Silicon Valley s latest feud pits tech giant Hewlett Packard against international business newspaper The Financial Times.
Earlier this month, Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway published an open letter criticizing HP for what she calls a disappointing threat to pull the company s newspaper advertising over one of her columns.
It is my editors steadfast refusal to consider the impact of stories on advertisers that makes us the decent newspaper we are, Kellaway wrote in the letter published on the Financial Times website. It is why I want to go on working here. It is why the FT goes on paying me.
The drama started with a column Kellaway wrote criticizing some advice HP CEO Meg Whitman gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. You can always go faster than you think you can, Whitman apparently told the audience. In her column, Kellaway disagreed — no, you can t. Sometimes, when you go faster you fall flat on your face. She then received an angry email from HP s head of marketing and communications.
In a follow-up column, Kellaway says the PR representative accused her of making a snide dig at HP s disastrous purchase of Autonomy (HP bought the British software company in 2011 and then was forced to drastically right down the value of the deal, sparking a lawsuit HP settled for $100 million, among other legal woes). According to the column, PR representative said Kellaway misrepresented Whitman s remarks at the conference, and followed up with a threat: FT management should consider the impact of unacceptable biases on its relationship with advertisers.
Kellaway wrote she originally replied with a curt thank you for your message. But after sitting on the issue, she decided to write a longer reply and share it with her readers.
In my experience people in big jobs occasionally say things that are a bit off, she wrote. Then not only is it my job as a columnist to point it out, but yours too, as a member of her top team.
She went on to address HP s advertising.
Assuming the decision to advertise in the FT was right in the first place, it would seem crazy — and not in shareholders best interests — to change course based on pique.
In her follow-up column, Kellaway wrote she decided to publicly post her response to HP because the conflict highlights an issue that matters to her. Though she admitted a secondary motivation as well.
I suspect readers are so starved of overt conflict in their own workings lives they ll enjoy witnessing a punch-up, she wrote.
Kellaway could be right. The post had 440 comments Wednesday morning. HP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: HP CEO Meg Whitman. (Dai Sugano/Mercury News)
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