Came acros this article today regarding the drop in shares of Apple with a rumour that Steve Jobs ahd a heart attack. The rumour is as follows
Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER just a few hours ago after suffering a major heart attack. I have an insider who tells me that paramedics were called after Steve claimed to be suffering from severe chest pains and shortness of breath. My source has opted to remain anonymous, but he is quite reliable. I haven’t seen anything about this anywhere else yet, and as of right now, I have no further information, so I thought this would be a good place to start. If anyone else has more information, please share it.
This brought about 2 conerns on my part. Firstly, its that this rumour was sparked by citizen journalism. Secondly, should a company’s reputation be so intrinsically linked to the CEO?
Regarding the first point, i did a post on citizen journalism a while back and it was amazing to see the shift in power was not only going to consumers in a marketing and communicaitons perspective, but rather the fact that they have control of the kind of news they can publish. However, this rumour sparked off by citizen journalism is terrible. It undermines the credibility in which news by citizen journalism is being published. Do they just push tabloid news which are based on rumours which are completly false? Thats y i did the post on the blogosphere becoming the next tabloid and the ehtical guidelines blogging should have to prevent such a thing from happeneing!
The second concern was how a CEO should be linked with the company’s reputation so tightly. I mean, the CEO is just a figurehead who can be replaced at anytime with someone with equal capabilities. It doesn’t mean if Steve Job dies, Apple is gonna shut down. They’ve already built such a great brand and although their CEO is an extremely great presenter, my concern is ‘Should Apple’s reputation have such a great dependence on their CEO?’
I did the post on Asian CEOs and online videos, stating how i tot it would be good for Asain companies to use their CEOs like how Apple uses Steve Jobs. However, shouldn’t we draw a line on the dependence of a CEO for the company’s reputation?
But Tech Crunch gave a good reccomendation at the end of their article stating that it would be good if a heir is named to the Apple throne. This would definetly ease the worry of shareholders and other stakeholders.
So a dip in Apple shares has brought out some profound effects for me to think about…
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