6 ms·

The problem with the "it's Teen Vogue's fault for fat fingering the publication" is that Sheryl Sandberg immediately shared the article on her personal Facebook

by tempsy 7y ago

The problem with the "it's Teen Vogue's fault for fat fingering the publication" is that Sheryl Sandberg immediately shared the article on her personal Facebook page. I mean, are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company (PR/comms falls under her leadership) that it was "mistakenly" published and was organic content (in which case she should've known as well as they had access to FB employees with pictures inside the office). Mistake or not, FB leadership clearly cheer led it's publication, and then walked back and claimed they had no idea this was sponsored, and only in the last hour or so said it was a "mistake" to deny it was sponsored.

tmpz22 7y ago
Can’t we assume at this point that Sandberg likely has someone posting on her behalf? Someone who likely is in PR/marketing working “next to” the person/team that spearheaded the article. This is particularly ironic because there are likely rules against account sharing that Facebook PR does not in fact follow.
- tempsy 7y ago
  there's no way someone could've posted this on her personal FB page without her knowledge
  - rtpg 7y ago
    Ok, but I think you overestimate how much micromanagement might be going on. Simple story: - ok we'll do a sponsored post in teen vogue - story is written up! - oh, looks like it’s out, time to post about it There isn’t gross incompetence, at best it’s just a bit of a timing issue from the mistaken early publish.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Is that true? Maybe I misunderstand how powerful people typically use media, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Sheryl Sandberg has an assistant who's allowed to post to her personal Facebook.
    - tempsy 7y ago
      you’re conflating the act of posting something with posting something you made up without approval from the person in question.
    - PavlovsCat 7y ago
      > an assistant who's allowed to post to her personal Facebook "I was just giving orders." Such an assistant would be allowed by her.
- yellow_lead 7y ago
  I hate that executives, celebrities, etc have people post on their behalf, and then people defend their posts saying "it was probably posted on their behalf." If you allow someone to write as you, it's your fault if they write something out of turn. I know you're making a different point and not defending her, but this type of thing irks me.
  - thrwaway69 7y ago
    I remember the blown up case of MKBHD being blocked by wonder woman when he pointed out in a screenshot that she used iPhone despite her being a Huawei ambassador when PRing and asking people to buy Huawei phones on Twitter. Which was fine if she did it personally but people used it was her pr team as an excuse to shut down drama. She unblocked MKBHD after deleting/retweeting those tweets using an android phone this time. I found it a bit weird how her fans and most people casually ignored it using the pr team theory. That just makes it worse.
jrochkind1 7y ago
> are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company Sure, I can believe it. Because facebook, and companies like them, routinely manage, via their PR departments, to get articles not different than that published without paying for it too. It's certainly the easiest way for a journalist/writer to write an article, from the press releases and interviews given to you by a company, provided on a silver platter. And there isn't a whole lot of money for articles beyond the easiest/cheapest way these days. The division between "journalism" and "content farm" (write whatever you want that gets eyeballs, if you didn't lie about anything, that's plenty ethical!)... is increasingly a grey area. Teen Vogue actually happens to be pretty responsible journalism that usually does better than that. But how or why would Sandberg keep track? I'm sure she knows that they got the article their PR department wanted, it literally does not matter to her whether they actually wrote a check with "for that article" in the memo line to make it formally 'sponsored content' or not.
- chucksmash 7y ago
  > Teen Vogue actually happens to be pretty responsible journalism that usually does better than that. On what basis do you say that?
  - Irate 7y ago
    Good question
  - chipotle_coyote 7y ago
    On the basis that Teen Vogue got a lot of attention around 2016–17 for its political journalism. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/teen-vogue-politics/510374/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/te... https://qz.com/866305/the-true-story-of-how-teen-vogue-got-mad-got-woke-and-began-terrifying-men-like-donald-trump/ https://qz.com/866305/the-true-story-of-how-teen-vogue-got-m... https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teen-vogues-evolution-high-fashion-magazine-community-activism/story?id=52104594 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teen-vogues-evolution-high-f... That primarily happened under former editor Elaine Welteroth; she left shortly after Condé Nast killed the print edition, and it's my impression that TV has been moving back toward a fashion focus -- although a glance at their web site shows that they're still doing political reporting and op-eds.
Lazare 7y ago
> I mean, are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company Well, first off, I doubt she wrote that FB post herself, and it's questionable if she even saw it before it went out. But even so, I'd easily believe that she thought the article was organic, not sponsored. FB (like all other large companies, organisations, interest groups, etc.) pays a lot of money to a PR team to get content like this into publications, and it works quite well. PR flacks are constantly talking to journalists, offering info, trading favours, giving journalists access to insiders or the opportunity to do a photo shoot, and even providing "draft" articles that the journalist can use as a starting point. These efforts succeed all the time; is it shocking that some FB execs may have believed they worked on Teen Vogue? (We're not exactly talking about the NYT here...) From Sandberg's point of view, FB pays a lot of money to PR people to get fawning puff pieces into print, and here's a fawning puff piece in print. Why would she smell a rat? What I want to know is, where did the communication breakdown happen? Who wrote that wording? Did everyone at FB believe they'd convinced Teen Vogue to run an organic puff piece? Was that intended to be a draft that the reporter was going to rewrite? Or was it always intended to be a sponsored post, Teen Vogue messed up by publishing it normally?
- gowld 7y ago
  Right. Interpret Sandberg's statement as "I didn't think we paid for that because I thought we already infiltrated that magazine."

