I always saw Silicon Valley inevitably being covered and cared about as much as the Hollywood insidery cabal of power and influence.
As much as we believe in the ideas, teams, executions, it's still very much an old boys network. Don't fool yourself otherwise.
The community upturns its nose constantly about gossip or fluff. But you don't get it, that's all there really is. Gossip and fluff. Tech reporting is as dry and pointless. How many times can you rehash someone releasing, fixing, investing, or selling something?
On top of all this we got exactly the tech reporting culture we deserved. People clamor for dispatches from foreign lands, substantial news, authentic stories but here's the real secret... there's no demand for those things.
There is demand to sell ads on pages. There is demand to hire expensive publicists to befriend the journalists that switch from site to site like musical chairs. There is demand for real time updates of something happening because we're digital addicts. Read Silicon Alley Insider for a day and watch how they wring blood out of stone.
The game is rigged. We know to win you adorn your hastily put together A/B-ed MVP LP with TechCrunch and Mashable logos. Or you syphon off mojo storytellers that have consistently the past 5 years been slowly making the story equal part themselves; their backs scratched by everyone eagerly waiting their turn. Be that way long enough and you get dangerously jaded not caring whether it's fingernails or a knife.
If you don't like it, too bad, millions do. And the millions more that's descending into Silicon Valley seeking their fame and fortune do too.
In the tech industry we definitely make celebrities of the wrong people. I can't recall a single other industry where journalists are the top-tier talent attraction, and I can't explain why that is. The closest in influence is perhaps the top editors in fashion - but otherwise we are in a league of our own (I have seen small-time contributors to Techcrunch get mobbed at tech events).
I have watched new tech bloggers starting out in the right direction and then getting dragged in by the mob to insert themselves into the story. The entire context of tech journalism shifts from reporting the facts to reporting on them reporting and before you know it every half-wit tech blogger has their own column where they endow the world with their opinion of things. Before long they are opining as 'we' - meaning they are speaking on behalf of everybody else (which for me is a lot worse than the worse style of 'I' editorial). There are more opinion-style journalists in tech than there are straight up reporters, and that says something.
And it is the entire audience that is culpable, not just the lovers, but the haters as well. If your intention as an opinion journalist is to get a reaction from people, then the haters are participating and perpetuating just as much as the fans are. I know a lot of tech bloggers who would furiously refresh the comments after they post the piece and look forward to the hate as much as they look forward to the applause. A lot of them intentionally rile up their audience just to get that reaction - sometimes even publishing a point-of-view they don't believe in just to get that rise out of the haters.
It may be because the real heros of this industry are less accesible, so we turn those who we have ready access to into faux heroes and villains. The movie and film industry has privacy invading gossip pages for readers to get their gossip fix from, they also have regular movies and awards shows. We don't have that with Zuckerberg, so we do it to whoever is next in line.
You can't observe tech gossip or talk about it without participating in it. All you can do is completely ignore it - but ignore it without saying that you are ignoring it, because that means you really aren't ignoring it.
I don't think that will happen though, there may be less interest in some stories at times but the gossip will always be there, it is part of human nature. We just gossip about the wrong part of the industry in tech.
If you want a good example example of gossip and fluff in the tech industry just look at 99% of the articles that hit HN frontpage in the past few days about the $1b Instagram purchase.
I'm similar. I never made a conscious decision, or said to myself "right, I'm never reading TechCrunch again," it was just something that sort of happened.
I gradually unsubscribed feeds in Google Reader that were generating too much uninteresting stuff, I stopped visiting sites, I got busy doing things of my own.. and before I knew it, I was tech-blog-free.
It's not like I know any less about what's going on in the world of tech without them; I just get a lot less clutter in my life.
> they left AOL after AOL told them they were violating the most basic of journalism ethics rules by investing the companies they were writing about.
This isn't true. Mike left AOL because Arriana was getting too hands on. There were a lot of little control decisions that lead to the decision to leave.
He left and then setup Crunchfund, with an investment from AOL. He was supposed to continue as a contributor, just like many other contributors who are also investors or entrepreneurs but declined on that as well. MG remained as a contributor.
