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Tech Journalism is Broken

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Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#21

Post by jbrodkin »

nikcub wrote: post #14
cstross wrote: post #2

This piece understates the problem, if anything. A lot of "journalism" today consists of regurgitating press releases rather than actually reporting on issues . And a lot of tech journalists have journalism qualifications but no tech -- gone are the pioneering days when the magazines found it easier to pick up techies and give them the basic training in journalism to communicate what they understood. Consequently we…

I think you have a false nostalgia for what "old school" tech reporting was. Before web publishing and blogs, many tech magazines were nothing more than press releases and a couple of opinion pieces stapled together. It was trade press, not journalism. Amongst the cabal of editors, PR and companies the racket was positive coverage in return for access. At least today we have viable independent sources who can build a…

That's true. There was a time when it wasn't easy for regular folks to find press releases and announcements, so there were all these magazines marketed to IT pros and tech executives that just regurgitated marketing materials, and that could be perceived as being a valuable service.

Of course, some of the websites still do that :-) But you really need to add original reporting or analysis today to stand out.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#22

Post by MatthewPhillips »

klint wrote: post #20
cstross wrote: post #2

This piece understates the problem, if anything. A lot of "journalism" today consists of regurgitating press releases rather than actually reporting on issues . And a lot of tech journalists have journalism qualifications but no tech -- gone are the pioneering days when the magazines found it easier to pick up techies and give them the basic training in journalism to communicate what they understood. Consequently we…

I'm a tech journalist -- I write for both TechCrunch and Wired Enterprise. I didn't write either of those pieces mentioned, but like many other tech journalists you'll find plenty of re-writes in my portfolio. I'm speaking for myself and not from either company. But I can tell you though everyone in the industry is aware of the problem and trying to get away from re-writing to produce more original content. The probl…

So, what you're saying is that TC has the same people working on rewrites and features? Doesn't it make more sense to give the busy work to interns and let the higher paid journalists do original content?

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#23

Post by klint »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #22
klint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech journalist -- I write for both TechCrunch and Wired Enterprise. I didn't write either of those pieces mentioned, but like many other tech journalists you'll find plenty of re-writes in my portfolio. I'm speaking for myself and not from either company. But I can tell you though everyone in the industry is aware of the problem and trying to get away from re-writing to produce more original content. The probl…

So, what you're saying is that TC has the same people working on rewrites and features? Doesn't it make more sense to give the busy work to interns and let the higher paid journalists do original content?

That's no differentiation -- there's just writers. I can't speak to why that's the case -- maybe because they don't want to make anyone be the person who does nothing but crap work. I don't think anyone sets out planning to do a bunch of rewrites anyway. In my experience it just sneaks up on you "Oh, well we should probably cover this and I need a post, guess I'll just do this real quick." That's just my experience, but there's certainly no one at TC telling me to do rewrites. I guess there's also varying definitions of what constitutes a re-write -- I don't actually always depend on a press release or anyone's else's coverage for every news short news story.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#24

Post by jbrodkin »

mmvvaa wrote: post #17

Not all tech journalism is created equal - or for the same audience, for that matter. @sarahcuda at http://pandodaily.com is leading a hard battle to remain an unquestionable source of original content, investigative reporting and industry insights unseen elsewhere. Pando should not be placed in the same platter as TC, BI, Mashable or the likes. In my opinion, Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or T…

Either you work for PandoDaily or this is a very elaborate tongue-in-cheek comment. I'm certain you're the first and last person to ever say "Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or The New Yorker is to culture."

It's just a spinoff of TechCrunch in both its origins and content. It's like the Joanie Loves Chachi to Happy Days.

I'll just assume you're joking.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#25

Post by nikcub »

mjn wrote: post #16
nikcub wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a false nostalgia for what "old school" tech reporting was. Before web publishing and blogs, many tech magazines were nothing more than press releases and a couple of opinion pieces stapled together. It was trade press, not journalism. Amongst the cabal of editors, PR and companies the racket was positive coverage in return for access. At least today we have viable independent sources who can build a…

There was certainly a lot of trade press (PC World, many of the gaming magazines, etc.), but a number of the '80s and '90s tech magazines were pretty good, with independent content and reporting. For example: Byte , Dr. Dobbs , and the first 10 years of Wired come to mind.

Byte, Dr. Dobbs, MSDN mag, Builder and the early Wired I remember fondly. Reading it really felt like you were part of something special, like a private audience with some of the smartest people in the world.

Those magazines were also hard to get, I would travel by bus to a larger library in the city, or download what was available via BBS. Everything that was mainstream such as the PC mags was just complete garbage. You were lucky to get 300 words in a tech section, and even then it would be something simple like teaching a DOS single command each issue.

