Slashdot Mirror
Blogs Are Eating Tech Media Alive
Heinz writes with an article in Forbes on how advertising in tech media is drying up and going — where else? — into specialist blogs and Google. "Silicon Valley is booming again. But if you work in tech media, there's blood on the floor. Take Red Herring. It hung onto its offices after getting the eviction notice earlier this month. But gossip site Valleywag is breaking story after story not just on its beat — but about its woes. Meanwhile, bigger publications are hurting too: Time Warner's Business 2.0 saw ad pages drop 21.8% through March from the same period a year ago; PC Magazine's editor in chief walked out the door after ad pages fell 38.8% over the same period; and one-time online powerhouse CNET is reporting growing losses even as the companies it covers flourish. It may be happening in tech first, but there's no reason the same thing won't happen, eventually, in every media niche."
If, and I hate to use this term, new media has taught me one thing it's that any press but a journal is horrible for science and technology. Time and time again some reporter is sent out to cover pseudoscience, or thinly disguised ads, as if it was actual technological or scientific news. I'm convinced that watered down reporting, writing to a level that should be insulting to a middle school student, is one of the main causes for the publics ignorance and rejection of science. The public isn't stupid, and they know that the watered down analogies to the library of congress are bullshit. I'm only hoping that the websites that also speak to the public at a five year olds level will follow after and people will will find themselves presented with the actual facts of the matter again.
Everything will be taken away from you.
What do CNET and Business 2.0 offer beyond smart alec FUD columnists and advertiser-friendly reviews?
It was sad to see most of the serious newspapers dry up, leaving nothing but wire fed papers that write to a 4th grade reading level.
It was sad to see local radio stations dry up, leaving nothing but Clear Channel fed recordings from Texas.
However, I have few tears for crappy magazines and their equally vapid online "portals" that never offered much in the first place.
The real issue is that we've sold off the Fourth Estate to advertisers, and we have very little real journalism left. We're all fed our news from the same ~5 mega corps who own everything. We are not informed because we gave up our media to capitalism, which works well as a way to price widgets, but is not really very good at providing truth. It only knows how to provide marketing spin.
Bloggers could provide some respite, but the Internet provides little in terms of a reputation system. Anyone can shout down unpopular truths, and any group can astroturf their marketing messages. Few people who follow Digg or Reddit links verify the credibility of sources they visit.
We've traded our serious tradition of journalism for a cheap bit of daily entertainment from who knows where and a media buffet prepared by a market driven media.
The fact that the least fit portions of our capitalist replacement for journalism are struggling to survive should be expected. The fact that our media is being run like a free market is the real story.
RoughlyDrafted Magazine
But isn't this the problem already? I'd feel more sorry for the tech magazines if they weren't so full of long-term-shilling themselves. Most articles are thinly-disguised paid advertisements. Advertisers are leaving the big magazines because we are - I don't bother reading them any more. Or if I do read them, I also want a feedback site to go with it. Slashdot might not be the place to get advice about life insurance, but if a tech writer is spreading FUD or throwing bad statistics around, the lovely folks here will warn me.
I read through 3/4ths of a website about traditional Japanese swords before I realized it was nothing but a shill for a line of Chinese reproductions sold by the website author. What's funny is that a lot of the information was legitimate. I probably would've bought one of his products if I hadn't felt like I had been conned.
I, for one, welcome our blog-spewing overlords!
No, wait -- that's not what I mean at all. In fact, I mourn the loss of proper technical journalism in the world. Nobody bothers actually reviewing a product, or rendering an original opinion anymore.
Instead, we get twelve pages of ads, with only sixteen paragraphs of whitewash, er, ahem, content spread amongst them.
I miss seeing reviews produced by competent and well-qualified people about things other than the latest 7800GTX repack. Just try to find useful comparison information on printers, monitors, keyboards, or even simple mice. These products are the human interface for the machine and are therefore among the most important facets of it, but unless it's twice as expensive as it should be and is intended for a child's gaming rig then there will be no reviews of it in the blogs.
There's a thousand disparate e-commerce reviews to wade through, sure, but at least they're typically honest. Blog entries (if you can find one related) all lack any semblance of depth or integrity.
The dead-tree derivatives like C|Net and the remains of Ziff-Davis aren't any better these days, as they flail about trying to copy their blog competitor's attention-deficit formatting and lack of editorial oversight, managing only to add more misery to their already inevitable death.
