Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post obtained the e-mails from Newsweek tech reporter Dan Lyons that show the concern he had about his predecessor Steve Lyons passing along Apple’s distaste for hiring the Fake Steve Jobs blogger at the weekly magazine.
Kurtz writes, “Lyons apologized Tuesday for misstating the sequence of events. The conversations he recalled — quite vividly, he says, because he ‘was so freaked by it’ — took place shortly after Newsweek agreed to hire him as Levy’s successor, not before. Lyons says Levy told him directly that Apple was upset at his hiring and told others at Newsweek (including then-business editor David Jefferson).
“On June 30, 2008, Kathy Deveny, now Newsweek’s deputy editor, e-mailed Lyons to say: ‘apparently apple has already complained to levy that we hired you. you should be proud!’
“Lyons responded to his new boss: ‘i think it’s a bit shady of levy to be writing to me telling me how happy he is for me, call anytime, etc., and then lobbying against me at newsweek.’
“Deveny wrote back: ‘don’t worry about this!! hard for me to tell exactly what apple said — levy only told david jefferson. . . . maybe flack was just trying to suck up to levy. so i wouldn’t exactly call it lobbying against you.’
“The next day, Lyons e-mailed Levy to ask who at Apple ‘complained to you about Newsweek hiring me’ because he wanted to ‘mend fences,’ and the two men spoke later in the day.”
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