Fake Steve Continues Live On Forbes! Yeah FSJ
08.08.07 - 05:02pm
The Fake Steve blogger was finally outed over a year after his debut into comical satire, writing as a pretend Steve Jobs and touting the much loved names of Beastmaster (Bill Gates) Uncle Fester (Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer), My Little Pony (Sun boss Jonathan Schwartz), Squirrel Boy (Google boss Eric Schmidt), The Clintstones (Bill and Hillary), Woz (Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak), Bono, (Al Gore) and many more
For 14 months reporters searched for FSJ (Fake Steve Jobs) and over 700,000 tuned into his blog. In the end FSJ was finally outed by Brad Stone from the New York Times. It turned out the blogger was none other than another reporter for a top magazine, Forbes writer Daniel Lyons, who said he was surprised at how long it took for people to discover him.
Perhaps everyone just loved the hilarious wit of his pieces too much and were afraid it would disappear once he was outed. But alas that is not the case! Now that he has been outed FSJ, much to Apple’s chagrin, is not going away but is instead being taken into the right into the heartbeat of the Forbes online version of the magazine.
Why would Forbes risk Apple’s undying wrath to keep the blog going? Well they simply have nothing to loose. As reported by Wall Street Journal Apple is well known for playing favorites and holding longstanding grudges in the media allowing only a select number of reporters form Newsweek, Time, Fortune, Business Week, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times access to their executives and secrets.
Forbes is one of the ones shut out and what is the grudge Apple has against them? Well, it would appear to date clear back to 1996, over 10 years ago - (do the same reporters even work there?) when Forbes ran a cover in December featuring then-Apple Chief Executive Gil Amelio predicting him as a visionary that would revitalize the company by purchasing the Be operating system. Instead a week after the article was published Apple bought NeXT Steve Jobs startup.
Apple decided they hated the cover (of course - a cover featuring Steve Jobs nemesis right before he takes over - looks like Forbes is out till Jobs retires and then it will probably be placed somewhere in Apple’s code of employment “no talking to Forbes”) thus ever since then Forbes has been shut off from Apple and left to flounder like a fish out of water as far as anything Apple goes.
Irregardless of the shut out Forbes has now found it’s own golden pond to swim around in, a pond rich in Apple nuggets and they aren’t about to let it go. As far as Forbes is concerned? Well publisher Rich Karlgaard simply said, “I think it is the most brilliant caricature of an important part of American culture that I’ve seen. We’re really proud that he’s one of ours.”
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