It’s kinda hard (if you’re paying attention tech-news in general) to avoid reading, or reading about, TechCrunch. (Loved by some, hated by many.) Over the weekend, I caught an interview with Mike Arrington, and it got me thinking about why, exactly, he’s such a focus of ire among traditional journalists. (Internecine grumpiness in the blogging community is another thing, I think.)
The main points:
- Reporting on? rumors
- Process journalism
- Conflicts of interest
These are legitimate issues, but they are also known issues. I don’t know if it actually makes what they (or any other tech reporting blog) do more or less legitimate than the tech (or other) sections of most newspapers.
Arrington’s attitude is that what they do isn’t unheard of in the wider world of journalism, so why is everyone picking on him? I think that’s exactly why (journalists, at least) go after him. He’s not covering the latest starlet to forget her undies, so they can’t dismiss him like some Mike Drudge/Perez Hilton bottom feeder. He’s covering “real” news, and it’s one thing for the gossip rags to engage in less than sterling ethical practices, but the sinking ship that is mainstream respectable journalism (with the NY Times leading the way) insists that THEY are different. They have standards darn it! (Except when they don’t.)? Arrington, by his actions, is s saying that the emperor’s naked.
I don’t have a problem with Techcrunch. I give it about as much credence as I do most other tech reporting (it varies on the day and story). I do have a problem with the horrified pearl clutching by “respectable” media, because it’s just ridiculous, and leads to nothing so much as another round of “I know you are but what am I?” that traditional and blogistan media have been playing out for the last few years.
The problem isn’t that Techcrunch commits sins against journalism, it’s the idea that there are some sort of journalistic “virtues” that were ever adhered to in the first place that I find questionable. Really, I’d like any of the “we must save Journalism or Democracy will fall” screeds to acknowledge the large debt modern journalism owes to the yellow presses of the robber barons. William Randolph Hearst anyone? Name ring a bell? Certainly not – modern heroic journalism begins and ends with Woodward and Bernstein and god help you if you look at some of the stuff they’ve published since the 70′s.
One of my first journalism professors laid it out thusly – a journalists’ job is to get eyeballs for ads. That’s what pays your salary, not the subscribers. (This was the ethics in journalism class, mind you.)? Anyone who was looking to change or save the world should not be there. This was the same term I was taking media theory and had to read a ton of? Chomsky. Suffice it to say, I got my ass out of dodge with some shreds of idealism intact. Yes, I have some a lot of bones to pick with Journalism as it is normally practiced… I never claimed to be impartial here.? Besides, didn’t you know that shredded idealism makes the best kind of bitterness?
Impartiality is a myth. The idea that you can take a person who is a conflicting collection of biases, impulses, nuroses, and desires and, by application of some editors, fact checkers and a loose agglomeration of ethical guidelines produce Truth and Justice delivered daily is just… fiction.
The truth is so much less prosaic, but that un-prosaic truth won’t help the drowning print media regain their footing, so they must find devils to point at, and cast themselves as Perseus, ready to save the princess (the reading public) from the gorgon-like perils of un-ethical journalism. Currently, Techcrunch is the gorgon.
And whew, I hadn’t intended to get quite so ranty there.