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It would have been an image-keeper's delight, except that the story's impact was blunted by a PR faux pas that grabbed the blogo-sphere's imagination a lot harder than the original piece.That screw-up, in an irony of ironies, involved a PR agency executive accidentally forwarding a briefing on the Wired reporter who wrote the story, Fred Vogelstein, to Mr.
Vogelstein himself.
The file, which the magazine posted on its website, is a blow-by-blow narrative of how the story came together, including one agency executive's "next step": "We're pushing Fred to finish reporting and start writing."
Not exactly what you'd call letting go.
Wal-Mart suffered a similar embarrassment with its attempt to open its PR "war room" to a writer from The New Yorker.
The resulting piece was a chronicle of the Wal-Mart's PR staff's barely disguised disdain for the author's existence.
Even worse have been high-profile missteps such as Sony and Wal-Mart attempts to use fake blogs to create the sheen of openness, blatant manipulations of the very tools of transparency.
"The trend line is definitely toward transparency," said Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media.
"Some companies will do it earnestly; others will fake it."
Trouble opening up
There are a few ways to read these foul-ups.
One is that they represent the very real tension in today's business environment between...
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