Real Journalists May Have Lost Touch with IT Reality
March 9, 2010
Keep in mind that the addled goose’s Web log, which you are now reading, is a marketing vehicle. It contains on good days old news. On bad days, the addled goose recycles his own talks which he delivers for tacos and Pepsis. I am not a journalist and I don’t pretend to be one. I am not even a public relations person. As I approach 66, I entertain myself capturing information that I otherwise would forget and documenting my thoughts, which are subject to change. When was the last time, a 65 year old could remember where he or she put the keys to the automobile? See what I mean.
When I read the Cnet write up about a post I saw last week, I thought, “CBS’s real journalists are now thinking about themselves in a meta-way.” Navigate to “Has Business Press Lost Touch with the Tech Industry?” CBS is a real company and it does real news. Cnet is a real news outfit, if I understand set theory. The point is that an azure chip outfit called ITDatabase figured out that the real journalists are writing about topics that are popular. I think this is using humans the way Google uses popularity algorithms. I am sure the “real” journalists would disagree. That’s okay.
For me, the most interesting passage in the write up in Cnet was:
Enterprise IT is woefully underrepresented, despite being the cash-cow in the industry. “In the overall editorial agenda,” the report says, “enterprise IT is treated like consumer tech’s snaggletoothed twin. It barely even makes the family photo.”
Let’s think about this statement.
First, publicly traded companies are covered with a bit of fancy geometry by the investment analysts tracking these companies. The information is usually able to deliver a couple of nuggets. The reason is that most of the analysts talk to people * other than public relations * and * business development officers *. Most of the real journalists recycle familiar contacts, preferring to quote names the writer assumes the readers will recognize. So when the word “search” appears in a story the same handful of “experts’ get quoted. The result is that the stories really don’t change too much from article to article. Google is an advertising company. Bing is gaining share. Autonomy is the leader in enterprise search. The statements in the article are true because they are in the article. Tautology meets routine.
Second, figuring out what is going on in a technology field is tough for three reasons. [a] The jargon is impenetrable. A “real” journalist may not have the time to figure out what the words mean. Example: faceted search or taxonomy. [b] The sources are often running the game plan. Take a look at the comments by tech leaders. There are buzzwords and a jab or two at a windmill. Not much substance because the focus is the sound bite. [c] A tech company sells products that a really complex. The wizards at the company cannot be trusted to answer a question because the wizard might point out that a specific feature is different from the function described by the marketing person. Guess who gets in trouble? The tech person so there folks are shuttled away from the lights and the cameras.
Third, I heard that publishing companies are getting rid of staff. The numbers quoted at a conference last week struck me as pretty high. The person pointed out that newspapers were shedding jobs at the rate of 1,000 per month. Wow. What will be left? What’s left, if this number is accurate, are people who have to write from news releases, contacts who are warm and familiar, and topics that are listed on Tweetmeme.
When the money goes away, algorithms will do this work and, of course, folks with time on their hands like this addled goose. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2010
No one paid me to write about how I write this blog. Wait. If I buy myself lunch this afternoon, I will be getting paid. I will report the write-for-food angle to the FCC.
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
