4 ms·

I kinda disagree with the idea tech blogs aren't real journalism or shouldn't be held to the same journalism standards. Especially with revenue on print media d

I kinda disagree with the idea tech blogs aren't real journalism or shouldn't be held to the same journalism standards. Especially with revenue on print media declining as much as it has, I'd say smaller blogs tend to do a lot of the deep original research online that many news organizations would've traditionally done. A blog like The Verge is often the original source of major revelations about tech companies and their behaviors. Furthermore, while one might consider tech blogs a niche area, we consider Amazon, the world's largest retailer, a "tech company", so as "tech companies" start dominating major traditional verticals, "tech news" starts to just... be "news".

crazygringo 6y ago
Here's the difference as I see it: major fact-based independent news outlets like the NYT, WaPo, etc. are essential for democracy. We rely on them for essential reporting about war, corruption, scandals, everything we need to make informed decisions at the voting booth. We expect them to report "both sides of the story". Industry news is different. We often expect blogs, authors, etc. to be openly pro- or anti- on certain subjects, to be given favorable treatment by companies, etc. We expect them to be "editorial". Such journalism can be openly one-sided. Reporting on the war in Afghanistan is fundamentally different from a review of the Oculus Quest 2. That isn't to say tech blogs can't report unbiased, hard-hitting news. They sometimes do, and that's wonderful. But I do believe that our general societal expectation is that industry news sources are free to (and often expected to) editorialize without a hard wall between news and editorials, while independent objective news outlets are expected to maintain that hard wall.