No Quid Pro Quo by You\'re the Boss Writer, but Intrigue, Anyway

Ed Zitron may not be the savviest public relations person around. When he e-mailed a New York Times business editor, he asked for the strictest anonymity about his complaint: that a writer for the You're the Boss small-business blog was demanding money as a trade for mentioning his clients.

But he also sent a copy of that e-mail to the public editor. My office's automated e-mail response informs senders that their e-mail may be printed, and says, in essence, please tell us now if you don't want that to happen. (We, of course, comply with those requests.) He never did.

So while he spoke anonymously to Gawker to make his alarming complaint - which that Web site made much of earlier this week - I was able to interview him, on the record, by phone on Tuesday. I also spoke to the blogger, Cliff Oxford, and to Loren Feldman, the editor of the You're the Boss blog.

Accusations flew about. Mr. Zitron, who says that for about a year he has run a “one-man shop” public relations agency, claims that Mr. Oxford demanded a quid pro quo. (Mr. Zitron's credibility may not be gold-plated: for example, his Web site says Ez-Pr operates “out of New York City,” but he told me that he splits his time between suburban New Jersey and North Carolina - which is, quite literally I suppose, “out of New York City.”)

“From the word go, I was always talking about coverage,” Mr. Zitron said. The deal, as he came to understand it, was essentially this: Mr. Oxford would write about Mr. Zitron's clients if his expenses, and maybe more, were paid in trade. Such an arrangement would be in complete opposition to The Times's guidelines for ethical journalism. At first, he said, things went well. “I was really happy. I thought I was going to get my clients in The New York Times.”

But when they couldn't come to terms because Mr. Oxford was demanding more, Mr. Zitron said he felt he needed to go public with what he now saw as an ethical lapse. “I was getting freaked out” by the escalating demands, he told me.

Mr. Oxford and his editor said that none of that was ever the case, and an e-mail chain backs them up, if imperfectly.

In his role as a business consultant for the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs, Mr. Oxford said he considered taking on Mr. Zitron's tech start-up clients but ultimately rejected them. He is adamant that there was never any discussion of a payoff or trade for writing about the companies in the Times blog nor would he ever do such a thing, he said.

But, to my mind, he wasn't clear enough about that in his correspondence. And in his interview with me, some of Mr. Oxford's statements strained the belief that he is a straight shooter.

For example, he told me with a flat no that he doesn't find his association with The Times's small business blog helpful in his consulting business.

“I don't want to mix the two at all, “ he said. However, the home page of his Web site prominently features two references to his Times writing: several of his blog posts are featured there and, separately, viewers see a link to the You're the Boss blog.

As another example of this tendency, Mr. Oxford at first denied that he had threatened this week to sue Mr. Zitron. I asked because Mr. Zitron sent me an e-mail from Mr. Oxford that read: “You are deliberately falsifying information since your companies did not get free ride with Oxford Center. You are running a smear campaign and we will address in a judicial proceeding. We are looking right now into appropriate venue. It also appears you altered e-mails. Please do not erase anything on your hard drive.” When I pressed Mr. Oxford, he admitted to “a little too much passion” in his correspondence.

Mr. Feldman, who came to The Times from Inc. magazine and has run the blog for four years, understands the difficulties of asking business people who are not professional journalists to be his writing staff.

“The challenges are real, they're significant and I lose sleep over them,” he told me. But he believes that the blog's content offers something to small business owners that they can't get elsewhere: the expertise of more experienced small businesspeople, and the willingness to join discussions and share their stories. The blog's 232,000 Twitter followers (@NYTsmallbiz) suggest that many find it valuable. Mr. Feldman told me that he makes it clear to his writers that they must avoid conflicts of interest.

The blog “sometimes takes us into gray areas,” he said, “but this wasn't one of them.”

In the end, I don't believe that Mr. Oxford demanded payment for a write-up in the Times blog. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary.

In the very e-mails quoted in Gawker, Mr. Oxford wrote: “I would like to be very clear that this trip is for my own understanding and I am not representing NYT this time.” That's clear enough. But then, muddying the waters, he added, “If I see a worthy story, I will engage in that capacity.”

Given Mr. Zitron's behavior and Mr. Oxford's lack of clarity, the situation was troubled from the start. Let's err on the side of mercy and call it a misunderstanding.