literate human would ever associate with Apple.

~~~
scott_s
Most people couldn't tell you what DRM is, or what, exactly, an operating
system does. The author said Apple presents an _image_ of being open, not the
actuality of it. And to most people, that's probably what they see.

~~~
mattmaroon
Anyone who doesn't know what DRM is doesn't even know to think about open vs.
closed. They don't know what proprietary is either. They still might know
about Apple's zealously guarded secrecy.

Also, if they buy an iPod and start using iTunes, they find out what DRM is
the hard way.

~~~
scott_s
We're talking past each other.

The author said that Apple presents an image of being open, and in the same
sentence, said this is ironic, since they are not open. So what are you
objecting to?

~~~
mattmaroon
I object to the idea that they project an image of being open at all. They
don't. They project an image of guarded secrecy. There's no irony in them not
being open, it's just them doing what they've always done.

~~~
scott_s
When I say (and, I think, the author) "image the company projects," I mean by
marketing. If their marketing said the company was run by angry iguanas, then
it would be accurate to say they project an image of being run by angry
iguanas, regardless of the truth.

~~~
mattmaroon
Does their marketing project open? I've never seen that. I have seen millions
of people wondering what product was going to ship at the next wwdc, and all
of the crazy (sometimes legally enforced) silence around that.

------
ars
Apple is starting to sound like bose. Bose used to be a tech company, but then
the marketers got a hold of it (they spend more on marketing then on
engineering). Bose has an obsession about not giving customers configurable
choices - for example none of their machines have bass/treble controls. Apple
does exactly the same thing.

~~~
rms
At least Apple still makes good computers; the regular Macbook is even price
competitive.

All of Bose's systems and headphones are incredibly overpriced if you care
about sound quality in a sound system. This
(<http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/ultra1.html>) would blow away any Bose
system and this one (<http://www.hsuresearch.com/products/performance1.html>)
would compare favorably to a much more expensive Bose system. Bose has done
one of the most brilliant marketing jobs in the history of marketing by
convincing the public that their inferior products are in fact the best made.

~~~
ars
> At least Apple still makes good computers

Today..... and there was a time that bose made good stuff too.

Apple needs to fire some of their marketers, but companies get addicted to the
money they bring in. And it works - in the short term.

------
jonknee
> How many times do you think Jobs rehearsed that opening line before he
> dialed (or had Katie Cotton dial for him)? I’d say he practiced it one
> hundred times.

I'd say he didn't practice it at all. I don't think SJ is the kind of guy who
has to practice a line like that--that's who he is.

~~~
pchristensen
Exactly, SJ _knows_ he's "an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the
law" and he definitely thinks some reporter is "a slime bucket who gets most
of his facts wrong".

From pg: "The trouble with lying is that you have to remember everything
you've said in the past to make sure you don't contradict yourself. If you
tell the truth you don't have to remember anything"

<http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html>

------
charlesju
I think there are legitimate reasons for privacy and keeping things off the
record. Not implying anything about Steve Job's condition, but I can imagine a
hypothetical situation in which a CEO has just been diagnosed HIV positive and
want it kept off the record. This is not necessarily a life threatening
condition anymore, but yet still comes with a strong negative connotations and
horrible social stigmas.

