Categories: OLD Media Moves

Was Wired editor spun by Microsoft?

FishBowl New York wonders if Wired editor Chris Anderson was spun by the PR people working for Microsoft for a recent article in the magazine.

FishBowl wrote, “Now that Wired‘s ‘radical transparency’ issue is out, Anderson is admitting that he might’ve been spun by Microsoft in an article about the company’s blogging initiative.

“Anderson posted a 6,000-word memo inadvertently leaked by Microsoft’s PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, in which executives are coached on how to stay on message, and recounts how they were able to woo him into publishing the article.

“‘As far as I can tell, everything in the memo is accurate,’ Anderson says. ‘I also think the executives were very well served by the document; they did indeed stick to their message and they got pretty much the story they wanted. This was also, as it happens, the story I wanted â€” or was it just the story I thought I wanted because I was so effectively spun by Microsoft’s PR machine?'”

Read more here, including a defense of the memo from the PR firm.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.