By Dominic Jones | Published: March 28, 2008 | 
Printer version
| Comment |
Business Wire fumbles error on its blog
AS MORE companies add blogs and other social media tools to their online communications, knowing how to handle errors in posts has become an important practice point.
Business Wire (BW) is one company that hasn’t yet learned how to do this properly. And that’s a problem because part of BW’s business is advising companies and providing tools for them to use the web as an interaction medium.
 |
| Business Wire deleted its erroneous blog post and my comment. |
Yesterday, for example, Tom Becktold, SVP Marketing at Business Wire posted a short piece on his company’s blog that contained a rather substantial error:
We came across this interesting blog post by Rice University student John Palizza who was prepping for his investor relations class. His post provides a summary of various research findings related to investor relations and disclosure practices.
The mistake here is that John Palizza is not a student. He is a lecturer at Rice University and a very experienced IRO.
I saw the mistake and immediately left a comment on Business Wire’s blog that simply pointed out the error. My comment, as with several I’ve made over the past year on Business Wire’s blog, never appeared.
I suspect Business Wire has blackballed me from commenting on their blog because they don’t like what I have to say about wire services in general, BW in particular, and its parent Berkshire Hathaway’s frugal earnings release practices.
Of course, my comment was still caught in their moderation queue, and they saw that they had goofed. The correct thing to do next would have been to approve my comment, then correct their post by striking out the word student and replacing it with the word instructor. They could then have apologized to John and thanked me for pointing out the error.
That’s the transparent and established way to handle errors on blogs.
But Business Wire didn’t do that. Instead, they deleted the original blog post — and my comment — and published a new one, with the only change being to replace the word student with instructor. At the end of the new post, Becktold added “(apologies for errors in the original post - TB).”
The problem with this approach is that readers cannot see what the “errors” in the original post were. Of course, if they did know that Becktold called Palizza a student rather than a lecturer, then readers would realize that Becktold didn’t do his homework before writing the post.
Indeed, Becktold was very sloppy when you consider that the following text appears prominently on the right side of every page of John Palizza’s blog, Investor Relations Musings:
“John Palizza is the founding partner of Palizza Partners, a firm devoted to consulting with companies on how to deal intelligently with Wall Street. He has practiced investor relations for over twenty years at SYSCO and Walgreens, as well as having been on the buy side at W. P. Stewart, a money management firm. He has an MBA from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a law degree from Loyola University of Chicago and a B. A. in History from Coe College in beautiful Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In addition to his consulting, John also teaches investor relations at the Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. For more information, visit www.palizzapartners.com.”
Pretty hard to call a guy like that a student, especially when it actually says that he “teaches investor relations.”
Of course, if readers knew what the “errors” were, they would also realize that Becktold isn’t really up to speed on what is happening in the IR community. John Palizza is one of the more prominent names in the IR community. He has recently written columns for IR Magazine and several other IR publications, been a speaker at industry events, and has a long and illustrious career.
Becktold, as his firm’s marketing SVP, really should know of him.
(added after original post: I think it’s clear that Becktold had a strong incentive not to explain his mistake or allow my comment to appear. It would have made him look bad. However, by reposting instead of just correcting the post and allowing my comment to run, he made a bad situation worse by opening the door for me, a blackballed commenter, to turn the incident into a full-blown post on my own blog.)
My point with this post is to highlight how important it is that companies understand how to use social media before they jump in. Know the protocols and user expectations. This is especially important, as I’ve already pointed out, if you’re selling social media tools.
And finally, don’t blackball people from commenting just because you don’t agree with their views. All that does is motivate them more and provides them with more fodder to use against you.
Just like I’ve done here.
Please Support Our Work
Email your friends about us. Subscribe to our paid publication Online IR Trends Quarterly. Get us to recommend improvements to your IR website (we're really good at it).
March 29th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
The very fact - and tone - that your are critiquing Tom Becktold’s blog is EXACTLY why many, many corporations are reluctent to use blogs. He merely wanted to share a piece of information with constituients. We should thank him for his effort, and respect him for acknowledging his harmless error. Instead, you focus on faults. Surprise surprise.
Your comments about blackballing and “protocols and user expectations’ are silly. There are no “blogs rules.” Where is it written that a “blog’ must post opposing opinions? ESPECIALLY if the opinion may be harmful to the blog source? BusinessWire is a public company - perhaps Becktold thought your comments would be harmful to the corporation… and perhaps affect shareholder value - which we (in capital markets) all agree is the #1 objective.
