Why the mainstream media is dying
fakesteve.net
fakesteve.net
That's why blogs are winning, because you can go straight to these people with laser focused insights that you just can't get from a j-school grad. In the past, journalists would have to go to experts for comments and structure stories around that, now with blogs you get to cut out the middle man.
A lot of the good reporting I saw over the last year has come from experts. Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight was able to generate some really great analysis on election polls.
The crew at CalculatedRisk gave reported on the mortgage industry and financial crisis better than most mainstream outlets. Actually, Tanta over there used to have to regularly correct Gretchen Morgenson, one of the senior writers at the NYT.
With war reporting, Andrew Exum at AbuMuqawama was really really great on issues dealing with the Surge/Afghanistan/Iraq. I have to bet that one of the reasons is because he served as a ranger in Afghanistan and Iraq and then got a masters in COIN and a PhD studying Hezb.
These were instances outside of Tech where I saw some really good reporting. I think Tech media will always be ahead of everyone just based on the savviness of their consumers. You can really see that with the absolute embracing of video podcast programs by the tech crowd whereas in finance we still havent seen anything close to that for taking out trash like CNBC.
Eventually, each of them has the chance to make himself into an expert in his field. The journalism grad might also remember some stuff from her studies such as not to invest in companies operating in the field she covers, verify with several sources, try to get responses before publishing and so on.
I'd say that blogs are a huge disappointment exactly because they failed to fulfill the promise of reporting by those who know most. Instead we got reporting by the those who write most, which tend to be the Scobles and Arringtons of this world rather than the Cunninghams and Torvalds (Torvaldi? ;).
I think Fake Steve is among the sharpest commentator on this space, but he's completely wrong here, suggesting TC > NYT because something they threw out against the wall managed to stay stuck.
Demonstrably yes. The entire J-school educated mainstream media has had the opportunity to do the story that Arrington has done, and yet they have failed. He has done the work that they have not, and done it well. By those credentials, among his other work, he has proven his suitability to cover technology.
Blogs are not yet a replacement for all of mainstream media, but that is to be expected. Blogs are young, and profitable blogs younger yet (5-10 years at best), whereas the mainstream media is still a multibillion dollar centuries old institution. The fact that blogs are any competition whatsoever to the mainstream media is a shocking condemnation of the current state of mainstream journalism.
I think this bears repeating. "A hot new fad sweeping the nation is deceiving your children and scamming customers for well in excess of $100 million per year" doesn't sound out of the purview of the NYT, does it? Instead of doing the ground pounding to shake out a story like that, they mainly get a press release from someone, open the Rolodex and find one of the usual suspects to give a punchy opposing quote for balance, and then publish it.
The Drudge Report broke the Monica Lewinsky story, which nearly cost a US President his job - does this mean The Drudge Report is a better news source than the NY Times?
In truth there is very little reporting in the mainstream media these days. Most media conglomerates rest on the advantages of access and consumer inertia. The big papers would rather "report" on their content-free, uncritical exclusive interview with a major figure than actually do the grubby, uninteresting behind the scenes grunt work to break legitimate news.
That might have gotten him curious about how Zygna really made their money and led him to look at those rebill ads.
Arrington grew up in California, USA and Surrey, England and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a major in economics. He went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1995.[6] He practiced corporate and securities law at O’Melveny & Myers, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.[7] Arrington was co-founder of Achex, an internet payments company, which was sold to First Data Corp for US$32 million and is now the back end of Western Union online. His other entrepreneurial endeavors include co-founding Zip.ca and Pool.com, acting as chief operating officer for Razorgator, and founding Edgeio.
If success is derived from or defined as 'most readers' (not obvious in the context of blogs), then it is mostly a consequence of who people want to read. But you don't need to be concerned with blogger success. You can read whoever wants to write.
That is the promise of blogs. Anything about what the content of blogs would be was always speculation. The promise is that anything can be thrown at the wall by anyone.
Some experts got thrown against the wall too.
Just because it's fashionable to tear down Arrington and TC, doesn't mean that mainstream media should get a pass in the process.
I think Fake Steve is completely right here. And what he's really talking about has little to do with Arrington and TC.
