In a must read, The New York Observer’s John Koblin writes about a low boil feud between the Wall Street Journal and CNBC. And this is apparently why…

According to a spokesperson at Estée Lauder, The Journal and WWD agreed to run their semi-exclusives on Friday, Nov. 9. It’s a huge story for WWD, which follows the fortunes of Estée Lauder daily; and for The Journal, the opportunity to break big fashion-industry news rated a B1 placement.

But the day before stories were to run, The Journal forwarded an advance copy of its piece to CNBC. A CNBC anchor, whom nobody interviewed by The Observer would name, then sent the piece to a Lauder executive’s BlackBerry, the Lauder spokesperson said.

Irate at seeing the story in circulation before the agreed-upon embargo date, the Lauder public-relations department (which said it has “great respect for CNBC and The Journal”) gave WWD permission to jump the schedule and publish the news on its Web site just after 6 p.m., beating The Journal, a WWD spokesperson said.

______________

Since the Estée Lauder incident, according to two sources familiar with the relationship, The Journal has cut back significantly on the amount of final copy it volunteers to the cable network in advance. (One of those sources said that the cable network can still get copies of stories if they request them specifically.)

CNBC, meanwhile, contends that all problems are now resolved.

“We continue to work well with The Wall Street Journal,” said Brian Steel, spokesman for CNBC.