Ingram: Beware blogger CEOs

Blogs aren't just for geeks and teenagers, it seems. They can also be used by companies and even CEOs as a way of levelling the playing field between journalists and the people they write about. The latest case in point is a recent online battle between Patrick Byrne -- the notoriously eccentric CEO of Overstock.com -- and a reporter for BusinessWeek magazine named Tim Mullaney.

According to Mr. Byrne, the BusinessWeek reporter emailed him a long list of questions about the company, which has been the subject of critical comments from both Wall Street brokerage analysts and some investors -- including billionaire entrepeneur, sports-team owner and blogger Mark Cuban. Among other things, Mr. Byrne has said that he believes he is the victim of a conspiracy that involves elements of the Mafia underworld and a group of short-sellers who want to drive down his stock price (Mr. Cuban has admitted to being short the stock).

Although he said the piece was only going to be 1,200 words, the BusinessWeek reporter sent what appears to be three pages worth of questions, including some bizarre ones -- such as who the CFO was involved with, whether they got married, and whether they are still together. At one point, the reporter asks Mr. Byrne whether he has gained weight as a result of stress (to which the Overstock CEO says he has gained weight because of a heart ailment). The reporter also asks whether he has been diagnosed with any mental illness.

Mr. Byrne also makes fun of his interviewer's questions, such as when the reporter says that he is "recognized as an online travel expert," and at another point when he says that he is an attorney, and that he also "keeps a Web stock model portfolio for BW that beats the IIX pretty consistently." Mr. Byrne posted the questions in full as well as a version with his comments interspersed -- before the article ran in the magazine. According to the Overstock CEO, the reporter later phoned his office and yelled at a receptionist.

Ironically, the approach Mr. Byrne took by posting the email and his comments has been used before by his nemesis Mr. Cuban. In both of these cases, the journalist in question comes off looking much worse than his subject -- which, in the case of Mr. Byrne, is all the more surprising given the CEO's reputation for bizarre behaviour and a somewhat unstable personality. In any case, both of these examples serve as a warning to journalists and to the traditional media in general: the terrain has changed, and the world is no longer as it once was. The implications of that change are profound.

Obviously, not every CEO is going to want to do what Mr. Byrne and Mr. Cuban have done. For one thing, not everyone is as obsessed with their theories about a particular subject, or as convinced that everyone is out to get them, as the Overstock CEO or the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. In addition, not every chief executive officer has the kind of time that allows them to answer 2,000 words worth of detailed questions with another 2,000 words of commentary, or to write long treatises on various topics, as Mr. Cuban likes to. And then there are the legal and corporate questions -- neither Mr. Byrne nor Mr. Cuban seem to care much about what investors think of them, so that's not a concern, and Mr. Cuban's companies aren't publicly traded, so he doesn't have to worry about securities regulators.

That said, however, the ability to post your comments on a story to your blog, as Mr. Cuban did, or to post the interview and your responses even before the article runs, as Mr. Byrne did, is a pretty powerful tool. And they are not unique: as journalist and blogger Dan Gillmor notes, the U.S. Defence Department has been posting full transcripts of its interviews with journalists for a while now. As Mr. Gillmor notes on his Citizens' Media blog, journalists are effectively having "transparency imposed on them" by the Internet.