If we only posted things that companies gave us permission to post
this would be a press release site and none of you would be here.
News is stuff someone doesn’t want you to write.
The rest is advertising.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-o...
Whether a news outlet should carry that last set of info to your ears or not is up for debate; but to see his role as binary - advertising/PR newswire vs. broadcaster of leaked private information... well, how sad.
He's not alone of course. Tabloids have been operating on basically just that model for eons. With the occasional fabrication when they can't get enough leaks to fill the inches.
That's something that's hugely missing from the "tech reporting" (ha) of today. Almost no one considers the things that came before.
For example, I saw no one else comparing Google Wave to OpenDoc... or even remarking on the old command-line tool, talk/ytalk. Both of which are extremely relevant to Wave as a product.
Shame.
Most of the front-page articles on HN are not news, they are recycled anti-business school puff pieces. And yet, this is Hacker News.
If Google releases a product that looks suspiciously like Apple's failed OpenDoc initiative from, oh, 12 years ago, that's news. If they're focusing on a communication medium style that totally existed before, but which was largely abandoned because it was incredibly annoying, that's news, too. Those who don't learn, doomed repeat, etc., etc.