Apple's Jobs calls NYT biz columnist — for an off-the-record talk

Joe Nocera, a business columnist for the New York Times, writes Saturday about Apple CEO Steve Jobs and the recurring questions about his health and why the company should disclose more detail about it.

Nocera also reports that Jobs himself called during the course of his reporting, but would only talk off the record. It’s an agreement that Nocera upheld.

Nocera wrote, “On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final ‘Steve’s health is a private matter’ — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. ‘This is Steve Jobs,’ he began. ‘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.’ After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

“Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than ‘a common bug,’ they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

“You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.”

Read more here.