The Opinion

Yahoo Mess: More Proof That Media Companies Don’t Know Anything About Dealing with the Media

And so it ends. This morning, All Things D’s Kara Swisher — whose stories about Yahoo’s crisis over the widely-circulated but false statement that its new CEO Scott Thompson earned a degree in computer science have made for compelling reading — reported that Thompson was stepping down. Yahoo has now confirmed it. The company has named veteran Internet executive Ross Levinsohn as interim CEO and said it’s allowing dissident stockholder Dan Loeb and two of his associates onto its board.

The whole saga began back on May 3rd when Loeb sent a letter to Yahoo disclosing the questionable status of Thompson’s computer-science degree, which was mentioned in his official Yahoo biography and had been listed in SEC filings.

(MORE: Match the Yahoo Memos with the Pollyannish Sentiments, 2007-2012)

If you’re fond of Yahoo and rooting for it to reverse its fortunes — as I am — it’s a relief to see Thompson go. The once-mighty web company has suffered from a bizarre string of humiliating episodes dating back at least to February of 2008, when it failed to agree to Microsoft’s extremely generous, never-to-be-equaled takeover bid. If it had allowed Thompson to stay in place, it couldn’t have moved past the current disaster. And even if Thompson’s claim that he didn’t insert the bogus credential into his biography is true, the notion that he never noticed it over the course of more than a decade strains credulity to the breaking point.

Among other things, the Thompson disaster is a reminder that media companies such as Yahoo are often truly incompetent when it comes to something they should theoretically know better than anybody: dealing with the media in times of crisis.

When Loeb first accused Thompson of fudging his résumé, Yahoo blithely issued a statement which said that the false computer-science degree was “an inadvertent error” — like there’s any other kind? — and praised Thompson’s background and leadership. At that point, shortly after Loeb lobbed his bombshell, there’s no way that anyone at Yahoo other than Thompson could have known what was going on; the company should have declined comment other than to say it was looking into the matter and would report back later.

It then let Thompson send two inevitably-leaked memos to Yahoo employees in which he gave a classic non-apology and told them not to pay attention to the mess; both of the missives made Thompson and Yahoo look worse than they would have if he had said nothing at all. And then Thompson’s “explanation” — hey, it was somebody else’s fault! — was leaked, spurring Yahoo’s headhunter to release an angry rebuttal.