Absolutely nobody ever bothers setting up repeatable tests for comparative measurement of anything in this century unless it can be done in the form of a Quake benchmark. And even then, products offering 1-2% gain for the low-low price of $200 more than everything else in the review are proclaimed to be the "clear winner" by some spineless high-school kid who is afraid to write a bad review for fear that XFX or MSI or whoever will turn off the free hardware spigot in retaliation.
The fact that I find Amazon and Newegg customer reviews by the clueless masses to be some of the most meaningful and useful information available makes me feel like we've lost something important. It's probably gone forever.
I, for one, am not very happy about it.
Kid-proof tablet..
Whenever I run across a cnet page or similar tech news site (slashdot link, google search) I'm always disappointed. Usually everything they have to say could have fit in a paragraph but it's padded with out of context quotes and general fluff. It never tells me the interesting technical details I might want to know (say like kerneltrap summaries or wikipedia articles) nor does it present any well reasoned opinions that I might want to consider. Frankly the content is just so poor it's better to flail around until you run into the blog or other site that actually has something useful to say.
The problem with sites like cnet is that they can't decide who their audience is. If they want to pitch their writing to the general public then they probably should stick with reviewing the iPhone and stay far away from stories about Linus's comments on the GPL3 or the latest groklaw controversy but the mainstream media has that pretty well covered. On the other hand if they want to appeal to people who are more informed about this stuff then dumbing it down and spending the whole time giving context just won't work.
Maybe the problem is they hired journalism majors with a bit of tech knowledge rather than tech guys who can write reasonably. That's the right strategy for the NYT tech section not cnet. I dunno.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
The reason the readership is there is because bloggers are picking apart opinion pieces throughout the editorial world and reshaping them by arguing against their positions. [...] frankly, the blog-0-sphere offers no substantial news reporting either.
I like how you went circle there arguing against your own position. Is this how bloggers do?
And let me tell you why why the masses won't get back to magazines even they got great tech reviews: because they're not free, and Internet is chock full of free information, you can research and read information for mere seconds that you can't fit in years worth of magazine issues.
Tech magazines will just move online in the end. The real loser are the industrial printing service businesses. They'll still be printing some flyers, brochures and books. But periodic printed press is doomed in mid-term.
That might be part of it, but I think the main reason tech journalism is failing is because so much of tech journalism is really third rate regurgitation of company press releases. Journalism on the whole has been failing the public, but I think tech journalism has been on the leading edge of that failure.
More broadly, mass media on the whole sucks. And now that it's possible for anyone to produce media, the suck monopoly is broken. There are a lot of sucky tech blogs out there, just like there's lots of bad video on you tube and crappy bands competing for attention on MySpace. Why buy mass media crap or read mass media crap when there is all this other crap? The mainstream can't compete with this inundation of crap, at least not without offering a quality product. And what are the chances of that?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
There needs to be a forums forum, where I can go to find which forums are authoritative on a given subject.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Yours is a reasonable opinion, but at the same time a little unfair. Take Slashdot, for example. Everybody is always complaining about the lack of editorial quality, yadda yadda yadda. But very few people recognize the fact that Slashdot doesn't break any news.
Slashdot is really a glorified blog. It aggregates news sources from all over, stories that its members think are interesting. But without the original sources that generate these stories -- media outlets who pay writers to produce stories -- outlets like Slashdot disappear.
You claim that readers want "a little fucking truth." Fair enough. But, by definition, Slashdot isn't in a position to generate anything but "a little fucking opinion." And you can't hate on it for doing so. That's what it's here for.
I spent three years as a senior editor at InfoWorld, and I certainly have a lot of criticisms to offer about the tech trade media industry. But I can say, with absolute certainty, that when trade media outlets like InfoWorld disappear you will all be sorry.
It goes against almost every fiber of my cynical being to say this, but your subject heading is full of shit. The problem is one hundred percent structural, zero percent editorial.
There has never been a tech reporter who has picked his baggy-eyed head up off a table and blurted out, "You know what? We need to do more stories about the iPhone." Not one. Editors might think that a 300-story onslaught about the iPhone sounds like a good idea, but only because we have people breathing down our necks, too -- people who are beholden to bullshit metrics like hit counts, which look a whole like hard statistics, but are infinitely less reliable than the reader surveys that they used to conduct on newspaper readers.
