By Richard Koman for

Nick Denton has been furiously following up on his Friday scoop that Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff had Wall Street Journal reporter Pui-Wing Tam (one of the several reporters tailed by HP) arrested when she tried to get close to the five-acre estate he's building on the Big Island.

Denton says that Benioff also flew to New York with a money-looking fellow Journal reporters assumed to be a lawyer, specifically to "brow-beat" top brass about the reporter's activities. Denton offers no details of that meeting but plenty of speculation that the meeting was responsible for the fact that the Tam's story makes no mention of the incident. To be clear, Denton is accusing the Journal of squashing that part of the story out of some sort of gentlemen's agreement with Benioff.

That the accusation is the wildest of speculation based on the thinest of evidence is apparent from Denton's own words:

It's not clear whether Benioff's visit to the Journal's headquarters came before publication, [if] he [was] trying to head off publication, or at least mention of the incident; or, less likely, that the visit came after publication, and an effort to head off further such intrusive coverage. ...

The Journal, and [managing editor Paul] Steiger in particular, deal with aggrieved CEOs on a regular basis. The usual tactic is to be mollifying, without making any firm commitments. These discussions are generally off-the-record, so the paper would not normally feel able to disclose the fact of the conversation, or the content of Benioff's complaint. The paper, also, tries to keep its reporter's personalities, and their subjective personal experiences, out of the way of the story. However, the arrest of a reporter would be unusual enough normally to pierce even the Journal's usual discretion. ...

I suppose Valleywag is still looking to hire that seasoned reporter with strong journalistic instincts....