Why Did the Vanity Fair Lost Decade Story Stick?
The Vanity Fair lost decade story stuck because every reporter kept citing it in interviews with Microsoft for four years. Frank X. Shaw says facts are easy to dispute and narratives are sticky, so an inaccurate narrative has to be fought harder and faster.
Kurt Eichenwald came to Microsoft early in Frank X. Shaw's tenure and said he was writing a Vanity Fair story about a lost decade at the company. Pieces in Vanity Fair were rare, and Shaw calls Eichenwald a quirky individual. Eichenwald said that if he did not get the interviews he wanted, he would write a hit piece. Shaw told him a Vanity Fair assignment does not work that way. It did, and Eichenwald wrote a well done hit piece. The first mistake was waiting too long to escalate to the Vanity Fair team. The second was underestimating the impact once the story was out. It did not appear to get much traction. A couple of follow-on stories ran, Microsoft got no follow-on inquiries, and the piece did not feel present in the popular consciousness.
Vanity Fair was something every reporter read. The story became part of the perceived narrative of the company, and every interview for the next four years referenced the lost decade. Shaw says he should have seen a sticky narrative that needed to be fought. He made the same argument later on LinkedIn.
