For a man who assiduously avoids the news media, Steve Jobs is incredibly skilled at exploiting his leverage with the press. So skilled, it's alleged, he turned a top newspaper into a key tool of Apple's public relations.
A former Washington Post reporter is said to writing a comprehensive profile of Mark Zuckerberg. Comprehensive enough, maybe, to include the old romantic entanglement Zuckerberg just fibbed about. Prepare to do a little more sweating, Mark.
If there's one enduring lesson I took away from my late-night argument with Steve Jobs, it's that Apple's relationship with the public is undergoing a quiet revolution. Are we about to see a new, more open Apple?
Openly gay Iraq vet and activist Dan Choi chained himself to the White House fence again, and was arrested, again. Police chased away the reporters trying to cover the demonstration, which is, if not unprecedented, at least unusual.
A refugee Apple flack has gone rogue and is now dishing on how the company tries to manipulate the press. Even when bending the truth in the grimy shadows of media relations, Apple uses an immaculate system.
A reader sent in the attached screenshot, showing his fruitless attempt to post our guide to enhancing the privacy of your Facebook account. Apparently Facebook found that content to be "abusive."
Because David Gergen, Jon Meacham, Howard Fineman, Mike Allen, Josh Marshall, David Brooks, and Gail Collins did! Also: Mara Liasson, who works for NPR and the Fox News Channel that Obama wants to destroy.
Carol Bartz has "come down with something," Yahoo's chief financial officer tells Wall Street, so the CEO was absent from a third-quarter earnings call. Whoops: Profits tripled this quarter, but Bartz's illness is a ready-made metaphor for Yahoo's falling revenue.
Just in time for Balloon Boy's all-but-complete disappearance from the national spotlight, the computer geeks at 4chan apparently had a pizza delivered to the kid and his dysfunctional family. Now they're in hiding from the media.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has granted a rare interview so he can share such management expertise as: founders like himself are scientifically shown to be superior CEOs, according to a stat he heard once, somewhere, which "someone should probably look into."
The big tech news today is Apple's expected unveiling of new iPod music players. How pedestrian. The subtext is far more gripping: The inevitable end of the Steve Jobs era at Apple, and whether it's yet upon us.
Barack Obama is on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, with his family, his dog, and the traveling press corps. This is terrible news for that island's struggling community.
Bryan Appleyard's lengthy Steve Jobs profile in the Times of London breaks no real news about the Apple CEO. And yet everyone's talking about it. Why? Because Apple tried so hard to stop the story.
White House Press Corps doyenne Helen Thomas turned 89 today! Coincidentally, today is also the day Barack Obama's grandparents chose when they forged Obama's birth certificate 48 years ago. Obama gave her cupcakes!
A leading goal at the annual BlogHer conference is "economic empowerment" for female bloggers. For some participants, this means ample freebies; for at least one, it meant the chance to shake a company down for free shoes.
Amazon.com bought Zappos, the beloved online retailer of shoes, for $920 million, mostly in stock. Amazon's announcement was as direct as its business model; while reporters were calling the company in vain, CEO Jeff Bezos was dishing via YouTube.
Remember when blogs were going to be fiercely independent firebrands who, purified of old media insidery stench, would pull no punches against traditional power structures? So much for that. Today's laptop media is shaping up to be nothing but lapdogs.
There's some kind of sick good cop/bad cop deal going down at Yahoo. CEO Carol Bartz swears, smacks down reporters and threatens "dropkicks." Her enforcer, meanwhile, has a Pomeranian named Clio and loves David Sedaris and peach cobbler ice cream.
It's one thing for little nonprofit groups like Consumer Watchdog to hound Google for how it handles privacy and competitors. Much trickier for the company: A large corporation like Microsoft, can afford to whisper in reporters' ears, individually.
It turns out Mark Sanford's full confession and apology today wasn't as heartfelt as it seemed: The South Carolina governor had just been informed The State newspaper would publish his mistress emails, its reporter tells us.