The good tech reporters who have stuck with this industry know what they're talking about. They write the stories that blogs like Slashdot link to. They might get it wrong from time to time -- fine. You're all there to call them on it. But they're still providing a valuable service.
What's really wrong with this industry is the same thing that's wrong with every industry -- the willingness to suck cock for money. If you're putting out a blog, and somebody offers you an opportunity to make a lot of money -- money, you gloatingly think, that won't be spent on a mainstream tech media outlet -- shame on you. The only reason that company was able to buy a story is because you sold it to them. Hope you brushed your teeth afterward.
You can pull a statistic out your ass that says the readership is all going to blogs. Fine. But can you really blame the management of the media outlets when they hear something like that? The answer is predictable: More blogs.
Blogs on blogs on blogs. It's great! Blogs don't cost us anything and readers trust blogs more than they do reporters, so screw the reporters' salaries and let's hire more bloggers. The answer is more corporate blogs. And folks like you eat it up.
Yeah, you heard me right. Is the media industry going to shit? Corporate media is on the blame list, for sure. But first on the list is you. Have you ever written your Congressman? Probably not. But even if you have, it's probably futile to ask that you write to your favorite media outlets and ask -- even beg -- them to cover real news, and not just fluff pieces and fake stories.
Media outlets cover bullshit because the metrics tell them that bullshit is what people want, plain and simple.
Hell, the only reason that I still read Slashdot (check out my user ID) is because the demographic of the stories is so narrow that I can guarantee that 5/6 of the stories posted are about something I'm at least slightly interested in. I bet that's not true for half the Slashdot readers, though.
Yes, the world of media is going to shit. Yes, I hate it. Damned if I can do anything about it on my own, though.
Breakfast served all day!
While I agree with almost everything that has been said by posters in this thread, no-one has yet commented on the round that was lethal. Most tech news sites are indeed full of ad-ridden republished press releases edited by people who are technically incompetent. Most tech blogs are indeed full of poorly written "commentary" with no original research. However, with so many blogs around, there are bound to be a few really good ones, which do offer thoughtful commentary, deep understanding of the issues covered, previously hard-to-find information, and/or original research.
Such blogs also tend to link to other worthwhile source material by their nature. In addition, blogs typically support comments, or more usefully full-blown web forums, mailing lists or Usenet groups. The combination means informed people can share knowledge and ideas once the scene has been set by the good bloggers, and I imagine that most discerning geeks, having found a few such blogs as starting points, simply have no need to bother with the numerous low-quality sites any more. I know I don't...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'm sorry, but it usually takes readers to sell advertisements. To get the readers, you have to have compelling content. None of these magazines have compelling content.
When is the last time you picked up ANYTHING from Ziff Davis and wanted to read it? Most of these magazines are filled with either articles that don't tell the whole story, gussied up press releases, six month old tips for the novice, editorials that are just written by FUD spewing morons selling their page to the highest bidder (I'm looking right at you, Mr. Dvorak), or news I read about three weeks ago on Slashdot (four weeks ago from other sources).
Why the hell do I want to cut down some trees and PAY for that?
I actually used to have a job for a PR firm that worked exclusively for tech companies. One of my duties was to scan these rags for articles about clients, or about their field of business. In that year, I skimmed pretty much every tech publication that was worth mentioning: PC Week, PC Magazine, Computerworld, Byte, Wired, Red Herring, Dr. Dobb's Journal, PC World, CRM, etc. Not a single one can keep up in print, with the pace of the tech sector today. They barely could 10 years ago when the web was new. Now, they are relegated to informing people that only have a passing interest in technology, because all the people that are actively engaged already know.
I can't imagine why the advertisers are leaving.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Have you picked up a magazine lately? They're getting much, much worse. Ads that span 4 pages. Just about every article split-up into pieces. And they all seem to be getting worse.
Popular Mechanics is the worst I've seen. There is literally no difference between content and ads. An advertisement may be a column of text talking about a product, written exactly like the rest of their articles, in the middle of a page with actual articles. Perhaps they're just "forward thinking" and an example of the future for all other magazines.