Blogs like aviation safety network and askthepilot are reporting comments from people that fly the same type on the same route, designed the black box in use and serviced the exact aircraft in question.
Mainstream media simply repeats talking points and soundbites. I was reminded of the stark difference between mainstream media and "real news" when I heard an anchor on NPR actually correcting some Republican legislator's ramblings about socialized medicine. I was shocked. It was as if I had just heard a kid talk back to his parents or something. Then, of course, I realized that this is how journalists are supposed to behave. CNN and MSNBC just "leave it there" after some blowhard spouts off a slew of factual errors.
Seriously. This is the same newspaper that helped legitimize a war by running Judith Miller bylines above the fold.
Mountains. Molehills.
If someone cares enough about something to read a puff-piece then they probably are going to care enough to read properly informative stories.
Increasingly, in all field (from celebrity gossip to finance to politics) you can get expert reporting from people who write well and know what they are talking about - and they provide real insights, not puff.
Forest. Trees.
The experience of sitting down with a Sunday paper is very different from that of reading a specialized outlet with a specifically targeted audience. The Sunday paper is a curated aggregator. Nine in ten stories (and probably much more than that) relate to subjects I don't have very specific knowledge of, and I'd be lost if I tried to keep up with reporting that expected significant topical familiarity.
The article proved that in one case, Techcrunch reported substantially better than New York Times. But it should be mentioned, that 1) this is not always the case, and 2) Technology is only a small part of what mainstream media cover.
Also, in my opinion, Techcrunch is not a blog in the traditional sense of that word. Yes, it uses blogging software and sorts its articles chronologically, but it is actually an Internet media company with professional staff, etc. From certain point of view, TC is mainstream technology media. Overall, this article proves nothing more that in one particular case, one media performed better than other.
Blogs already cover politics and technology more thoroughly than papers. I'll bet webcomics are catching up to newspaper funnies in popularity. By 2019, there won't be anything in newspapers that you can't get better online.
How is TechCrunch not a blog? Are the rules that if you're able to find advertisers and make money you're not a blog anymore? Because they don't make a magazine, they don't have print, and they publish exclusively online. That's exactly what a blog is.
With pet.com?
People forget that a newspaper, or a magazine, or a television station aren't news sources; they're distribution systems.
Every day, I wake up and read things from: The Times Online, New Scientist, Scientific American, Wired, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Financial Times, and probably more.
The paradigm might be changing shape, but it isn't going to be that different. Websites like this one become new-stands, and the distribution changes (from papers and trucks to packets and routers), but that is about it.
'of course fake steve jobs is all caught up in the fact that he wrote a semi decent article for newsweek about this. but the failure at nyt is pretty epic. i remember reading their article on zynga last week and thinking -- wtf? are these guys even paying attention to anything? but investigative journalism is quite different from other types of journalism. but i will say about arrington that the two big points in his favor were (a) in his original riposte with shukla, he says in his second mic session, 'this will make good copy'. the fact that he knew that way back then is a sign that that fool has matured. he is way ahead of the game compared to any other tech journalist. (b) the video he found of pincus telling developers that he had scammed in the beginning was HUGE. forced facebook to force zynga to kill this entire lead-gen industry (or at least severely modify it). and that, truly, is the benefit of online journalism. a single journalist at a desk assigned to a single story can't find those videos. you need the power of hundreds of people reading articles and collaborating (some dude probably thought to himself -- hmm, wait a second, i remember i was at that startup talk a couple of years ago...).
on the other hand, the developers, whom fake steve jobs calls scammy or something -- i don't really think they quite realized the extent of what was going on. it doesn't shirk their responsibility to see better. but, now we know. and boy, mainstream media was completely out of the loop of this entire change in the tech industry. so let's blame them. jk, but the long-term and short-term benefits of reporting w/ and w/o serious editors is going to be a bigger and bigger issue.'
As an aside no mainstream media would actually use those words , though they be true.
The true reason why blogs are beating regualar newspapers is because newspapers are trying too hard to win pulitzer prizes. Blogs give the same information but in a more convienent fashion that allows you to get the main idea with good commentary in a quick fashion.
So I think it has more to do with form and structure of content.