A CEO of an Irish company sent me a very long email recently telling me how I am to discuss his company in public in future. I found it quite inflammatory and abusive. He also called into question the ability of another Irish technology journalist in this unsolicited email and told me how I should not go down the path they chose. I am still wary of calling myself a journalist since these folks are professionals. I’m just someone with a gob. I asked said CEO could I publish his email on my blog and he has refused and questioned my inability to have a normal private conversation. Except a conversation is two way. Not abuse. No problem, it won’t be reproduced. Tom recently blogged about the fun he had with the CEO of Blueface.
There are good ways of interacting with bloggers and there are bad ways. Bloggers too are people and a modicum of respect for people would be nice if you are the one making contact with them. One way of getting their goat up is to tell them how they are to talk about your company in public. Another is to use passive aggressive bullshit of the type “I’m surprised that you of all people said that” or “of all people, you should know better”. Questioning whether someone is biased is another. As is taking swipes at a fellow technology journalist or someone in “the trade”.
Also if you are asked to stop emailing them. Do. Do not send another further email with more personal abuse. Finally putting all of these don’ts together in an email and marking the email as “personal and confidential” so the person in receipt of the abuse can’t reproduce on their blog or to others isn’t very nice at all. It’s not transparent.
It’s amazing that some business people think that being abusive to people will not come back and haunt them. Surely the Internet proves that the truth will out.
