Why my book about Marissa Mayer uses so much anonymous sourcing
At the top of my list was Ken Auletta, the staff writer for The New Yorker, who has written several books about the industry, including "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It."
Auletta read my book. He even said he liked it. But he wasn't willing to blurb it - not until I answered a few questions.
Mainly, Auletta wanted to know why book used so much anonymous sourcing. He said he understood why Bob Woodward had to use it when writing his books about the White House - national security concerns and all that.
Why did a relatively down-the-middle account of a famous tech executive need to be so protective?
At some length, I explained my reasoning. I told him about Yahoo and Mayer's efforts to silence my sources.
When I was done, Auletta said: Great. You should write that explanation down and put it in the book.
Also, he said, put in that part about how you spent so much time in California doing reporting.
I did what Auletta said. Today, you can see Auletta's eventual blurb on Amazon.
Here's what I wrote down, and what appears in the book:
A note on sources
This book is based primarily on firsthand reporting. That reporting included hundreds of interviews with more than a hundred sources with firsthand experience of the events described. I also obtained dozens of internal Yahoo documents. I have covered Google, Yahoo, and Marissa Mayer as a beat reporter since 2006. I specifically began reporting on this story in October 2012. Since then, I visited California several times to meet with sources for this story. In April 2014, I spent two weeks living in Palo Alto, California, meeting with people who knew Marissa Mayer from their work and social lives.
This book is heavily reliant on anonymous sourcing. I would like to explain why.
When I first began working on this project, I reached out to Yahoo and Marissa Mayer, seeking their cooperation. Months and many emails later, I was told it would not be coming. It never did. I frequently attempted to change this through emails and phone calls throughout the process. The last time I heard from Yahoo public relations about the book was when I asked if Yahoo would like to help me fact check it. Yahoo PR told me: "We don't plan on participating in the book, including fact checking." Finally, when I completed my first draft, I offered to go over the facts reported in this book, if only as a courtesy. I never heard back.
Not only did Yahoo PR and Mayer not participate, each told Yahoo employees, former Yahoo employees, personal friends, former colleagues, current colleagues, and admirers not to speak with me for the book.
The reason I used anonymous sourcing was that I needed those kinds of people to speak with me to get the unbiased (either way) truth about Yahoo and Marissa Mayer. Mayer is a very powerful person and Yahoo is a very powerful company in Silicon Valley. Many of my sources only agreed to speak with me on the condition that Mayer and Yahoo never find out they did. Many of the sources who provided me documents and agreed to be interviewed by me did so at the risk of their careers inside Yahoo, Google, and around the Internet industry.
And so, to protect those people, and to tell this story in a flowing, narrative fashion, I have not identified the sources of information for particular facts in this book, including thoughts and dialogue. I have not identified many on-the-record sources, because I did not want to allow the process of elimination to identify others.
I would caution readers against assuming that because I have reported a person's thoughts, that person is a direct source. A person will often share thoughts about pivotal moments in their lives with a large group of people-sometimes with other reporters, in front of large audiences or TV cameras.
The quoted dialogue in this book was carefully constructed from interviews, transcripts, and prior reports. Dialogue not in quotes should be considered a paraphrase of what was actually said.
This book would not have its level of detail without relying on years of work by other writers and reporters. I have outlined the reporting this book draws from, by chapter, in a bibliography. I am most especially in debt to the work of Karen Angel, Kara Swisher, Patricia Sellers, and Steven Levy.