One bad day for Apple spoils a whole bunch for journalists who tell the tales of turmoil in Cupertino. Guy Kawasaki, Apple's chief evangelist, describes the regular email bombing of journalists who cover Apple Computer sans rose-tinted glasses as "education," and posts pointers to stories he and his cohorts find unfair or unfavorable on a Mac enthusiasts' mailing list. It's a sure way to flood a writer's inbox, but not necessairly to change his or her views.
"I wouldn't change the way I write about the Mac simply because I received 500 or 600 hostile emails," said computer columnist Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe, who was on the receiving end of a recent Mac attack mail offensive. "I mean, that's life. I recognize that there's millions of Mac users and I wouldn't let something like that color my coverage of the product."
It's no secret that readers of all persuasions have become more vocal via email, but the Apple terrain is particularly fertile. Mac enthusiasts don't stop at pointing out factual errors, and their frequent email floods can't be easily written off like some oddball response. Apple-related mail will often fill a reporter's inbox (including some at Wired News) with sharp-tongued story critiques verging on accusations of a media-wide conspiracy to destroy the computer-maker.
"There has been some inaccurate reporting and it has impacted negatively on Apple's performance," explained Mac User editor Andrew Gore, shedding light on why some slammers vent their bitterness to journalists. Many say that the full-on coverage given to Apple's economic woes and management turmoil has come at the expense of reports about cool new products.
But it is articles with headlines like "The Sure Road to Bankruptcy" that really spark the ire of the Mac crowd. A few thousand angry love notes stoppered developer and author Dave Winer's email account last week, after he posted an opinion piece about the rough road the company is bumping along on his DaveNet site.
"Feedback is a two-way street," argued Kawasaki, who says the practice of "educating the media" came into being more or less simultaneously with his arrival at Apple in 1983. "If you don't like it, leave," he tells writers who complain about the email floods. In an article for Forbes, Kawasaki spells out his opinion loud and clear: "Over the years journalists forgot that they are as accountable as the people and companies they enjoy skewering. On the Internet the reality is if you screw up, you die by a thousand E-mails."
Winer didn't die, and would probably argue he didn't screw up or take pleasure in imaging an Apple-less future - but in a subsequent column he did offer a peace pipe to the masses offended by his pontificating. His response is the exception to the stiff upper lip shown by most journalists in the face of a verbal battering.
"I basically don't let it affect me," said Jon Swartz, who covers Apple for the San Francisco Chronicle, "but I don't think any human being can be completely unmoved after you've been scourged by one of those letters."
Jodie Mardesich, who reports on Apple for the San Jose Mercury News, responds to much of the mean-spirited mail she gets from Mac users and admits their vociferousness has made her all the more vigilant about upholding the journalist's standard quest for accuracy. "I try harder to be fair with Apple than any other company I write about," she said.
That's exactly what Kawasaki is after with the "educational" letter writing. "If that thought enters your brain for a nanosecond, I think something good is happening," he explained.
Others who contribute to his "Macway" mailing list crave a greater effect. "The number of media errors continues to increase," posted one Mac enthusiast who suggested that "the tactic of writing letters to the journalist doesn't seem to be working," and that it was time to send letters to editors and even advertisers in publications that repeatedly report on Apple with what appears to be a negative slant.
Letters to the editor are nothing new from the prolific Mac crowd, however. Mardesich said that her editors at the Merc know better than to assume she's done something wrong when they too get attacked by a flood of mail. "I think they understand that Apple people are really emotional," she said.
At Macworld magazine, even the receptionist knows about the volume of email from readers. The stories that get the most hits are "articles, that are objective, but may not be incredibly favorable," explained Andrea Dudrow, an editorial assistant whose job includes answering the 40 or so email messages that arrive each day. "Spirits run so high with Apple," she said, explaining that the mail includes critiques of the products and the company, as well as the coverage.
"It's something Steve Jobs started - the Mac against the juggernaut of the establishment," Craig Boyer, an airline mechanic and Macway poster, said of the letter-writing phenomenon. Part of the problem, he feels, is being in the underdog position for all the wrong reasons. "It's a blatantly superior product [to Windows95] but the marketing is so bad.... They need to be shouting PowerPC from the rooftops," he said.
But journalists aren't the ones to play the PR role, and instead may criticize the same issues a Mac fan would - but have to sit out the mail flood all the same. Bray, of the Boston Globe, sounds not unlike Kawasaki when he cheers them on with the conviction that people have a right to express their opinion.
"I think that the avid loyalty of some Mac users, without meaning to cause any harm, has hurt the company. I think to some extent it's why Apple is in the mess it's in today," Bray argued. "It's not because these people are doing anything wrong; it's because Apple has always fallen back on this idea that, 'Oh, our customers love us. They'll do anything for us. They're fanatics about the Mac.' That very fact has been used by them as a security blanket to avoid dealing with the real issues concerning the Macintosh."
And that's a trouble spot that even a happy-go-lucky spin on Apple coverage can't cure.
