Silicon Valley Style Journalists Want to Be Digital Peter Druckers
August 27, 2020
I wrote about the New York Times’ journalists who wrote about one another. I suggested that these “real” news professionals were taking a short cut. Boy, I mischaracterized what was happening. The problem is escalating because Silicon Valley-style journalists want to be like Peter Drucker. The management guru had a Ph.D. and a knack for nailing trends. Perhaps his most timely today is the phrase “knowledge worker.” Today’s “real” journalists want to skip the Drucker trajectory of management by objectives and thought leadership over decades. The Silicon Valley journalists want to get right to it: Stories about technology to grand statements about the way life should be. Not just tech life, but life in general.
The most recent example, in my opinion, is “Why People Can’t Stand Tech Journalists: An Interview with Casey Newton.” Mr. Newton lit up my radar when he suggested that Jeff Bezos give a weekly speech to explain Amazon. After viewing the Congressional hearings, I am not confident Mr. Bezos knows what is going on at Amazon, but I know that a “real” journalist telling the world’s richest man is the journalistic equivalent of Google’s sense of entitlement.
Once again we have two “real” journalists talking to one another. And what do we learn?
The spine of the “real” journalists’ baseline assumption is, “People don’t like us.” Once again a big generalization created to make “real” journalists into underdogs. I noted this statement:
The tech press, I think, has done probably the best work of its life collectively over the past four years.
Let’s do a quick show of hands. Who thinks that this statement from the “real” journalist pundit person will resonate like Dr. Drucker’s knowledge worker or management by objectives phrases? Here’s the Sillycon Valley statement:
I’ve been thinking about what we’ve lost because everything is so noisy and spicy.
Memorable. Noisy and spicy. Like a budget quasi ethnic restaurant and its comidas?
Several observations:
- The merging of entitlement, social justice, and inside baseball produces information that in some ways is as destructive as the output of nation states seeking to influence behavior in the US
- The laziness of talking to someone in the next cubicle or while standing on line at Philz Coffee is evidence of a serious problem. Thought leadership does not flow from unsubstantiated opinions.
- Journalism, whether at the New York Times, the Murdoch outfits, or zippy Silicon Valley-type “real” news producers is becoming indistinguishable from the yammerings of mid-tier consulting firms and student who couldn’t get an “A” from Dr. Drucker.
That’s a less-than-positive situation in my view. Has Mr. Bezos attended to the demand that he give a weekly speech? The answer is, “No.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 27, 2020
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