There’s a problem in technology journalism today. Editors and reporters seem to have forgotten that they’re supposed to be writing about companies, products and trends, not about what they’re doing after hours or in the pressroom of the LasVegas Convention Center at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
I had to laugh yesterday when I read three separate reports about the CES pressroom running out of food at lunchtime. Oh the horror, no food. The old reporter in me wants to know why the reporters were gabbing in the press room when they should have been out on the showroom floor getting the information they needed to write stories about products, technologies and how they might effect me.
Given a choice between Boopsie Gomez’s experiences partying at the bar of Hooters in Las Vegas and her breathless description of what some obscure computer luminary was wearing and a tight 250-word piece on how new notebooks with hybrid drives that boot from flash memory, the former is a waste of space and the latter will help my purchasing decisions in the coming six months.
As a consumer of information I’ve begun to think editors have allowed their news gatherers to put basic newsgathering skills behind their abilities to write colorful event-themed blogs.
It’s time to get back to basics: aligning the cart (news and trends) behind the horse (reporters’ blog-like stories). Jim Forbes, 01/08/2008 wearing a neatly pressed hair shirt.
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