Out of the Woodwork

Seagate CEO Renounces His Porn Aiding Ways

Anil Dash has gotten people talking with his post on the fallout from a Fortune interview of Seagate CEO Bill Watkins. See Anil's post for the whole story, but in short the clamor is over the interview's headline ("Seagate CEO: I help people 'watch porn'") and prominent use of this quote: "Let's face it, we're not changing the world. We're building a product that helps people buy more crap - and watch porn."

Some have reacted by calling Mr. Watkins a plain-speaking hero. Other camps are split between criticizing him, the offended Seagate employees (to whom Watkins has now apologized), and the publishers of the interview for their respective parts in the situation. Of these, I find blaming the publishers most interesting. John Furrier, who was present at the interview, provides a prominent example as he tries to "set the record straight" in his own blog. He says that the Fortune article blew the CEO's words out of proportion and failed to translate his informal language into its real underlying meaning. Spelling out this idea of a missing translation, Furrier writes: "His comment was part of a bigger conversation - let me translate for people not aware of the slang - 'crap = stuff' and 'porn = early adopter rich multi media'." As a result, he says, "Fortune owes Bill Watkins big time for slamming him."

So did Fortune blow these words out of proportion? Probably. If so, was it done entirely for the purpose of attracting readers' attention? Absolutely. Do they owe Bill Watkins "big time" as a result? No. He said something interesting to grab the attention of his audience and they in turn used it to grab the attention of theirs. What's wrong with accentuating whatever piece of a story will draw readers to a headline? I'll certainly admit that the opportunity to get "Seagate CEO" and "Porn" together in a title is giving me some incentive to comment here. Does that mean that I, too, will owe Mr. Watkins? No. It means that I strive to maximize the audience for my writing efforts. Why shouldn't the "big boys" like Fortune be able to do the same?

Speaking of the big fish in the journalism pond, I think there is an interesting new media twist on the issues raised in Anil's post. He suggests that this whole episode shows how the natural dynamic between public figures and the media leads to the suppression of any genuine personality in "on the record" settings. But if blogging turns more and more of us into some new sort of combined media and public personae (albeit in "little fish" forms), do we all face this inevitable blandening? My own employer, Sun Microsystems, has 3,000 bloggers and counting. Does that mean it's time for me to start specifying when I'm going "off the record" in staff meetings? Or to note when watercooler talk is about porn as in "porn" versus porn as in "early adopter of rich multi media"?

Hope not. The latter could burn up half my day.

Tags: seagate

Posted at 08:02PM Dec 23, 2006 by Jamey Wood in Potpourri  |  Comments[0]