As for the circle jerk being boring, I couldn't agree more (and I know the people involved, most of them well). What you have to keep in mind is that when something is made public, there is a motive for that. There is a reason why readers are being informed, and it usually isn't a good reason (for eg. claiming 'in view of full disclosure' and then telling half the story and leaving comments closed).
But if you are going to call out the circle-jerk and how boring it is, first make your story accurate (not difficult, all the details are spread out across the various blogs) and second at least back-up the claim that people are starting to tire of it, for eg. the fact that only one other blog wrote about the latest bust-up, or that it only rated a mention on twitter amongst other bloggers who joked about it.
The 'dirty laundry' posts used to be a lot more popular than they are now, and that means they are having little effect to their purpose of riling up readers. It would have taken a single paragraph to lay that point out, this just reads like somebody who jumped right into the circle jerk and is riding coat tails. The tone is one of speaking condescendingly on behalf of the rest of the world, but in attempting to do that he has stepped a bit too close to the action and got himself messy. And as has already been mentioned, we really really really don't give a shit - and that includes you.
This is an article that needed to be written. Tech shouldn't be a popularity contest like the attention-deprived "journalists" that were called out in the article. The whole lot of them have a psychological disorder that needs treatment, probably stemming from lack of attention from their peers in high school.
It's fairly clear that the information in TC and/or Pando is biased. Neither should be supported, ever. Stop the popularity contest that these people are turning our passion into!
TheVerge has become my favorite "mainstream" tech publication, largely because it covers actual tech news, rather than self-referential articles about tech journalism.
There is indeed. Western culture has undergone a value shift. Today's values are superficial in the extreme - we value money, personality[1], and social status. We "want respect"[2], and don't want to be "judged"[3].
Most of all, we crave others' approval.
The old values like integrity, honesty, empathy, conscientiouness and authenticity have been tossed aside.
It's also the reason people like Arrington will maintain that status quo. This article does nothing to change that. People KNOW what's being done here. And yet people always go back for more, because of these new, superficial values. Who we hang with is much more important than what we do.
The most amazing thing about it is that we value money over happiness. Just yesterday I read a post here that bemoaned guys with talent who don't deliver. Well, news flash. The guy with talent that doesn't turn his talent into something tangible is invariably happier than the guy who does. The number one regret of old people is having worked too much.
This value shift is a result of fear. Of a lack of confidence. If you can go through life without needing others' approval (looking at you, Mssrs Arrington, Siegler, Carr, and Lacy) you're free to be happy. And content.
Ever seen The Big Country with Gregory Peck? That guy was a role model worth modelling.
[1] That word is so out of place. Everybody has a personality.
[2] Respect is earnt, not given. If I "dis" someone it's because said someone hasn't done anything to earn my respect.
[3] The human brain protects itself from overload by filtering value from noise. We categorise what's left. That means judging people, every day, every time we meet someone new. It's what we do. We can't not do it.
I'm more annoyed with the constant barrage of either Facebook, Apple, or Google getting in trouble because of privacy each week. Even when there is really no story at all (conceptual Google Glasses? Privacy! Instagram being bought, despite no TOS changes? Privacy!).
> Instagram being bought, despite no TOS changes?
> Privacy!
To be fair, this means that all of the Instagram data becomes a part of Facebooks 'profile' on you. I'm willing to accept a looser TOS when my data is silo'd into many different places that aren't necessarily talking to each other. When all my data becomes consolidated into the same place, I want more strict reins over what happens to it. Much in the same way the rules change for businesses that find themselves in monopoly positions.
I'm not sure if I'm adding any value here, but this was the first article linked from HN's front page that have read for a while and which I did not understand what it was about. I have done some research, and I think I understand now.
People who can write well want to get paid for writing. Some kind of business model has to emerge that allows that to happen. Can we assume that advert driven blogging is not that model?
PS: on a netbook, the page design means that I spent some time looking for the actual content.
I was told a long time ago that if the journalist/publication IS the story, something has gone wrong (excluding genuinely serious news like NewsCorp or the journos killed in Syria). Any time someone who runs a news website and spends almost as much time trying to convince you of their value as the value of the stories they're writing you have to ask what the purpose is. In most cases, it's to establish themselves for future money making ventures, not for the journalism.
