One of the shows I miss the most from the now defunct ZDTV/TechTV is "Silicone Spin" hosted by John C. Dvorak. It was a great show where various tech pundits got together and hammered out the current issues in a round table. Dvorak moderated the show with a cut-to-the-chase style. The technical press is one area of journalism that is not criticized enough except by people like Dvorak. "Silicone Spin's" demise silenced some of the media critics. Face it, the mainstream press is just now getting analyzed and criticized in a meaningful way. The business and technical press need to be taken to the woodshed a little more often.
Dvorak's latest column for PC Magazine is an excellent example as to why the self-proclaimed watchdogs for the American people need their own watch-dogging.
The newsroom editors are generally so out of touch that they can't see this bias. Besides, they use Macs too. There are entire newsrooms, such as the one at Forbes, that consist entirely of Macintoshes. Apparently nobody but me finds this weird.
Even Jack Shafer, who recently wrote about Apple's skewed coverage in Slate fails to point out the connection between the skewed coverage and the existence of this peculiar conflict of interest based on the national writers' use of Macs.
Thank you, John. I'm not privy to the newsrooms, but I always suspected this was the reason Apple is such a media darling. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple's products and they are a company to study in terms of how to market and release products. They know the press likes them and they use it to their advantage as they should. But the anti-Microsoft bias is obvious in the technical press.
This bias also bleeds over into Linux reporting. My theory is the press always likes underdog stories. But if you step outside the IT industry, you'll find that mainstream business couldn't tell you exactly what Linux is. So when I read about how Linux is threatening Microsoft's desktop market or how "everybody wants Linux", I have to do a double-take since I actually work in the business world and see people using Windows every day. I've never heard anybody openly express a desire to replace their Windows desktop with anything other than a Macintosh. But even then, that is followed up with something about how the applications they use the most are only available on Windows.
Microsoft is to the technical press what Wal-Mart is to the business press. It's an easy target because it is so big and it's cool to bash Microsoft. I've written before about Microsoft's cultural problems and their old, outdated business model. But changes are afoot at Microsoft to address them. These are largely positive changes, but you wouldn't know that if you didn't frequent blogs written by actual Microsoft employees.
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