MG Siegler wrote a piece lamenting the deterioration of tech news. Much of his ideas are not new nor news.
Tech journalism ceased in the late 90s when bloggers started calling themselves journalists. Remember the “A list” bloggers? They grouped themselves together, separating themselves from others, and supported each other with links and commenting about each other. They started called themselves journalists and bloggers started replacing newspaper sites.
Take it one step more and consider HuffingtonPost as evidence that good journalism nor accuracy is required for gaining visitors. Lemmings follow the crowd and bloggings (Bloggers who follow other bloggers) also speed link in hopes others will link to them.
This was similar to the in-crowd of the mid-80s claiming that they were the experts in building PC clones. Actually, they were just assembling parts from different suppliers – but hey – who cared? Lemmings followed and clones took the market away from IBM. Think Compaq – remember them? But their time passed.
Back to the former “A list” group. How do they currently get their news? To pick up on news, they read press releases sent to them via emails, scan RSS feeds, and pick a means to re-write a piece and publish something without verifying the accuracy. It does not matter. No one reads. People skim.
Let’s think for a moment about the “new bloggers.” Where do they get their ideas? The wanna-be crowd goes to Tech Meme and writes about the same hype and hope to get listed.
With this frame of reference, let’s skip back to the 75-20-5 rule proposed by Mr. Siegler and consider his laments in current historical context.
The true lament is not that tech journalism is dead but that no one reads or cares about accuracy. Bloggers and Bloggings rush to get visitors and comments.They are not interested in accuracy.
In turn, people skim with the understanding that most of any tech piece is fluff. People jump to conclusions and write their own fluff.
But the real culprit is the belief that Google is important. People slam Google search, skim the titles, pick the top few sites and go for it. This leads Bloggings to chase the Golden Top Ten spot for keywords.
In fact, I’ve known many bloggers who start sites with the hope of reaching the top pages of Google search. They eventually quit in weeks or months of rejection and slow site comments. Maybe they should just focus on good content and forget Google.
Robert Scoble (“A list blogger”) understood this concept several years ago. He wrote that he was getting off the press release treadmill. He was ahead of his time. More bloggers need to get off the press release republishing business, get off the speed, and get off the Google chase.
Trailblazers ignore the hype. Trailblazers read.