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I hate to be a hater, but I was never too impressed with Mossberg's reporting. My opinion is that his platform was stronger than his content. I suppose my clai

I hate to be a hater, but I was never too impressed with Mossberg's reporting. My opinion is that his platform was stronger than his content. I suppose my claim is Mossberg was the New York Times Best Seller List of tech writing.

ddebernardy 9y ago
Any odds you could name a few journalists whose reporting you find more impressive than Mossberg's?
- mc32 9y ago
  From a technical pov Anand Lal Shimpi perhaps? He didn't kill it on the prose or suave approach, but on the technical detail and exactitude.
  - TwoNineA 9y ago
    The CPU guy from Ars Technica was extremely good as well.
    - dogruck 9y ago
      Agreed.
    - untog 9y ago
      He is, but it seems silly to compare him to Walt Mossberg. They do very, very different kinds of tech journalism.
  - ericd 9y ago
    Agreed, he was excellent.
  - haikuginger 9y ago
    Brian Klug also. Both at Apple now.
- nihonde 9y ago
  Jean-Louis Gassée (author of this piece on Mossberg) is one of my favorite commentators. He's just enough of an insider and yet also an oddball, which means he keeps it pretty real in an area that tends to be an echo chamber of fawning cultists.
- antonchekhov 9y ago
  Dan Gillmor did a lot of very astute writing (not necessarily just reporting, but also commentary) about many aspects of the scene in SV when he wrote for the San Jose Mercury-News. He didn't seem to care much for gossip or writing purely about personalities, and was more interested in cultural and legal effects of new technologies. I believe he's now occasionally writing for the Guardian, as well as teaching journalism at the university level.
askafriend 9y ago
Ben Thompson in my opinion is brilliant and extremely underrated (even for how popular he is).
- mattkevan 9y ago
  Agreed. Ben has some of the best analysis out there. Also worth reading: * JLG (as already mentioned) * Horace Dediu at Asymco * Kontra at Counternotions – posts very infrequently but always insightful
martijn_himself 9y ago
I have to say I agree. I'm only familiar with his recent writings but they didn't strike me as very original or standout reporting, so I don't get the adoration. I also found some of his on-stage tech interviews rather lacking in depth and personality. I'm probably wrong though, and I get the impression I would have had to follow his contributions from his early career through to his later work to truly appreciate his influence on the tech industry.
- m_mueller 9y ago
  On-stage he was IMO ok, but the ATD interviews were lowered very much in quality by his co-host Kara Swisher. Why was she in that position again and again? Why two hosts for an interview at all?
jhbadger 9y ago
Mossberg wasn't a "techie" in the sense of delighting in technology for the sake of itself, and so he wasn't that attractive to those of us that are. Rather he was a writer who appealed to people skeptical of technology and who wanted to know if a particular device would really be useful to somebody without a technical background for actual uses.
rplst8 9y ago
I 100% agree with you. When Mossberg left the WSJ this thread was on HN... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6414723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6414723 The tech press was then, and is now, a total joke compared to other forms of serious journalism. I wrote this about Mossberg's colleague Kara Swisher a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8036679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8036679 I think my comments still stand. The tech press is terrible at covering: - Energy Use/Efficiency of tech (not just laptops I'm talking datacenters, etc.) - Governance of the Internet - Privacy (until recently - sort of [and it still gets buried]) - Software copyright issues - Market/monetary prospects for new tech (I think the article sort of talks about the fear of "crushing innovation") - Energy tech itself (new forms of power generation, batteries) - Tech in our lives (and I'm not talking about the fear card) - autonomous vehicles, medical devices, etc. And Mossberg was and is part of the problem. It's pageantry for the common man rather than serious journalism. Things have improved slightly since I wrote that 3 or 4 years ago but there is still waaaaaaay too much noise about Apple's latest widgets. Instead we should be hearing much more about the socioeconomic, political, and societal impacts that technology has and the fact that Apple's entire business model is centered around filling our landfills with their devices that become unusable with their latest version of iOS.
- simonh 9y ago
  How can you Square writing that statement with the fact that Samsung (as just the foremost Android vendor) sells more phones than Apple, provides software updates for them for a fraction as long, has significantly shorter average device working lifetimes and doesn't come close to Apple's record on recycling? Yet you're picking on Apple. Name one device vendor that is doing more to address these issues? How can you be interested in this issue and not be perfectly aware of all of this?
  - SpikeDad 9y ago
    Downvoted the truth. It's hip to hate on Apple. I thought folks here had a little more intelligence.

