Daniel Lyons, the technology editor at Newsweek who has written a fake Steve Jobs blog for years, writes Monday that he’s stopping the blog now that the Apple CEO is taking a medical leave of absence.
“Sadly, I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.
“I’m sure there will be stories where some reporter talks to people who know Jobs — his friends, his neighbors — and tries to wheedle out some tidbit of information.
“I fear there will be stories where some dirtbag (last time it was a guy from Forbes) hangs around outside bars near the Apple campus and ambushes half-drunk Apple engineers, asking them if they’ve seen Steve lately.
“I’m sure there will also be stories where a reporter talks to cancer specialists and tries to get them to speculate on what might be wrong with Jobs this time. They’ll talk about life expectancies for people, like Jobs, who have had liver transplants after suffering pancreatic cancer. They will try to make this all seem respectable. They will claim the cancer doc stories represent a kind of ‘teaching moment,’ an opportunity to explain some arcane medical stuff to the regular folk.
“They will rationalize the prying story by saying that Apple is a public company and investors need — nay, deserve — this information.”
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While Lyons' stepping down is admirable from a personal standpoint, his conviction that:
"If you're an investor and really can't live with the uncertainty that today's announcement brings to Apple stock, well, sell your shares and thank Steve Jobs for the ridiculous profits you've made."
seems be a bit naive. Jobs a celebrity of sorts in the world of CEOs, the one non-business junkies know the name of and who is most closely aligned with Apple's perception as an innovative company simply because he's the innovative visionary behind it. Thus, when he has health concerns, it's more than just a temporary shift in leadership. It's uncertainty about the future of the company and its ability to perform if the worst happens and their visionary responsible for their success isn't there to take the helm. It's a sad thing that the information needed to determine the health of a company is so directly aligned with the health of its CEO, but I can't blame people for doing all they can to protect their investment. It's the darker side of the CEO-as-celebrity coin.