Globe and Mail recently made headlines with one of their articles titled, “Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt“, this article was a deeply researched article with inside information regarding such a private company that Forbes questioned writers Sean Silcoff And Jacquie McNish about their article, they responded.
See questions:
Q: This article was perhaps the most comprehensive I’ve seen discussing the story of BlackBerry’s downward spiral. How long did it take to work on and how many reporters were involved?
A: A team of reporters spent many months talking to sources, going back to 2012. But our reporting really accelerated once the company announced its strategic review in the first half of August. In total, six reporters contributed to this story.
Q: In this time of newspaper budget cutbacks, why was the Globe willing to invest that effort into the story?
A: Despite the challenges facing the newspaper industry, the Globe and Mail remains, as ever, devoted to delivering the highest quality journalism. This is what the industry is built upon, and will be the foundation of our success going forward.
Q: You two led the story. There were a number of contributions you made to the discussion of BlackBerry such as getting comments from Balsillie on the record. Which contributions are you most proud of?
A: We felt this was the best opportunity to answer a lot of questions people continue to have about BlackBerry, even after the intense media coverage it has received. We wanted to put some key events in context, including the significance of the failure of Storm and how that created an opening for Google and Android. The fact Mr. Balsillie resigned over the SMS 2.0 strategy also sheds new light on a bold strategy that could have transformed the company – but also had many doubters.
Another critical point was our examination of just how much time passed between the arrival of the iPhone and the arrival of BlackBerry 10. You could argue Blackberry 10 was the company’s true response to the iPhone, but it came six years later. Exploring why that took so long reveals a lot about just how difficult it is to compete in this business, and how BlackBerry’s internal challenges contributed to that. Finally, the debate over whether the company should lead with a full touchscreen smartphone or a model with a keyboard this year speaks to just how divided the company had become.
Q: How many RIM employees or directors (past or present) would you estimate you spoke to in the course of the research for the
article?
A: We spoke with about two dozen people we would describe as past or present “BlackBerry insiders.”
Q: There are several critics of your article who say you guys were a PR mouthpiece for the former co-CEOs. That they wanted to rewrite history to look favorable to them. How do you address that criticism and how did you try to guard against being used by any of your sources?
A: Blackberry’s enormous global success and recent failures have inspired a passionate debate about media coverage of the company for years. There are just as many critics who say The Globe has been unduly negative in its coverage of RIM and its former executives as there are those who say we are too gentle. The debate reflects the sharply divided camps that exist to this day over the company’s rise and fall, and we certainly didn’t let any of the three CEOs off the hook in terms of their roles in the firm’s decline.
If we have one regret, it is that Thorsten Heins declined our request for a sit-down interview. He did provide written responses to some questions, but his voice would have greatly added to our story.
Q: Some have said selling BBM to carriers as SMS 2.0 would have been like selling an ISP a new type of email. Therefore this idea was doomed. What would its proponents say to that?
Pretty interesting set of questions and answers, head on over to Forbes to continue reading the interview.
Photo credit : Globe and Mail