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February 15, 2008
Gawker Takes on E-man
My dad just called to alert me to a Gawker v. Edelman (my former place of employ) smack-down over on Gawker.com. Seems Gawker wrote about an anonymous (and for my money - bullshit) tip that had Edelman execs telling clients to "stand up there and lie" to the media. The CEO, Richard Edelman, responded and Nick Denton Hamilton Nolan wrote back in a bitchy, pointless post that does nothing to further his case that the tip is legit, and everything to show Denton (et al)'s own total lack of ethics. It's so obvious to anyone that this is just a tip from a disgruntled former employee or - more likely - a competitor. I mean, please. Edelman's got its fair share of total a-holes working there, but they're not stupid. They're definitely not stupid. I'm too rushed to write about this further, so will just quote one of the commenters - who got it dead-on:
"as someone who used to do this type of thing for edelman, this accusation isn't credible. i've never heard of anything like this happening anywhere, and a former PRWeek writer knows it certainly doesn't happen at a place like edelman. the entire premise is reckless and sloppy.
here's the thing: telling a client to lie isn't just unethical, it's bad fucking advice. why? because it's guaranteed to produce stuff like this every time. no one at edelman -- even the ones who don't know what they're doing -- would give this advice if they cared about keeping their job. people get fired for waaaaay less."
Posted by Bree at February 15, 2008 08:31 AM