Newsweek censors Tech blog
By Techgirl

American journalist Dan Lyons is one of the brightest stars in the tech universe.  He has mastered serious journalism as well as satire.  Many, including me, feel that his brilliant satire ‘telling it as it is’ is unmatched by any tech writer in US and Europe. Dan Lyons worked for 10 yeas as a Tech journalist at prestigious Forbes.com before joining Newsweek this year. 

Dan has also written for prestigious media like New York Times. But perhaps his biggest success was writing satire as ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ which was read by everyone from Bill Gates to Steve Jobs.  As Fake Steve Jobs, Dan wrote what every journalist wanted to say but could not. Many media organizations are hampered by advertising deals and personal equations and work within a system.   Fake Steve Jobs was anonymous and pulled no punches in telling the truth.

While at Forbes.com, Dan’s identity was uncovered by an American newspaper.  Lacking anonymity, the blog posts while still masterful were restrained.  Then came news that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs may have cancer.

After joining Newsweek, Dan stopped writing ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ and started a new blog ‘Real Dan Lyons’ where he wrote under his own name.

Even as the Yahoo Board were preparing to ‘let go’   their CEO Jerry Yang and made it public yesterday, the Yahoo PR machine was feeding half truths and spin to the media.  Perhaps the Yahoo PR team were themselves unaware about how the Yahoo Board would replace Jerry Yang.

The Yahoo PR machine fed Newsweek’s Dan Lyons the story that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang would not leave his job and that their business tie up with Google was a ‘done deal’. 

When the Goole-Yahoo deal did not work out and the Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang stepped down, for a moment ‘Real Dan Lyons’ wrote like Fake Steve Jobs in the Newsweek sanctioned blog. 

Yesterday, Dan Lyons wrote the following heartfelt outburst in his Newsweek sanctioned blog :
“
I’d never dealt much with Yahoo before, and I was stunned by their PR operators — they’re really an unsavory bunch. During that same reporting this crack team of lying sacks of shit put one of Yahoo’s attorneys in Washington on the phone to tell me, over and over, the true “inside story” of what was going on with the Google deal, which was, he informed me, that the deal with Google was a sure thing, definitely going to happen, no way in hell is the deal not going to happen, there are no real objections from the regulators, they’re fine with it, the objections from advertisers are not an issue, blah blah blah. Then that deal fell apart. And now Jerry Yang is out on his ass. The take-away: Do not believe a word that Yahoo says. Ever. – Dan Lyons
“

The Newsweek management was not happy.  They pay their Senior Editors healthy six figure salaries every year and want them to work as part of the system.  They made Dan Lyons take down his blog posts criticizing Yahoo.

The anonymous Fake Steve Jobs said whatever he felt like in his blog.  The real Dan Lyons may have realized that serious journalism may sometimes not allow you to say what you really feel.   And Yahoo Public relations, like other PR teams are paid big bucks to spin news in the best interests of their companies.

Techgoss note:  Dan Lyons, as Fake Steve Jobs, gave his first Indian interview to techgoss which you read at this link.