You want transparency? Fine. It seems to me that you used this Becktold blog bit as another shallow opportunity to bash BusinessWire. “FODDER against them?” I did not realize we were in a aggressive scenerio were we needed fodder against BusinessWire. They are not the Taliban…they are merely a business that I can choose to use to or not.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Kevin,
The issue is not that Becktold made a mistake. We all make mistakes, including me.
The issue is how he responded to the mistake. He covered up his obvious sloppiness. Blogs are about transparency, including showing people how you screw up. If you aren’t mature enough to do that, don’t blog.
Reposting to avoid egg on your face is not transparent and undermines your credibility. Tom should know that better than anyone.
Finally, my comment on the original post was straightforward. It said something like this: “John Palizza is the lecturer. He is also a very experienced IRO.”
How that could hurt Berkshire’s stock price escapes me.
On one thing we agree, though, blackballing people from commenting because you don’t like their opinion is silly.
As for my comment about “fodder” I was being transparent about my intentions. This post was meant to educate people about the proper way to handle mistakes on blogs and for handling comments.
And yes, it was also an opportunity for me to have a dig at BW for blackballing me, which is exactly what they’ve done because they don’t want their clients to read what I have to say about wire services for disclosure.
At least I’m honest about my motives.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
What are you talking about? Blogs are not about transparency. Blogs are about communications.
And to be clear…we disagree - blackballing is a realistic practice, if the forum takes a turn away from a constuctive conversation to the topic presented or harmful to the organisation.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Blogs are about honest communication, which is transparent communication in my book.
I think my comments about wire services have always been constructive and accurate. There is a debate about the need for paid PR wires for disclosure that even the chairman of the SEC has participated in.
There are two sides to the debate, but Business Wire only wants its clients to see one side of it, and they refuse to correct erroneous statements made by their CEO.
I’ve allowed their comments to appear on this site as is. I’ve linked to their comments and posts. I want people to read both sides of the argument.
But they don’t do likewise. That’s not a conversation. That’s an old school ram-our-views-down-your-throat-and-snuff-out-dissent approach that has no place in an honest and transparent debate.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Honest about your motives? It seems you could have written a best practice bit about “the proper way to handle mistakes on blogs for handling comments” without rooting around with BusinessWire.
Rather than having the negativity built title of “Business Wire fumbles errors on their blog” you could have written a piece titled “The Proper Way to Handle Mistakes on Blogs and Handling Comments.”
Transparent indeed.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Am I being a vindictive jerk in using this incident to call them out for a lack of transparency and for blackballing me? Yes, absolutely I am.
But I am open about that in the post itself.
I am doing so because it contains a lesson for bloggers of all stripes. You can’t “control” the medium, so don’t try to because it will bite you in the arse.
The best approach is just to put it all out there and let people reach their own conclusions.
If IR departments or vendors stop to think next time they want to squash an opinion they don’t like, then this post has done its job.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
You are wrong.
Business Wire offers people a VERY clear choice to demonstrate dissent views to any “ram-our-views-down-your-throat” behavior. The “dissents” can work with another wire service.
That is as honest as it gets.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
OK, so in your book the only choice is to use another wire service.
What about simply not using ANY wire services for disclosure?
What about using wire services the Warren Buffett way, which is to simply notify investors that new information has been made available on the company’s website? That would cut companies’ bills by more than half. If it works for Buffett, why doesn’t Business Wire promote that approach to its clients?
Shouldn’t these alternatives be on the table?
Yes, they should, but BW doesn’t want to talk about them openly because while they are good for clients, they’re not good for BW’s revenues.
Hence why they continue to blackball and attack me and others who think there might just be better, more efficient and less costly ways to do disclosure.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Of course Business Wire needs to make revenues.
Shockingly, I expect that Business Wire (and other wire service) clients understand that - and being highly educated persons ( PR and IR) those departments would be doing their due diligence (both dollar based and compliance based) to look at alternatives for public disclosure. I don’t believe Business Wire believes their clients are lemmings.
You wrote “they continue to blackball and attack me…” ATTACKED!! How / where did they attack you? I had not read that. It seems to me, today, it it you have have been the aggressor against them.
Over a typo on a blog.
March 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
In July 2007, Neil Hershberg of Business Wire wrote:
” * Others have been quick to jump on Schwartz’ bandwagon, including Dominic Jones, who writes IR Web Report. We think that people who preach disclosure should practice it to the extent that they clearly spell out how they conceivably could benefit from a major policy shift.
