Slashdot Mirror
The Failure of Tech Journalism
Belzebutt writes: "This is a great article that talks about something we already knew, but haven't paid that much attention to: most tech journalists are a bunch of corporate whores. It even mentions Slashdot, although not very favorably." Eh, we'll get over it. It's a good rant, something to consider as news sites fold left and right.
Much of the moderation here appears to be done based on whether or not the moderator personally agrees with you, regardless of how intelligent or relevent your comments may be. This is a subtle evolution of the "luser who uses Windoze" quote from the NetSlaves author. It's rare that Microsoft does something right, of course, but when it does, it's nice to be able to discuss it rationally.
/. without adhering to the dominant pro-Linux, pro-open-source, anti-user-experience ideology. I've done it, as an old Mac hand who thinks the open source model is fundamentally flawed, and who frequently points out problems with command line interfaces and UNIX. It took a lot of work, and I've had to be a lot more careful in expressing myself than would someone whose views were more in line with local consensus, but it's been effective.
There is a lot of ideological moderation here, but if you stay reasonable, choose your battles carefully, and back up your points with solid facts, you can get modded up on
Granted, I also get flamed out the wazoo by hordes of ESR drones, but that's only to be expected when you're taking an antinomian stance. I also sometimes get unfairly modded down, usually by the kinds of people who like to throw "overrated" around to avoid metamod, but that happens less often than you'd think.
So I can't testify from personal experience that all divergent views get modded down here. In any human group critics need to be extra careful, but in many groups, someone taking an oppositional stance like mine would be excluded altogether, rather than being at the karma cap.
Tim
You need to read Tom's Hardware or Sharky Extreme. Even PC Computing (best for long flights, bird cages and darts). Tom's and Sharky's does the kind of detailed, intensive reporting that most magazines avoid.
Quite true. His article makes alot of sense, now if he had only included
The Register he would have rounded it out nicely. I can see that some posts are trying to take to task his portrayal of Slashdot as a Linux-Centric site. Come on. We all KNOW that this site is devoted to Linux Advocacy before tech journalism. There is nothing wrong with that. The main problem seems to be the rabid "knee jerk" reactions shown by the community in general here. (You only need to look at any story do do with Microsoft, and then read the comments therein.)
The authors comments towards the PC Mag Review are bang on. ZD net has always had a positive bias toward Microsoft products just as (as the author mentions) Macaddict has favorable review of Macs. Not much of a surprise there. The reason that ZD is still around is that it is very business oriented, and it's reader base is very much entrenched in the Microsoft world.
Maybe the net public realized this bias (or, perhaps I should say "lack of news") before the author did though. Myself and my friends frequently visit tech sites that are indepentant. In fact, in the list of independant sites we regularly visit we have noticed no layoffs of staff, or any change in the way they run their websites. If we the readers ignore the biased sites (and thus ignore the advertising) the site (which cannot now make any money sitting in their Aeron chairs) then the website dies.
I have not noticed that many of the "dotcoms" are dissapearing. This is probably because I realized long ago what was a good website, and what was not. I think most of us have.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
His whole point is that this particular sector is unethical in an unprecedented degree. If this guy was a real journalist, he would know that this goes on in all kinds of press, and is nothing new.
If he knew anything at all about journalism, he would know that the watergate expose is the exception, and not the rule.
Most industries have a few myths that are generally accepted as truths. Today Ben Stein posted an interesting article on thestreet.com, dissecting the myth about the high longterm yields of the stock market. He showed that it is a myth. However, 99% of financial reporters and analysts accept this myth as pure truth. Does that make reporters of the financial sector crooked, or cold it just be incompetence, and lack of foresight.
Every single industry has similar problems. Do you see many of the car magazines criticizing the industry, and the government for the SUV scandal?
Does body builder magazines publish critical articles on the dangers, and use of steroids?
When's the last time you saw one of the fashion magazones write that Kalvin Klein makes pretentious dozen ware, and DKNY makes ugly clothes?
When's the last time a D.C. newspaper did a deep and dirty expose on congress, senate or white house, that had anything to do with the politics? Nope, they're too busy to dig up sex stories, leaving the pols to do their business unaudited.
So I have to disagree with the author. Yes, there's a lot of crap in tech journalism, but that's not special. Crap journalism has been a readily available commodity for a long time, all over the place.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.