So Wired News does an article on increased transparency at Microsoft, mainly covering their Channel 9 site. Someone at Microsoft mistakenly sends Fred Vogelstein, the author of the story, a confidential internal dossier about how the company is managing the story internally. It covers who’s talking to Vogelstein, what they’re telling him, and how likely it is that they will be able to make sure that the story presents the message Microsoft wants delivered. It’s sort of the corporate version of the Scooter Libby trial and further illustrates how journalists and their subjects attempt to game one another. Wired editor provides some background on the memo, and you can find the memo itself here (it’s a PDF). The memo even reveals that Microsoft planned ahead of time to get Wired to write the story in the first place. In the end, Microsoft got the story they wanted published, so even in spite of the memo being leaked before the story was finished, their plan was a total success.

Fascinating stuff.