I hope you mean just the ads on google.com, because use of Google's Adwords seems to be getting worse... A huge horizontal column of text ads across the top of the screen, a huge vertical column of text ads squeezing the body down to half the size, another section of text ads in the middle of the article you're reading, and every other word double under-lined and displaying a huge pop-up over the page if your mouse should accidentally pass over it. You'd think Google would have some bare minimum standards as to how their service gets used.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sure. The big money mass media will continue to degenerate while
the independent, energetic, and innovative blogs will slowly become
the dominant sources for quality information.
But then the big money will shift to the blogs as it infiltrates their
ranks with hucksters and shills on a grand scale. A new model of
mass corporate journalism, expressed though the cloak of the independent
blog, will have arisen. Stagnation and degeneracy will once again become
widespread and unavoidable.
The second half of the equation, the discriminating consumer, is always
completely ignored. Thanks to these dull and perennially misinformed hordes,
we will never eliminate the swell of the meretricious conglomerates.
There's *much* truth in what you're saying here. At first, I agreed with the earlier comments ... Tech sites are dying because of all the pop-up ads, or because they just regurgitate A.P. wire news and press releases, rather than going out to actually GET a new story.
BUT, as I think about it, I end up looking to forums for all my in-depth knowledge on specific items too. If I think back to 10 or 15 years ago, this really wasn't much of an option. If you were a computer fan, you got as "selective" as buying a magazine catering to whatever brand of computer you owned, and hoped they'd discuss issues relevant to you as you combed through each month's issue.
These days, I think only relative beginners/novices do that. My boss at work still gets PC Magazine each month, and reads it to learn new things. But he's not very skilled in doing Internet searches, nor does he have the patience to dig too deeply into his tech. problems most of the time. (Why should he? He can ask someone like ME for help in that area, since I'm on his payroll already.) He just wants some kind of general "summary" of interesting stuff about computers to look at, at his leisure.
If you're more of a "techie", you need real specific, focused answers and you need them ASAP. The "tech magazines" are falling flat on their faces providing that level of assistance. They've tried to create their own forums to address that, but those fail too, on the whole - because their users are the same crowd buying their magazines. They don't have the collective knowledge to give great assistance to each other.
It's no different with music gear. I found 2 forums dedicated to one of my music synthesizers, and the best techs. from the manufacturer regularly hang out there (seemingly to learn about problems they need to fix, as often as to actually provide help or solutions to issues people post questions about!). Professional musicians hang out there too. (The synth player from "Dream Theater" is one of their regulars.) It's simply VASTLY more informative than some articles could ever be in "Keyboard Magazine" or whatnot.
Did you read anything the the Byte editors wrote about the end of the magazine? Tom Halfhill's Tom's Unofficial BYTE FAQ: The Death of BYTE Magazine ? The advertising was drying up well before CMP purchased McGraw-Hill technology publications (including Byte.) By that time, enough magazines with a strong focused interest existed that it was tough for a generalist like Byte to sell advertising. If Microsoft wanted to advertise NT4, they could reach more of their potential customers by advertising in Information Week, rather than Byte. If NuMega wanted to sell a memory leak tester to developers, they could reach more of their audience in Dr. Dobbs Journal. Texas Instruments DSP group could reach more hardware designers by advertising in Microprocessor Report.
Byte was a great magazine for someone like me who was interested in how popular technology was currently used today, what advantages and disadvantages alternate technologies had, and what was coming up in the future. Articles from chip design to heterogeneous user management. I wasn't a good target for many of the advertisers though. (I wasn't interested in the Microsoft NT ads, because I wasn't trying to set up an windows network. I wasn't interested in the NuMega ads, because I wasn't developing for Intel hardware. I wasn't interested in the TI DSP articles, because I wasn't doing hardware design, etc.) and those advertiser didn't want to pay for me to see their ads. The end result is a high subscriber base for a tech magazine with lower per subscriber ad revenue. Not a good business model.
It's funny, but the original purpose of advertising was to tell an interested consumer details about your product. For example, I would read an ad by Intel or AMD about their new processor architectures, and how they improved on the previous generation of processors. The entire problem with advertising is that there is no longer any respect for "consumers". Marketers have decided to simply manipulate people instead of informing them. That's why we get a jackass in a clean room suit dancing around telling us that Pentiums make the internet faster. Ironically enough, people pay to go to vendor conferences and workshops which are essentially advertising, so I guess I can't fault the economics of it all.
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