Pando and TechCrunch, can you guys report on the ground in Syria or Libya or Myanmar (or any place where life is actually happening) regarding the tech/start-up scene? I'd love to actually hear something of interest from you(and not about you) folks for a change.
These sites are the tech equivalent of the newstand tabloids or Hello magazine. They package themselves in such as way as to give themselves a veneer of respectability but they're somewhere between fluff and gossip at best, out and out product placement or PR at worst.
There's no difference between the articles they write and the thinly disguised endorsements for a particular moisturiser brand you get in women's magazines written by someone who has just come back from an all expenses paid spa day sponsored by a cosmetics manufacturer.
We should stop referring to people who write and work for these sites as journalists and start referring to them as public relations people because really that's what they are.
I couldn't understand why the startup of which I was a member, which was 2 years old and sold for half a billion in January wasn't covered in Tech Crunch. I guess this explains it.
I can't help thinking of this kind of thing as being like driving by a 10-car pileup on your commute home. You know you're not supposed to stop and stare, but you do anyway.
[+] [-] alaskamiller|14 years ago|reply
As much as we believe in the ideas, teams, executions, it's still very much an old boys network. Don't fool yourself otherwise.
The community upturns its nose constantly about gossip or fluff. But you don't get it, that's all there really is. Gossip and fluff. Tech reporting is as dry and pointless. How many times can you rehash someone releasing, fixing, investing, or selling something?
On top of all this we got exactly the tech reporting culture we deserved. People clamor for dispatches from foreign lands, substantial news, authentic stories but here's the real secret... there's no demand for those things.
There is demand to sell ads on pages. There is demand to hire expensive publicists to befriend the journalists that switch from site to site like musical chairs. There is demand for real time updates of something happening because we're digital addicts. Read Silicon Alley Insider for a day and watch how they wring blood out of stone.
The game is rigged. We know to win you adorn your hastily put together A/B-ed MVP LP with TechCrunch and Mashable logos. Or you syphon off mojo storytellers that have consistently the past 5 years been slowly making the story equal part themselves; their backs scratched by everyone eagerly waiting their turn. Be that way long enough and you get dangerously jaded not caring whether it's fingernails or a knife.
If you don't like it, too bad, millions do. And the millions more that's descending into Silicon Valley seeking their fame and fortune do too.
It is what it is.
[+] [-] nikcub|14 years ago|reply
I have watched new tech bloggers starting out in the right direction and then getting dragged in by the mob to insert themselves into the story. The entire context of tech journalism shifts from reporting the facts to reporting on them reporting and before you know it every half-wit tech blogger has their own column where they endow the world with their opinion of things. Before long they are opining as 'we' - meaning they are speaking on behalf of everybody else (which for me is a lot worse than the worse style of 'I' editorial). There are more opinion-style journalists in tech than there are straight up reporters, and that says something.
And it is the entire audience that is culpable, not just the lovers, but the haters as well. If your intention as an opinion journalist is to get a reaction from people, then the haters are participating and perpetuating just as much as the fans are. I know a lot of tech bloggers who would furiously refresh the comments after they post the piece and look forward to the hate as much as they look forward to the applause. A lot of them intentionally rile up their audience just to get that reaction - sometimes even publishing a point-of-view they don't believe in just to get that rise out of the haters.
It may be because the real heros of this industry are less accesible, so we turn those who we have ready access to into faux heroes and villains. The movie and film industry has privacy invading gossip pages for readers to get their gossip fix from, they also have regular movies and awards shows. We don't have that with Zuckerberg, so we do it to whoever is next in line.
You can't observe tech gossip or talk about it without participating in it. All you can do is completely ignore it - but ignore it without saying that you are ignoring it, because that means you really aren't ignoring it.
I don't think that will happen though, there may be less interest in some stories at times but the gossip will always be there, it is part of human nature. We just gossip about the wrong part of the industry in tech.
[+] [-] thornofmight|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasil003|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrahamc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andyking|14 years ago|reply
I gradually unsubscribed feeds in Google Reader that were generating too much uninteresting stuff, I stopped visiting sites, I got busy doing things of my own.. and before I knew it, I was tech-blog-free.
It's not like I know any less about what's going on in the world of tech without them; I just get a lot less clutter in my life.
