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NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> $1,027 - the price of journalistic ethics?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> $1,027 - the price of journalistic ethics?
Steve Kruse (skruse_at_pacbell.net)
Fri, 2 Jan 1998 14:15:39 -0800
In 1982, I left a 12-year career as a journalist and newspaper editor in
the Pacific Northwest to be a founding partner in a fast-growing software
company. I'm still in the software business, but have fond memories of my
days as an investigative reporter and member of the Writers Guild.
In all my time in the software industry, I have never once considered trade
magazine writers as real journalists. How many times have you met supposed
magazine editors that were ad reps in disguise? Do you see any serious
reporting in the trade magazines? How often do they go after the big
companies and help promote the smaller ones? For every article on the CEO
of a bootstrap company that does not make it, there are 10 Bill Gates
interviews. For every article about a great new database software, there
are 100 articles on Oracle. For every article about some crooked high-tech
company that bilked the public with an early IPO, there's 100 articles on
how many millionaires that Microsoft created. Face it, you can directly
relate how much ink/publicity a company receives by how much it spends in
advertising.
Most of the writers and editors for trade magazines are not trained
journalists. Most are so-called computer experts that write a book on "How
to Program in C" or "Computer Mousepads for Dummies!" Once they get their
name in print, the magazine hires them as expert columnists. They then
spend their energies on wining and dining the elite of the industry for
quotes for their meaningless columns. If you are Larry Elision, you can
take your pick of 100 "journalists" a day to have lunch with. If you are
Larry Nobody from Startup Software, Inc., you can't even get an editor to
return your call or e-mail. Trade magazine journalism is pack journalism at
its finest.
It does not surprise me that an Infoworld editor made money from
recommending a product in his column. It's part of the process. If you want
a good review, you better be a big advertiser. If you want the big-name
analysts to write great research reports on you, you better pay for their
research services. The only thing that surprises me is that anyone would be
surprised by this at all.
Steve Kruse
Nucleus Interactive, Inc.
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