24/7 Wall St.

Over the weekend, a Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) public relations department manager, Jonathan Sandler, decided to mount a personal attack on a 24/7 Wall St. writer for an analysis of the number of store closures the retailer would have to announce this year, in our Eight Retailers That Will Close the Most Stores.

Best Buy asked that we run a statement about its store closing intentions, and we did, while objecting to the company’s statement as arbitrary. That is when Best Buy brought in heavy artillery and said we were reaching for our “henry blodget moment” and described the author as “frustrated, wannabe analyst.”

The full Best Buy reaction:

with all due respect, how could you say disingenuous?  as i mentioned in my previous email, and as you already know, best buy has not made any announcements re store closures, outside of the 50 we announced last spring & the canadian ones last week.  for you to then speculate “200-250” is irresponsible and random.  if you have inquiries/questions, all you have to do is call us.  otherwise, it seems to me, like perhaps you’re a frustrated, wannabe analyst, who’s trying to have his henry blodget moment.  you know better, doug — it’s just lazy journalism — quoting 3rd party sources and reading our 10k, without reaching out to us as well.  in the future, please call us and we’ll be happy to put you in touch with whomever we can.  in the meantime, who ya got — ravens or niners?  am actually bummed that i won’t get to see ray lewis’s squirrel dance one last time as not being introduced individually.  & please look out for best buy’s awesome commercial — airing in 1st quarter!

And later:

it’s all good, doug, thank you.  i was just confused as to why you couldn’t take our statement at face value, rather than call it disingenuous.  and i still don’t understand why you persisted with the “200-250” store numbers (& where you got them from?) — which we never stated, and which you didn’t ask us for comment on.  re the henry blodget/wannabe analyst comments — just meant to it to be light, good-natured ribbing — certainly not personal, i don’t even know you — in fact, i would love to sit down with you one day — with your background, i am sure i could learn a lot from you — you probably have some fascinating stories to tell, and i would benefit greatly from hearing them.  but please, in future, before printing speculation, it would be nice if you could call us first for comment, that’s all.  thank you, doug…

Three more comments from 24/7: many of us did not see that Super Bowl commercial, Henry Blodget does not deserve the insult and the ribbing is not “good natured.”