by tempsy 7y ago

tmpz22 7y ago

Can’t we assume at this point that Sandberg likely has someone posting on her behalf? Someone who likely is in PR/marketing working “next to” the person/team that spearheaded the article. This is particularly ironic because there are likely rules against account sharing that Facebook PR does not in fact follow.

tempsy 7y ago
there's no way someone could've posted this on her personal FB page without her knowledge
- rtpg 7y ago
  Ok, but I think you overestimate how much micromanagement might be going on. Simple story: - ok we'll do a sponsored post in teen vogue - story is written up! - oh, looks like it’s out, time to post about it There isn’t gross incompetence, at best it’s just a bit of a timing issue from the mistaken early publish.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Is that true? Maybe I misunderstand how powerful people typically use media, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Sheryl Sandberg has an assistant who's allowed to post to her personal Facebook.
  - tempsy 7y ago
    you’re conflating the act of posting something with posting something you made up without approval from the person in question.
  - PavlovsCat 7y ago
    > an assistant who's allowed to post to her personal Facebook "I was just giving orders." Such an assistant would be allowed by her.
yellow_lead 7y ago
I hate that executives, celebrities, etc have people post on their behalf, and then people defend their posts saying "it was probably posted on their behalf." If you allow someone to write as you, it's your fault if they write something out of turn. I know you're making a different point and not defending her, but this type of thing irks me.
- thrwaway69 7y ago
  I remember the blown up case of MKBHD being blocked by wonder woman when he pointed out in a screenshot that she used iPhone despite her being a Huawei ambassador when PRing and asking people to buy Huawei phones on Twitter. Which was fine if she did it personally but people used it was her pr team as an excuse to shut down drama. She unblocked MKBHD after deleting/retweeting those tweets using an android phone this time. I found it a bit weird how her fans and most people casually ignored it using the pr team theory. That just makes it worse.

jrochkind1 7y ago

> are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company Sure, I can believe it. Because facebook, and companies like them, routinely manage, via their PR departments, to get articles not different than that published without paying for it too. It's certainly the easiest way for a journalist/writer to write an article, from the press releases and interviews given to you by a company, provided on a silver platter. And there isn't a whole lot of money for articles beyond the easiest/cheapest way these days. The division between "journalism" and "content farm" (write whatever you want that gets eyeballs, if you didn't lie about anything, that's plenty ethical!)... is increasingly a grey area. Teen Vogue actually happens to be pretty responsible journalism that usually does better than that. But how or why would Sandberg keep track? I'm sure she knows that they got the article their PR department wanted, it literally does not matter to her whether they actually wrote a check with "for that article" in the memo line to make it formally 'sponsored content' or not.

chucksmash 7y ago
> Teen Vogue actually happens to be pretty responsible journalism that usually does better than that. On what basis do you say that?
- Irate 7y ago
  Good question
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  On the basis that Teen Vogue got a lot of attention around 2016–17 for its political journalism. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/teen-vogue-politics/510374/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/te... https://qz.com/866305/the-true-story-of-how-teen-vogue-got-mad-got-woke-and-began-terrifying-men-like-donald-trump/ https://qz.com/866305/the-true-story-of-how-teen-vogue-got-m... https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teen-vogues-evolution-high-fashion-magazine-community-activism/story?id=52104594 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teen-vogues-evolution-high-f... That primarily happened under former editor Elaine Welteroth; she left shortly after Condé Nast killed the print edition, and it's my impression that TV has been moving back toward a fashion focus -- although a glance at their web site shows that they're still doing political reporting and op-eds.

Lazare 7y ago

> I mean, are we to believe that she did not realize this was paid sponcon by her own company Well, first off, I doubt she wrote that FB post herself, and it's questionable if she even saw it before it went out. But even so, I'd easily believe that she thought the article was organic, not sponsored. FB (like all other large companies, organisations, interest groups, etc.) pays a lot of money to a PR team to get content like this into publications, and it works quite well. PR flacks are constantly talking to journalists, offering info, trading favours, giving journalists access to insiders or the opportunity to do a photo shoot, and even providing "draft" articles that the journalist can use as a starting point. These efforts succeed all the time; is it shocking that some FB execs may have believed they worked on Teen Vogue? (We're not exactly talking about the NYT here...) From Sandberg's point of view, FB pays a lot of money to PR people to get fawning puff pieces into print, and here's a fawning puff piece in print. Why would she smell a rat? What I want to know is, where did the communication breakdown happen? Who wrote that wording? Did everyone at FB believe they'd convinced Teen Vogue to run an organic puff piece? Was that intended to be a draft that the reporter was going to rewrite? Or was it always intended to be a sponsored post, Teen Vogue messed up by publishing it normally?

gowld 7y ago
Right. Interpret Sandberg's statement as "I didn't think we paid for that because I thought we already infiltrated that magazine."