[+] [-] codeka|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikcub|14 years ago|reply
This isn't true. Mike left AOL because Arriana was getting too hands on. There were a lot of little control decisions that lead to the decision to leave.
He left and then setup Crunchfund, with an investment from AOL. He was supposed to continue as a contributor, just like many other contributors who are also investors or entrepreneurs but declined on that as well. MG remained as a contributor.
As for the circle jerk being boring, I couldn't agree more (and I know the people involved, most of them well). What you have to keep in mind is that when something is made public, there is a motive for that. There is a reason why readers are being informed, and it usually isn't a good reason (for eg. claiming 'in view of full disclosure' and then telling half the story and leaving comments closed).
But if you are going to call out the circle-jerk and how boring it is, first make your story accurate (not difficult, all the details are spread out across the various blogs) and second at least back-up the claim that people are starting to tire of it, for eg. the fact that only one other blog wrote about the latest bust-up, or that it only rated a mention on twitter amongst other bloggers who joked about it.
The 'dirty laundry' posts used to be a lot more popular than they are now, and that means they are having little effect to their purpose of riling up readers. It would have taken a single paragraph to lay that point out, this just reads like somebody who jumped right into the circle jerk and is riding coat tails. The tone is one of speaking condescendingly on behalf of the rest of the world, but in attempting to do that he has stepped a bit too close to the action and got himself messy. And as has already been mentioned, we really really really don't give a shit - and that includes you.
[+] [-] methoddk|14 years ago|reply
It's fairly clear that the information in TC and/or Pando is biased. Neither should be supported, ever. Stop the popularity contest that these people are turning our passion into!
[+] [-] rdl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Angostura|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] _exec|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnda|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spearchucker|14 years ago|reply
There is indeed. Western culture has undergone a value shift. Today's values are superficial in the extreme - we value money, personality[1], and social status. We "want respect"[2], and don't want to be "judged"[3].
Most of all, we crave others' approval.
The old values like integrity, honesty, empathy, conscientiouness and authenticity have been tossed aside.
It's also the reason people like Arrington will maintain that status quo. This article does nothing to change that. People KNOW what's being done here. And yet people always go back for more, because of these new, superficial values. Who we hang with is much more important than what we do.
The most amazing thing about it is that we value money over happiness. Just yesterday I read a post here that bemoaned guys with talent who don't deliver. Well, news flash. The guy with talent that doesn't turn his talent into something tangible is invariably happier than the guy who does. The number one regret of old people is having worked too much.
This value shift is a result of fear. Of a lack of confidence. If you can go through life without needing others' approval (looking at you, Mssrs Arrington, Siegler, Carr, and Lacy) you're free to be happy. And content.
Ever seen The Big Country with Gregory Peck? That guy was a role model worth modelling.
[1] That word is so out of place. Everybody has a personality.
[2] Respect is earnt, not given. If I "dis" someone it's because said someone hasn't done anything to earn my respect.
[3] The human brain protects itself from overload by filtering value from noise. We categorise what's left. That means judging people, every day, every time we meet someone new. It's what we do. We can't not do it.
[+] [-] pilgrim689|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shank|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyre|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karunamon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crag|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|14 years ago|reply
People who can write well want to get paid for writing. Some kind of business model has to emerge that allows that to happen. Can we assume that advert driven blogging is not that model?
PS: on a netbook, the page design means that I spent some time looking for the actual content.
[+] [-] meiji|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pelayo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justauser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sriramk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|14 years ago|reply
There's no difference between the articles they write and the thinly disguised endorsements for a particular moisturiser brand you get in women's magazines written by someone who has just come back from an all expenses paid spa day sponsored by a cosmetics manufacturer.
We should stop referring to people who write and work for these sites as journalists and start referring to them as public relations people because really that's what they are.
[+] [-] n72|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _exec|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismealy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeeone|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dclowd9901|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgregd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ktothemc|14 years ago|reply
The new TC team has very little to do with the weird, navel-gazing BS of last year. The new editor, Eric, actually went through YC six years ago.
Our philosophy is more startups. More founders. Less crap.
[+] [-] j_baker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msrpotus|14 years ago|reply