For me that has been replaced by HN, reddit, other aggregators and a much broader range of sources. The difference now is that there is enough high quality content that I could spend 12 hours a day reading it, whereas 15 years ago I remember I would read all the magazines within a week or so and then eagerly wait out the following 3 weeks for the next issue to arrive.

There is so much high quality content on the web now. If there is any complaint, it should be that it is difficult to find and surface. I would love a pure technical, programmer oriented community that is not news related but rather just interesting advanced tech related, picking out old good stories from those good sources or finding real gems in individual blogs.

Most online communities and aggregators are too focused on content from the past 15 minutes. Even an article published 24 hours ago is seen as 'old news'.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#26

Post by nikcub »

klint wrote: post #20
cstross wrote: post #2

This piece understates the problem, if anything. A lot of "journalism" today consists of regurgitating press releases rather than actually reporting on issues . And a lot of tech journalists have journalism qualifications but no tech -- gone are the pioneering days when the magazines found it easier to pick up techies and give them the basic training in journalism to communicate what they understood. Consequently we…

I'm a tech journalist -- I write for both TechCrunch and Wired Enterprise. I didn't write either of those pieces mentioned, but like many other tech journalists you'll find plenty of re-writes in my portfolio. I'm speaking for myself and not from either company. But I can tell you though everyone in the industry is aware of the problem and trying to get away from re-writing to produce more original content. The probl…

While I was at TC there was a hard and fast rule that if a story had already been reported on another tech blog that we wouldn't write it, even if one of the writers was 90% done on his or her version of the story.

The only time this didn't happen was when there was a pre-brief and an embargo, which we usually got a head start on anyway.

Arrington was strict on this rule and that was his editorial style. If you talk to any writer from that time period ('06-'10) they would each have a half-dozen stories to share of stories they had been working on being stopped because somebody else published the same story first. It didn't even need an instruction from editors, it was just understood.

(this isn't a comment on the 'new' Techcrunch, I actually like it, the rewrite content doesn't get in the way of good original content from being written, and it usually adds new information to a story).

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#27

Post by bl4k »

mmvvaa wrote: post #17

Not all tech journalism is created equal - or for the same audience, for that matter. @sarahcuda at http://pandodaily.com is leading a hard battle to remain an unquestionable source of original content, investigative reporting and industry insights unseen elsewhere. Pando should not be placed in the same platter as TC, BI, Mashable or the likes. In my opinion, Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or T…

the pando daily sock puppets need a lesson in subtlety

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#28

Post by jbrodkin »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #22
klint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a tech journalist -- I write for both TechCrunch and Wired Enterprise. I didn't write either of those pieces mentioned, but like many other tech journalists you'll find plenty of re-writes in my portfolio. I'm speaking for myself and not from either company. But I can tell you though everyone in the industry is aware of the problem and trying to get away from re-writing to produce more original content. The probl…

So, what you're saying is that TC has the same people working on rewrites and features? Doesn't it make more sense to give the busy work to interns and let the higher paid journalists do original content?

When you cover a beat, a lot of times there are small stories that are worthy of a few paragraphs. But you often come across those stories while researching your beat and working on longer articles. So it often makes sense to divide up resources (the time of writers) based on topic rather than story length.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#29

Post by mmvvaa »

jbrodkin wrote: post #24
mmvvaa wrote: post #17

Not all tech journalism is created equal - or for the same audience, for that matter. @sarahcuda at http://pandodaily.com is leading a hard battle to remain an unquestionable source of original content, investigative reporting and industry insights unseen elsewhere. Pando should not be placed in the same platter as TC, BI, Mashable or the likes. In my opinion, Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or T…

Either you work for PandoDaily or this is a very elaborate tongue-in-cheek comment. I'm certain you're the first and last person to ever say "Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or The New Yorker is to culture." It's just a spinoff of TechCrunch in both its origins and content. It's like the Joanie Loves Chachi to Happy Days. I'll just assume you're joking.

Sorry to disappoint, I wasn't joking. Nor am I in any way associated to Pando, Sarah, or anything related to them.

Re: Tech Journalism is Broken

#30

Post by mmvvaa »

bl4k wrote: post #27
mmvvaa wrote: post #17

Not all tech journalism is created equal - or for the same audience, for that matter. @sarahcuda at http://pandodaily.com is leading a hard battle to remain an unquestionable source of original content, investigative reporting and industry insights unseen elsewhere. Pando should not be placed in the same platter as TC, BI, Mashable or the likes. In my opinion, Pando is to tech, what The Economist is to business, or T…

the pando daily sock puppets need a lesson in subtlety

No affiliation with Pando at all. Sorry to disappoint.
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