Jones is an IR web consultant; he, too, potentially stands to reap financial rewards should Internet disclosure take root, and demand for his services increase.”
That is a flat out attack on my integrity. It suggests an ulterior motive when I have none. I’m pointing out an anachronism in the disclosure system.
Read this post by them attacking Sun Microsystems, then read my post. To date, they’ve never acknowledged their lies and errors, even though they know they were wrong.
And to be clear, I’m not attacking Becktold or BW over a typo. I’m pointing out that they lack transparency. That they’re sloppy and cover up when they’re found out. And that they blackball people from commenting on their blog just because those people have a different opinion.
What are they so afraid of? That people might actually agree with me? As for lemmings, let’s just say I’ve seen enough to know that IROs don’t get the benefit of other perspectives unless they read blogs like ours.
And on the compliance point, well, there’s actually no requirement from the SEC for companies to use wire services. Oddly, that’s not widely known in the IR profession, in part because it’s in no one’s interests to tell them.
March 30th, 2008 at 1:42 am
An attack on your integrity? You are a consultant on web disclosure: OF COURSE you have the ulterior motive to make profit from your opinions: this blog is your marketing. If you owned a corner bodaga, then perhaps your “no ulterior motive” point would ring true.
You are blogging over a typo - and as you admitted, you are being a vindictive jerk. The “marketing guy” made a mistake in a blog and seized the opportunity to disguise your vindictiveness into a larger “transparency in blogs” bit. “Cover up when they are found out?” Please. You’re not Bob Woodward.
And again - stop selling IR departments short. In the roundtables I have attended, both public and private - the points of the SEC RegFD are VERY clear. We. Live. It. Each. Day. And we have inside council that “reminds” us each day as well. We know PRECISELY what the regulation states. Frankly, wire services give us both peace of mind and CYA with RegFD… at a price that is moot. Perhaps we are lemmings - not many of us are ready to trust the promise web 2.0 and social media yet - ESPECIALLY when your consider the liability.
And again - stop selling IR departments short. We know when we are being lied to or merely “sold to.” Even on a blog. Any blog.
March 30th, 2008 at 3:33 am
How exactly do I benefit financially from advocating that companies spend less money on wire services? Especially when I’m making the case publicly and without any fee for doing so.
Are you suggesting that if companies spend less money on wire services that their savings will somehow flow to me? Anyone who can draw a direct line between less money spent on wire services and more on my services is clutching at straws and seeing bogeymen where there are none.
I am simply making the case for the web because it makes sense and because it advances the cause of better investor relations communications. I don’t believe in unnecessary expense. I don’t believe in doing something simply because that’s the way it’s always been done.
And you might not believe this, but we honestly would do much better financially not doing this blog. If you think this is marketing, let me tell you that it is not. It is anti-marketing. Challenging convention and calling out the BS that is IR today does not make us popular.
We’d do much better to just shut up and be sheep. But that’s not in my nature, and even if it hurts us financially I will never stop calling things as I see them. Fortunately, some people respect us for that. I believe that better disclosure practices on the web can achieve a win-win for all investors and public companies, and that there is something noble in pursuing that win-win. For me, it’s not all about money.
Again, the post is not about a typo. A typo is a misspelling and is easily fixed. This post is about a factual error borne of sloppiness that was then covered up by trying to rewrite the record, something that cannot be done because of Internet caching and RSS archiving — another important lesson for any IRO who might be considering a blog.
You say all Becktold was trying to do was point out a useful resource, but I question how linking to a post by someone you haven’t bothered to vet can be viewed as adding value to your readers. Why should we thank him for sending us to a source he couldn’t vouch for?
Let me say this because you’ve suggested that it is comments like mine that make IR departments fearful of blogs: the only IR departments who should fear blogs are those with something to hide. It’s that simple.
And I didn’t “disguise” anything in the post. It’s plain as day, from the headline down to the last sentence. That’s how you reached the conclusion that I was using the post “as another shallow opportunity to bash BusinessWire.” I said as much in the post.
March 30th, 2008 at 5:11 am
“Frankly, wire services give us both peace of mind and CYA with RegFD… at a price that is moot.”
What? So disclosure costs are irrelevant to you? You don’t care if you can achieve effective disclosure at a lower cost?
What company do you work for because if that’s its attitude to efficiency, I’d like to avoid ever owning the stock.