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Comment by andymboyle | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to know how Dave Winer expects a new biographer to get the same amount of access to Steve Jobs as Walter Isaacson did. It's hard to interview someone 40 times if, you know, you can't.

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Just because a biographer had access to the subject doesn't mean the biography is necessarily better. "Authorized" biographies are notorious for slanting favorably towards their subjects, papering over their flaws and building up their good points.

Sometimes that's just a byproduct of spending a lot of time with someone; you can't spend all those hours with a person without starting to see things at least a little the same way they do. Other times it's a condition they had to agree to in order to get that access in the first place.

Which is why so much of this stuff turns on the reputation of the biographer. An authorized biography by a hack is unlikely to have much merit. The presumption is that Walter Isaacson (a) cares very much about his reputation and (b) stakes it on this biography.

You can't call this biography "slanted" without suggesting that Isaacson sold himself out. He may have, but that's a serious accusation.

I'm not calling this biography slanted -- how would I know, I haven't even read it yet -- I'm challenging the assertion that a biography written with access to the subject is automatically better than one written without it.

It's not automatically better. It's simply an asset of the book, to be weighed among other assets against whatever liabilities it may have.

Well said, to both commenters above me. Access has both pros and cons.

By "source materials" presumably he means the raw transcripts of the interviews, etc. Which doesn't seem too likely but it's at least possible.

And under what obligation is Isaacson or his publisher supposed to give the raw transcripts of any interviews he did with anyone for the book?

I would assume none. But I also assume it doesn't hurt to ask. :-)

I would assume they're actually under obligation to not release them. Most people that sit down for these things would rather every word they've spoken does not see the light of day.

Interestingly enough, the reports make it sounds like both Jobs and his wife want everything to be told as is.

I would expect he is under no legal obligation. But he ought feel a professional obligation to history that others may be able to use the recordings/transcripts to draw their own conclusions. He is a biographer, after all; he never got to interview Einstein, he had to rely on the records of others that were preserved. That doesn't mean the transcripts must be released immediately, but I would expect that others will eventually have access.

How often does this actually happen? I'm not altogether that knowledgeable in this area, as I am neither a biographer nor a historian. But I don't know where the "professional obligation to history" comes from. He's making a commercial product, not doing a research paper for a public university.

And sure, it'd be nice to see his source material eventually. But I'd rather see the coherent package of his research in a narrative book form rather than his notes. I'll trust Isaacson to tell the story of Steve Jobs through his own interpretation, as that is all that a biography can be.

I'm not an expert, either, and I don't know of much precedent for interviews like this with an individual author being publicly released (say, on the web, rather than in a university archive), but private archival materials are used by historians and biographers all the time. I don't know whether Isaacson or his publisher own the rights, but I'm sure others will ask for access in the future.

I'm not sure about characterizing a biography as a "commercial product"; although although it is the source of the author's livelihood, and the publisher is a for-profit entity, it is a complex entity as a product. The author depends in this livelihood in having access to materials from others, it is not unreasonable to think he may reciprocate in some circumstances. In any case, in future years (after the initial sales peak of the bio), releasing the source documents may even cause a revival of interest that helps residual sales.

> How often does this actually happen?

It happens. Example: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/us/12jackie.html?pagewante...

Yes, that's what I meant. I bet there are recordings too. It would be enormously selfish to keep those for himself, but I agree with you that it's unlikely. However, by asking for it, it seems to increase the likelihood that it will happen, however slightly. The question should be raised. Maybe after Isaacson dies he'll will them to a museum, library or university.

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