Why (Smart) Agents Don't Blog
About two months ago Jayne kindly invited me to contribute to this blog (“Just something short from an agent’s perspective….”)—and, though I quickly agreed, I’ve been dragging my feet ever since.
I meant to quickly toss off a nice little piece; really, I did. But somehow, the project kept getting put aside so I could attend to more pressing needs—like organizing my sock drawer, for example.
To be sure, Jayne is a very important client (a wonderful person, as well, I should add) and I was very well aware that I’d promised her a piece—but something was holding me back.
I’d done my homework (I’d read all the talked-about agent blogs) and even figured out how to make my contribution to the blogosphere much more interesting.
(Which shouldn’t be very hard, I thought, since most agent blogs are by newly-minted agents who just don’t have any good stories to tell. All I would have to do is dust off a few of my better adventures-in-agenting, and, voila, I’d be a blogospheric star….)
But every time I’d start to think about which great story to start with, I would think of Dave Wirtschafter—and I’d come to a dead halt.
Wirtschafter, the president of the William Morris Agency, didn’t blog, but about a year ago, he let himself be interviewed for a long, candid profile in the New Yorker. It made for great reading—it was the real deal—but his candor is widely believed to have cost the agency at least two major stars, Halle Berry and Sarah Michelle Geller, as well as a major director, etc.
Indeed, according to Defamer, a Hollywood blog (“LA is the world's cultural capital. This is the gossip rag it deserves.”), in an email to this staff announcing Berry’s defection, Wirtschafter wrote,
“As you know, I am the subject of a story in the New Yorker that has caused some problems. I had personal reasons for doing the article and I recognize that these became blurred with my professional life. I never intended to harm any of our collages [sic] or our clients by participating in this story. While I can elaborate on the fine points of how I was portrayed and what I said, I did participate in this and want to apologize for any hurt that has stemmed from it.”
Hurt? That’s putting it mildly—and all because a very smart guy made a very bad mistake.
A few months after the New Yorker profile ran, W Magazine interviewed the now-retired Sue Mengers (“Hollywood’s first superagent”) and she has some choice words for Wirtschafter (“Dave Something—Schmuck, I think….”) but then she goes on to say something I thought was pretty perceptive: “It’s very tempting for an agent to give interviews. We want a little credit, so it’s hard to say no. But you should.”
And I’m starting to believe that what’s true for agents granting interviews is doubly true for agents blogging. Agents should just say No.
Admittedly blogs are different from printed media. They are less formal and more conversational. Less considered and more stream-of-consciousness. More real, less phony. At their best, they are a much freer medium than print
But this freedom comes at a price. And maybe that’s why, if you Google “Fired Bloggers” you get 14,500,000 results. Yup, 14,500,000.
It’s instructive to read some (though certainly not all) of them. My favorite is The Papal Bull, who blogs on the phenomenon of fired bloggers: “…what do we know about bloggers who get terminated and what commonalities are there?” It almost sounds like the title of a doctoral thesis (but much more interesting).
Basically it seems that bloggers who wrote juicy anonymous blogs got canned by their bosses when their identities were publicly exposed (Washingtonienne, et. al) and bloggers who wrote juicy stuff under their own name simply got canned when their bosses read their blogs (duh….).
And aside from all of them being fired, the “commonality” that caught my eye was that in most (though not all) cases the blogs that got their authors fired were juicy.
Which is no surprise. Human nature being what it is, the most interesting—and successful—blogs are the ones that dish dirt. The more dirt the better. And it’s better still when it’s the inside scoop about people in your own industry.
But here’s where I think the fired bloggers went badly wrong. It only makes sense to traffic in gossip when your boss is paying you to traffic in gossip.
Which is to say it’s ok to dish Hollywood dirt when you’re covering Hollywood for People Magazine—it’s not when you’re representing Hollywood for the William Morris Agency.
If your boss (or your client) is paying you to do something else—representing stars, representing writers or working in any other profession—they expect (demand, actually) that you put the interests of your firm or clients first. That means that, in addition to performing your professional activities, you exercise discretion about what you do and who you do it for.
And blogging, whether you do it anonymously or not, whether your intention is to provoke or merely inform, shows you’re not always putting your firm or your clients’ interests first.
Which is why good intentions don’t mitigate the damage you do. Even well-meaning bloggers get fired (though they don’t get blogged about as widely…).
In the blogosphere—or in the New Yorker—it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not dishing any dirt—indeed, it doesn’t matter if you think you’re being discrete or even complimentary in relating a story or two about the great work you’ve done for your clients.
Those very clients (or some of your other clients) are free to take it in a very different way—and there’s nothing you can do about it. Dave Wirtschafter might have thought he was doing his clients and his firm a favor when he talked about the brilliant deals he made for Halle Berry. I was impressed, but Miss Berry clearly disagreed.
Decades before blogs were invented, Samuel Goldwyn observed, “I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until they’re dead.” And it’s as true now as it was then.
So, for me at least, mums the word. Discretion is the better part of valor. In the best interests of my clients (not to mention, myself!) I’m going to put aside my dreams of blogospheric glory and, although this is my first attempt at blogging, I think I’ll also make it my last….
