“NEVER pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,” Mark Twain famously warned. The question is whether that wisdom holds true in the digital age, particularly when the guy picking the fight has a seemingly unlimited supply of electrons. What’s clear is that Elon Musk is not someone to readily brook criticism. A few years back, for instance, the co-founder of PayPal, an online payment service, and, more recently, the founder of Tesla Motors, a maker of battery-powered cars, went to war with the BBC over a story on the cheeky Top Gear, a wildly popular car show. He ultimately lost. What’s not clear is who came out on top in Mr Musk’s latest media brawl. This one pitted him against one of the world’s most powerful and influential newspapers, the New York Times. Last month it ran a report by John Broder that detailed his drive from Washington, DC, to Boston in one of the carmaker’s new Model S sedans. What seemed to have short-circuited Mr Musk was a shot showing the electric vehicle being loaded onto a flatbed truck after running out of juice. Initially, Mr Musk called the reporter to apologise for the inconvenience. But then he fired off a series of angry tweets, which declared the Times article a “fake”. He insisted that Mr Broder made a number of errors not only in how he handled the drive, but in the subsequent review, touching off an increasingly fractious he-said/she-said flap. Predictably, mainstream media outlets largely sided with the Times, whereas new media and electric-vehicle proponents were more willing to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt.

To win the fight, Mr Musk lobbed the big grenade: he revealed that Mr Broder’s journey was silently monitored by an onboard “black box”, a digital tool which Tesla activates whenever a journalist does a review. Mr Musk produced a chart purporting to back up his claims that the Times correspondent was responsible for the battery shortfall, not the car itself.

For her part, the public editor of the Times, Margaret Sullivan, first insisted that Tesla’s version of the story “was not necessarily an accurate portrayal of what happened.” But she then issued something of a mea culpa. “I am convinced that [Mr Broder] took on the test drive in good faith, and told the story as he experienced it. Did he use good judgment along the way? Not especially,” concluded her statement.

At any rate, Tesla was not ready to give up the good fight. It offered a number of other media outlets, including CNN and NBC, two TV broadcasters, the chance to duplicate the drive.

With most electric vehicles typically delivering less than 100 miles per charge and taking the better part of a day to recharge, driving from DC to Boston would normally be a days-long chore. But Tesla had originally encouraged Mr Broder to take the trip: an add-on battery pack would extend the car’s range to as much as 300 miles and “Supercharger” stations, which the firm is setting up along both America’s East and West Coasts, would cut recharging times to an hour or so. While this is a lot longer than it takes to fill a tank with petrol, it is quick enough to make the 450-mile journey in one day.

That is, of course, only if one follows the rules. A Tesla spokesperson failed to provide a detailed list of the instructions drivers are given, but it is clear that such a drive requires careful attention to detail: no speeding, in some cases not even passing a slower car. On the frigid day Mr Broder did his trip it also meant keeping the electric heater on “chilly". (The other reporters made it without incident, further embarrassing the Times.)

But Mr Musk cannot claim complete victory. In an appearance on Bloomberg TV, he lamented that the well-publicised battle led “a few 100” customers to cancel their orders for the Model S. That would not be a problem considering “they have buyers lined up 10 deep,” in the words of Jim Hall of 2953 Analytics, a market research firm. But the dispute made a big dent in Tesla’s market capitalisation—about $100m, according to Mr Musk.

Yet it was not the only reason for the plunge. The Times story came out just before Tesla reported a loss of $89.9m for the fourth quarter of 2012—a tenth more than in the same period a year earlier. Mr Musk promised that Tesla would claw its way back into the black during the current quarter. Just as potential buyers are left to figure out if the Model S can really live up to its range claims, investors will have to wait to see if Tesla can deliver on its financial numbers.