Michael Wolff

USA TODAY

Uber is at the forefront of a vast reordering of ground transportation and how we use cars. It is also in the middle of many publicity storms. This is partly due to the stuck-pig resistance of an entrenched and politically savvy taxi industry; to Uber's black car identification with the 1% (and its surge pricing); and to its own lack of PR finesse. But its most recent contretemps is also because of me.

In an effort to argue its case with more care and professionalism, Uber has recently organized some background meetings with journalists and what are called in the PR trade, "influentials." I was invited to one such dinner last week in a private room at the Waverly Inn in New York. In turn I asked Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor in chief, if he'd like to come as my guest.

I had understood that the Uber dinner, like other such media meet-and-greets — I've been to hundreds over the years — was off the record. I neglected, however, to specifically tell Smith this. And while I might have fairly assumed Smith knew the context, this was my oversight — though surely not Uber's. I might have thought too that, as my date, he would have asked if there was an understanding — suffice to say, he didn't ask, and likely, didn't want to know.

In addition to Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, among the 25 or so guests were the actor Ed Norton, a friend of Kalanick, and his wife, film producer Shauna Robertson; Mort Zuckerman, owner of New York's Daily News; Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman; Huffington Post chief Arianna Huffington, New Republic owner Chris Hughes; and an executive at Ronald Perelman's company, Chris Taylor. It was a long table, probably 40 feet or more, and Smith was seated at the far end with Emil Michael, Uber's senior vice president for business. I was at the other end of the table, far out of earshot of the Smith-Michael conversation, as was most everyone else.

At any rate, Smith apparently engaged Michael in a discussion of Uber's frequent bad press and came away with a set of quotes, or, in fact, snippets of quotes, which had Michael saying that Uber, if it wanted to, could investigate journalists, including their personal lives. As Smith represented Michael's conversation, much of his anger was directed at Sarah Lacy, the editor and founder of PandoDaily, a tech website.

The dinner was on Friday. On Monday, the Uber hosts called me to say they were getting questions from Smith, and hadn't I told him this was off the record. I contacted Smith and told him it seemed unfair that Uber suffers for my lapse.

Still, if Uber was threatening journalists, then the politesse of off-the-record or whatever obligation Smith might owe me surely paled.

On the other hand, while being off-the-record, or believing you are off-the-record, might mean you are more truthful, it can also mean you are, carelessly, full of gas. Was Michael stating Uber policy, or was this a half-bottle of wine rant? And do you want to acknowledge a difference?

In person Smith is wry and nuanced. But as a writer, he mostly has one setting. His background is as a gotcha political blogger, and he has matured into a stern, official-sounding voice, censorious and moralistic.

Other than meeting at the Waverly dinner, I do not know the Uber people, except as an often grateful consumer of their services. I do know, however, that it was a convivial evening, and that Smith's portrait is at odds with the event. In fact, Smith's article rather obviously misrepresents it. The article implies that the Michael remarks were to the dinner itself, heard by everyone, and unchallenged, instead of a conversation that no one else knew had occurred. Indeed, Smith, peculiarly, is the author of the BuzzFeed article that describes these remarks, but refers just to an unnamed BuzzFeed editor as attending the event—depersonalizing the encounter. Not one-on-one, but somehow more serious and official. Hence, more newslike, I suppose. Scarier.

Of course Smith himself could have dealt with the issue on the spot and tested his story. Uber's CEO was there and taking questions. Smith could have confronted him. But that would have complicated the story: employee mouths off, CEO says balderdash, or even dresses him down. Perhaps. (Curiously, Smith made no mention of his conversation with Michael to me after the dinner.)

Or instead of labeling Michael's remarks in such OMG, shock-shocked, clickbait fashion, Smith, or a more skillful writer, might have located them with greater precision on the broader spectrum of meaning and emotion. After all, how likely is it that a company planning to investigate reporters is going to divulge this to a reporter, even in an off-the-record conversation? If you believe that, there are many worthless tech companies I could sell you. So if he did not literally mean we're going to spy on the press, then what was Michael trying to say?

Uber is one of those companies that has grown so fast and promises to be so transformative that it has seemed to think it might avoid the hard and, I'm sure, often distasteful job of maintaining good relations with the press. Apple and Microsoft have been guilty of such oversight—what we in the press call arrogance—in their time. Now Uber finds itself angry and frustrated, sensing that the media, and especially the tech media, is an insiders game of cultivated relationships and careful stroking that it does not know how to play. It certainly is all that, a bad movie plot of secretly and cannily aligned interests.

Various of the notable journalism brands in tech media have rather assumed the power of Hollywood gossips of old, Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper-ish. Sarah Lacy, who Michael singled out for particular vituperation, is well known for the rewards and punishments she doles out to supporters and detractors. The technology and Internet press, earnest, righteous and toxic, exists on a far different basis than the traditional press, but is ever-more powerful because the traditional press follows gullibly and desperately behind it, including a The New York Times' front-page follow-up on the dinner, wholly absent any new information.

BuzzFeed itself — a financial play as much as Uber is — has key investors who are investors in Uber's main competitor, Lyft. Those investors are, too, investors in PandoDaily. Does this have any bearing at all on the cost of tea in China? I don't know. But I know that little in this world is what it seems.

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