That's News To Me

Big companies spend tens of millions of dollars each year making sure their message with their spin gets covered. A common trick is to prebrief journalists on an upcoming news announcement and then make the reporter promise to "embargo" his or her story until a time specified by the company. The reporters know their competitors also have been briefed, so they bend over backward trying to make their story better than the other guy's, knowing they will be published simultaneously.

The net result is that companies receive massive coverage for their new products or programs—often far out of proportion to the actual news value of the announcement. Many companies, including HP, even score each news story about the company, rating whether the coverage is positive or negative. Most companies, too, have designated leakers—people assigned to feed sensitive information to the press in order to gain maximum exposure. In HP's case, this practice was rampant during the contentious proxy battle surrounding the Compaq merger.

Of course, this obsession with positive news coverage has a flip side. When something the company doesn't want printed hits the press, corporate executives freak out. HP went to the extreme, allegedly tailing reporters and obtaining phone records under false pretenses. But this isn't just boardroom-level stuff. HP and other companies routinely advise solution providers—specifically those on their advisory councils—not to talk to the press unless they are authorized to do so. Solution providers who run afoul of the warning are threatened with reprisal.

I have to admit, I have been more amused than shocked by the HP boardroom scandal. Any company that paranoid about how they are perceived in the press is bound to screw things up eventually. The funny part to me is that a company that spends millions each year trying to manage news coverage still has no idea what is news and how the press works. So I'll put press coverage in perspective for HP free of charge: If you have information you want me to print, it's publicity. If it's information you don't want me to print, it's news.

What's news to you? Contact Industry Editor Craig Zarley at [email protected].