ddebernardy 9y ago

Any odds you could name a few journalists whose reporting you find more impressive than Mossberg's?

mc32 9y ago
From a technical pov Anand Lal Shimpi perhaps? He didn't kill it on the prose or suave approach, but on the technical detail and exactitude.
- TwoNineA 9y ago
  The CPU guy from Ars Technica was extremely good as well.
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Agreed.
  - untog 9y ago
    He is, but it seems silly to compare him to Walt Mossberg. They do very, very different kinds of tech journalism.
- ericd 9y ago
  Agreed, he was excellent.
- haikuginger 9y ago
  Brian Klug also. Both at Apple now.
nihonde 9y ago
Jean-Louis Gassée (author of this piece on Mossberg) is one of my favorite commentators. He's just enough of an insider and yet also an oddball, which means he keeps it pretty real in an area that tends to be an echo chamber of fawning cultists.
antonchekhov 9y ago
Dan Gillmor did a lot of very astute writing (not necessarily just reporting, but also commentary) about many aspects of the scene in SV when he wrote for the San Jose Mercury-News. He didn't seem to care much for gossip or writing purely about personalities, and was more interested in cultural and legal effects of new technologies. I believe he's now occasionally writing for the Guardian, as well as teaching journalism at the university level.

askafriend 9y ago

Ben Thompson in my opinion is brilliant and extremely underrated (even for how popular he is).

mattkevan 9y ago
Agreed. Ben has some of the best analysis out there. Also worth reading: * JLG (as already mentioned) * Horace Dediu at Asymco * Kontra at Counternotions – posts very infrequently but always insightful

martijn_himself 9y ago

I have to say I agree. I'm only familiar with his recent writings but they didn't strike me as very original or standout reporting, so I don't get the adoration. I also found some of his on-stage tech interviews rather lacking in depth and personality. I'm probably wrong though, and I get the impression I would have had to follow his contributions from his early career through to his later work to truly appreciate his influence on the tech industry.

m_mueller 9y ago
On-stage he was IMO ok, but the ATD interviews were lowered very much in quality by his co-host Kara Swisher. Why was she in that position again and again? Why two hosts for an interview at all?

jhbadger 9y ago

Mossberg wasn't a "techie" in the sense of delighting in technology for the sake of itself, and so he wasn't that attractive to those of us that are. Rather he was a writer who appealed to people skeptical of technology and who wanted to know if a particular device would really be useful to somebody without a technical background for actual uses.

rplst8 9y ago

I 100% agree with you. When Mossberg left the WSJ this thread was on HN... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6414723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6414723 The tech press was then, and is now, a total joke compared to other forms of serious journalism. I wrote this about Mossberg's colleague Kara Swisher a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8036679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8036679 I think my comments still stand. The tech press is terrible at covering: - Energy Use/Efficiency of tech (not just laptops I'm talking datacenters, etc.) - Governance of the Internet - Privacy (until recently - sort of [and it still gets buried]) - Software copyright issues - Market/monetary prospects for new tech (I think the article sort of talks about the fear of "crushing innovation") - Energy tech itself (new forms of power generation, batteries) - Tech in our lives (and I'm not talking about the fear card) - autonomous vehicles, medical devices, etc. And Mossberg was and is part of the problem. It's pageantry for the common man rather than serious journalism. Things have improved slightly since I wrote that 3 or 4 years ago but there is still waaaaaaay too much noise about Apple's latest widgets. Instead we should be hearing much more about the socioeconomic, political, and societal impacts that technology has and the fact that Apple's entire business model is centered around filling our landfills with their devices that become unusable with their latest version of iOS.

simonh 9y ago
How can you Square writing that statement with the fact that Samsung (as just the foremost Android vendor) sells more phones than Apple, provides software updates for them for a fraction as long, has significantly shorter average device working lifetimes and doesn't come close to Apple's record on recycling? Yet you're picking on Apple. Name one device vendor that is doing more to address these issues? How can you be interested in this issue and not be perfectly aware of all of this?
- SpikeDad 9y ago
  Downvoted the truth. It's hip to hate on Apple. I thought folks here had a little more intelligence.