Mystery Blogger: Steve Axelrod
I meant to quickly toss off a nice little piece; really, I did. But somehow, the project kept getting put aside so I could attend to more pressing needs—like organizing my sock drawer, for example.
To be sure, Jayne is a very important client (a wonderful person, as well, I should add) and I was very well aware that I’d promised her a piece—but something was holding me back.
I’d done my homework (I’d read all the talked-about agent blogs) and even figured out how to make my contribution to the blogosphere much more interesting.
(Which shouldn’t be very hard, I thought, since most agent blogs are by newly-minted agents who just don’t have any good stories to tell. All I would have to do is dust off a few of my better adventures-in-agenting, and, voila, I’d be a blogospheric star….)
But every time I’d start to think about which great story to start with, I would think of Dave Wirtschafter—and I’d come to a dead halt.
Wirtschafter, the president of the William Morris Agency, didn’t blog, but about a year ago, he let himself be interviewed for a long, candid profile in the New Yorker. It made for great reading—it was the real deal—but his candor is widely believed to have cost the agency at least two major stars, Halle Berry and Sarah Michelle Geller, as well as a major director, etc.
Indeed, according to Defamer, a Hollywood blog (“LA is the world's cultural capital. This is the gossip rag it deserves.”), in an email to this staff announcing Berry’s defection, Wirtschafter wrote,
“As you know, I am the subject of a story in the New Yorker that has caused some problems. I had personal reasons for doing the article and I recognize that these became blurred with my professional life. I never intended to harm any of our collages [sic] or our clients by participating in this story. While I can elaborate on the fine points of how I was portrayed and what I said, I did participate in this and want to apologize for any hurt that has stemmed from it.”
Hurt? That’s putting it mildly—and all because a very smart guy made a very bad mistake.
A few months after the New Yorker profile ran, W Magazine interviewed the now-retired Sue Mengers (“Hollywood’s first superagent”) and she has some choice words for Wirtschafter (“Dave Something—Schmuck, I think….”) but then she goes on to say something I thought was pretty perceptive: “It’s very tempting for an agent to give interviews. We want a little credit, so it’s hard to say no. But you should.”
And I’m starting to believe that what’s true for agents granting interviews is doubly true for agents blogging. Agents should just say No.
Admittedly blogs are different from printed media. They are less formal and more conversational. Less considered and more stream-of-consciousness. More real, less phony. At their best, they are a much freer medium than print
But this freedom comes at a price. And maybe that’s why, if you Google “Fired Bloggers” you get 14,500,000 results. Yup, 14,500,000.
It’s instructive to read some (though certainly not all) of them. My favorite is The Papal Bull, who blogs on the phenomenon of fired bloggers: “…what do we know about bloggers who get terminated and what commonalities are there?” It almost sounds like the title of a doctoral thesis (but much more interesting).
Basically it seems that bloggers who wrote juicy anonymous blogs got canned by their bosses when their identities were publicly exposed (Washingtonienne, et. al) and bloggers who wrote juicy stuff under their own name simply got canned when their bosses read their blogs (duh….).
And aside from all of them being fired, the “commonality” that caught my eye was that in most (though not all) cases the blogs that got their authors fired were juicy.
Which is no surprise. Human nature being what it is, the most interesting—and successful—blogs are the ones that dish dirt. The more dirt the better. And it’s better still when it’s the inside scoop about people in your own industry.
But here’s where I think the fired bloggers went badly wrong. It only makes sense to traffic in gossip when your boss is paying you to traffic in gossip.
Which is to say it’s ok to dish Hollywood dirt when you’re covering Hollywood for People Magazine—it’s not when you’re representing Hollywood for the William Morris Agency.
If your boss (or your client) is paying you to do something else—representing stars, representing writers or working in any other profession—they expect (demand, actually) that you put the interests of your firm or clients first. That means that, in addition to performing your professional activities, you exercise discretion about what you do and who you do it for.
And blogging, whether you do it anonymously or not, whether your intention is to provoke or merely inform, shows you’re not always putting your firm or your clients’ interests first.
Which is why good intentions don’t mitigate the damage you do. Even well-meaning bloggers get fired (though they don’t get blogged about as widely…).
In the blogosphere—or in the New Yorker—it doesn’t seem to matter if you’re not dishing any dirt—indeed, it doesn’t matter if you think you’re being discrete or even complimentary in relating a story or two about the great work you’ve done for your clients.
Those very clients (or some of your other clients) are free to take it in a very different way—and there’s nothing you can do about it. Dave Wirtschafter might have thought he was doing his clients and his firm a favor when he talked about the brilliant deals he made for Halle Berry. I was impressed, but Miss Berry clearly disagreed.
Decades before blogs were invented, Samuel Goldwyn observed, “I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until they’re dead.” And it’s as true now as it was then.
So, for me at least, mums the word. Discretion is the better part of valor. In the best interests of my clients (not to mention, myself!) I’m going to put aside my dreams of blogospheric glory and, although this is my first attempt at blogging, I think I’ll also make it my last….
Mystery Blogger: Steve Axelrod
posted at 6:40 AM
