Columnist Severs PC Connection

Will Zachmann Says Editors Wanted Advertiser-Friendly Copy

By Howard Kurtz
The Washington Post

July 7, 1992

William Zachmann, one of the most popular pundits in the techno-speak subculture of personal computing, has been churning out regular columns for PC Week and PC Magazine for four years.

But Zachmann pulled the plug on the Fourth of July, saying it was time to declare his independence from the PC Week editors who, he says, were pressuring him to write more favorably about Microsoft. The software firm is one of the largest advertisers in the magazines, which are published by Ziff-Davis.

"I have been subjected to improper pressure ... to please a major advertiser," Zachmann said yesterday. "This is well over 50 percent of my income I am kissing goodbye here. But I just decided it was time to take a stand."

Michael Edelhart, a Ziff-Davis vice president, called the charge "dumb" and "categorically untrue," saying: "Will's column was becoming very strident and somewhat monomaniacal in writing the same thing {about Microsoft software} every week. It was droning repetition. ... He lost his audience and was resisting ordinary editorial advice."

Said PC Week Editor-in-Chief Sam Whitmore, "Is Microsoft pressuring us? The answer is absolutely not."

Microsoft Vice President Jonathan Lazarus said that "we were concerned about some of the mis-facts that Mr. Zachmann peppered his columns with. They were discussed with people at PC Week and with Will. We did not request or pressure Ziff-Davis to fire Will or change anything he wrote. We expressed our displeasure."

There has long been talk in the computer world that some computer magazines have had trouble shedding their image as boosters of the fast-growing industry. For example, Ziff-Davis and other publishers see no problem in co-sponsoring conferences with the companies they cover.

Zachmann, an industry analyst who runs his own Massachusetts firm, says he ran into trouble for criticizing Microsoft's Windows software and defending a rival version, OS/2, made by IBM. Microsoft has seven pages of ads in the current PC Week, compared with three for IBM.

In April, after directing him to focus his writing on Windows and OS/2, Whitmore told Zachmann he was unhappy with the column. "There was no doubt that Sam was pressuring me about Windows," Zachmann said. "He said I was losing my credibility because of my lack of objectivity. The message was clear."

That evening, Zachmann says, he received a call from a Microsoft official, who said he had "heard I was now going to be taking a more positive view of Microsoft and Windows, and basically wanted to help with my reeducation. I cannot imagine how this could have been a coincidence. I was dumbfounded."

Zachmann says his editors raised no objection when he found fault with the IBM software in a recent column. But when he criticized Windows two weeks later, Zachmann says, PC Week Editor Eric Lundquist told him he "had a problem" with the column and asked him to rewrite it.

Lundquist said he simply asked, "Where did you get those facts? Do you really feel comfortable in those claims?"

Zachmann announced his September departure on a computer bulletin board, prompting a rash of messages. One PC Magazine columnist called the situation "an outrage" and "really demoralizing."

Copyright 1992