Agency confirms document was sent in error; Wired posts it

March 30, 2007 

Linda Rosencrance, Computerworld

A briefing memo that Microsoft Corp. and its outside public relations agency kept on a Wired magazine reporter who was writing an article on the company accidentally ended up in the reporter's e-mail in-box.

In February, while reporting on a story about Microsoft's video-blogging initiative Channel 9, a Web site designed to facilitate communication between Microsoft's developers and its customers, reporter Fred Vogelstein received the e-mail that was intended for a Microsoft executive, not him.

However, after reading the entire memo, which Vogelstein called a "secret dossier," he was less than thrilled about some of the comments Microsoft made about him.

"It's a little weird to read in a professional briefing document that you're 'long-winded,' and that you're 'tricky.' At least the latter isn't how I characterize myself, and I suppose I wouldn't characterize myself as long-winded, but others have," he said in a telephone interview.

In the 5,500-word memo, Microsoft said, "Fred can be a little tricky in interviews. He looks deeply for any dirt around whatever topic he is focused on and generally is tight-lipped about the direction he will take for his stories, sometimes even misleading you to throw you off. It takes him a bit to get his thoughts across so try to be patient."

In the interview, Vogelstein said he wasn't surprised that Microsoft did its homework on him, but he was a bit taken aback by the level of detail of the information.

According to Jenny Krentzman, communications manager at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, Microsoft's public relations firm, the document unintentionally sent to Vogelstein was a briefing document prepared by her company to help Microsoft executives prepare for their interviews with the reporter.

As for the personal information the memo contained about Vogelstein, Krentzman conceded that the information could have been conveyed differently.

"It's kind of one of those unfortunate situations where different words could have been used to describe things," she said. "This was never a document that was meant to insult anyone or cause any hard feelings; it was just something we were trying to put forward to make our client feel comfortable."

Krentzman confirmed that Vogelstein received the e-mail in error.

"It was a genuine mistake," she said. "Accidents happen, it's part of being human. No one's head is going to roll. It was an honest mistake."

In his blog, Frank Shaw, president of Microsoft accounts worldwide at Waggener Edstrom, said the memo was not a secret dossier, but a briefing document.

"[L]et's talk about the briefing mail now online and the mention in the article of a "confidential dossier of 5,500 words." Not true -- someone is confusing a briefing with a dossier and "confidential" with "not sent to me," Shaw wrote.

Wired magazine editor in chief Chris Anderson, commenting in his blog, said that while Vogelstein was writing about Microsoft's new culture of transparency, the old company culture was not gone, as evidenced by the inadvertently sent briefing memo by Waggener Edstrom.

"At nearly 6,000 words, it's an amazing document and a telling counterpoint to the laissez-faire spirit of the open blogging initiative," Anderson wrote.

He said the company decided to post the entire memo online in the spirit of transparency, "because it so aptly illustrates the parallel open vs. closed cultures that now exist at Microsoft, as in any big company trying to evolve a command-and-control messaging process to an out-of-control age."

Anderson wrote it was "kind of freaky to read in the memo how I was wooed (even manipulated, if you want to think of it that way) by Microsoft into commissioning the piece" that he assigned to Vogelstein.

"By the way, as far as I can tell, everything in the memo is accurate," Anderson wrote. "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 -- or was it just the story I thought I wanted because I was so effectively spun by Microsoft's PR machine? The mind reels. ..."