Overstock BusinessWeek Smackdown!

I must confess: Every time I am about to write off Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne as a "paranoid fool" (Mark Cuban's assessment), he does something that makes me smile.

For those who missed the firehose of press releases emanating from Overstock HQ last week, the story (according to Byrne) goes something like this.  A Business Week reporter, Timothy J. Mullaney, emails Overstock to do some preliminary research for a short piece on the company.  In the email, he includes some preliminary questions that, in aggregate, run several thousand words.  In them, Mullaney asks for a response to every allegation, rumor, and complaint that has ever been lobbed at Overstock and goes so far as to inquire about CEO Patrick Byrne's apparent weight gain (was it stress-related?).  Given the numerous issues surrounding Overstock/Byrne, most of Mullaney's questions were reasonable, and in the context of, say, a 10,000 word feature, would have been appropriate.  In the context of a piece one-tenth that size, however, they were beyond overkill.  Some, moreover, were inappropriate and snarky.  (Leave CEO weight monitoring to the National Enquirer, please).

So what does Byrne do?  Well, first, he takes the time to write answers to a lot of the questions.  This sort of thing is a waste of a CEO's time, especially for a little 1,000-word jab.  But Byrne-the-CEO clearly enjoys being Byrne-the-famous-and-entertaining-renegade and spending a couple of hours crafting such answers is par for his course.  He does duck several of the key fundamental questions--some of which I've raised here--and he devotes hundreds of words to detailing short-seller conspiracies, branding some Wall Street analysts charlatans (plausible), and then saying he never reads their stuff (also plausible, and perfectly defensible--this is also a waste of a CEO's time). This, too, however, is vintage Byrne.

And, of course, Byrne had another agenda in answering the questions: He sent them to a buddy, who published them.  Before the Business Week story ran.  With the (reasonable) logic that an on-the-record interview is on-the-record for both parties.  And the next thing that happened, according to Bryne, is that Mullaney called up screaming and threatening, called Byrne's two temp secretaries "dumb bitches", and vowed that, when the story came out, Byrne would be sorry.  So Byrne wrote Mullaney another note, and the buddy published that, too.

To anyone who has ever been burned by a reporter, Byrne's move seems like poetic justice.  Yes, Byrne should have told Mullaney that he might publish the answers--a reputable journalist with integrity, of which there are many, would have given him this courtesy.  On the other hand, given the colossal amount of time Mullaney was implicitly requesting, a bit more courtesy and gratitude on his part would have been nice, especially for someone who might later want to lecture temp secretaries about how he's not being shown any. 

In any case, the Q&A is an amusing read, and the image (true or not) of a reporter cursing out some temp secretaries because he's had the tables turned is worthy counterpoint to the media's perma-story about how the main character flaw of most corporate titans is ego.  And stay tuned for Mullaney's story--which, one hopes, will include his version of the events...

Comments

[Riley]

So does this Adsense make you any money? I never click on ads?? How many visitors do you get on a day?

[marissa]

It's rich that Business Week is pointing fingers at anyone about sleaze.

Try finding a story on their site. You'll probably be sucked into a link that leads to a series of photos changing automatically for hours on end. And I bet each one is "sold" to advertizers as a genuine page view.

Even when you click on a story link you often just go to another page and then you have to click again to reach the story. They triple their traffic!

Don't know if Overstock is wacky, but Business Week sure is crooked.

[Jill]

Don’t you wish you’d asked Infospace a few more questions, Hank?

Don’t you think Eliot would have had fewer questions for you if you had?

I'm curious, did you, or anyone else for that matter, call or email Tim Mullaney to see if there was any truth to the claim of Byrne's that Tim called two secretaries something inappropriate? (For the record, he didn't.)

This whole asking questions thing - which something people do to get to the truth of a matter - is a concept that just continually seems to elude you.

[terry]

hard to imagine a reporter would act like that, except if he wrote for the National Inquirer or something

[sophia]

can anyone direct me to a copy of the full interview? the only website that seemed to have it (thesanitycheck.com) is no longer functional, apparently. thanks

[jimb12345]

Overstock is such a well run compaany. He definitely has a goldmine here. Keep up the good work.
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