Gruber has an interesting if slightly nauseating post on Dan Lyons, Fake Steve, and Newsweek:
“Dan Lyons, who recently took over Steven Levy’s old spot as Newsweek’s technology columnist, on why he walked away from his Fake Steve Jobs weblog:
“The truth is simply this. I began hearing a few months ago that Steve Jobs was very sick. I wasn’t sure if these rumors were true or not. Then I saw how he looked at WWDC and it was like having the wind knocked out of me. I just couldn’t carry on. I hope and pray that he’s not sick. But for now I just can’t carry on with the Fake Steve character.”
I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that continuing the Fake Steve blog might have an adverse effect on the amount of access to new products Apple will grant to Lyons and Newsweek. Levy, while at Newsweek, was often seeded with new products a few weeks in advance of release, in the same rarified air as Walt Mossberg and David Pogue.
And while I would not go that snarky distance—Gruber’s remarks bespeak the ignorance of the successful blogger when it comes to corporate salaries. And suggest that the real problem may be that Apple does not seed him. Whatever—they seem beneath him. Just saying.
Nor do I doubt that RSJ’s appearance has thrown a lot of people for a loop … But come on, Dan, didn’t you learn anything about the intelligence of your readers? Though, granted, some of it may have been kinda hard to spot.
I always surmised that you were being fed the juicy stuff from someone in the valley, if not inside Apple; FakeSteve always gave one a giddy sense of sheer impossibility, while at the same time being wholly, wonderfully believable. (You can tell me—is Larry really gay?) At its best, the work reached a very high place, where art becomes a kind of meta-truth (you guys like meta,) informing reality, burnishing it, affecting its course.
But who cares about real, it was all real, and uncannily funny. Yoko Calls Again.
The best thing on the web, and Lyons, you just walked away, delicately unnerved? I don’t think so. That’s a serious walk, for any writer-reporter. Or do you not know how beautifully you wrote? An artist of the funny.
I wish you luck. It would great if your new thing at Time proves the equal of FakeSteve.
But it won’t.
