Monday 22 February 2010

UK Tech journalists - lazy, complacent or focused correctly on the Big Guys

This is Paul Maher's work, not mine - I am simply hosting it for wider readership.

UK Tech journalists - lazy, complacent or focused correctly on the Big Guys
Had a shocking experience when pitching a great customer story from an up and coming client.

Anyone seen anything like this recently?

http://positivemarketingorg.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/%E2%80%9Cinnovation-nah-we-only-cover-the-establishment%E2%80%9D/



Posted 1 day ago | Reply Privately
Comments (3)

Adrian Bridgwater
Freelance Journalist
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Shocking. In a word - just shocking.

My thoughts:

1. thank you for posting this.

2. without naming the exact source, would it be fair to assume that this journalist works for one of the big five or six UK publishing houses with interest in the IT sector? i.e Future, Dennis, VNU, etc...

3. I would also bet that this person is under 30? Under 25 years old perhaps - please say that this is the case.

3. I fail to comprehend this journalist's attitude at all. I take great delight in covering Microsoft and honestly find it to be a privilege when I get to interview the top brass evangelists (and for the record evangelist DOES NOT mean marketing necessarily - at least not in my developer-centric world it doesn't, so Editors please take note) and lead tech gurus. The same goes for IBM, Sybase, Sun, Adobe - you name 'em

4. But I also find it extremely interesting to cover the small guys. The start ups, the web 2.0 try hard companies, the 'we know we might eventually get bought but we're still trying to make a name for ourselves' type of company.

In summary, I this journalist is probably highly inexperienced and is nervous of not knowing how to make a big headline out of a small company's piece of news - and so is reliant on big names brands and SEO optimization for dummies.

Thanks again - a good post.

Adrian
Posted 20 hours ago | Delete comment
Bill Boyle
Managing Director, WHB Communications
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Paul

I have worked on IT clients for the past ten years and have increasingly come up against this attitude. I have been told on a number of occasions recently that my client is too small to be of interest before the journalist takes a good look at the technology on offer. It is lazy journalism and a reflection of the pressures smaller and smaller numbers of writers are under to deliver.

These are the same pressures which have destroyed investigative reporting in all but the most well-funded titles.
Posted 14 hours ago | Reply Privately

Nikki Alvey
Freelance Public Relations and Communications Consultant
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Hi Paul,

An interesting thread so thanks for that. Having recently completed a tech press tour for a non top 5 vendor, I can say with confidence (from my own experience) that all of the 9 journalists who came out to meet with the client were interested, engaged and shock horror most had done some background research of their own on my client (board members, investors even too). They even turned up in business casual attire :-)

It's never an easy sell getting the smaller guys heard, but it is possible and if people come up against this kind of argument, they should stand their ground - or find a better journo at that title to talk to.

Nikki
Posted 10 hours ago | Reply Privately

1 comment:

  1. This doesn't sound like lazy journalism, it sounds like somebody who has very little experience or knowledge of IT so cannot tell when they are being pitched something interesting or not.
    Every PR believes their client is interesting, and has something valuable to say - god forbid their clients might actually be talking arse.
    The problem with idiot hacks is not laziness, it's an industry that doesn't reward tech publications, just like it didn't 15 years ago when I got my first editorship with only two years writing under my belt. There was too little money in publishing back then, and too little now. If a vendor spends its marketing budget on PR, because it is believed to be better value than display advertising or banner ads, who is paying for the staff on the magazine? Chumps? There's very little subs-based IT publishing, so it must be the chumps. And PR world, flooded with clients and agencies, has very few outlets left. Maybe the publications and the agencies should just accept they are dying. They certainly can't be expected to recruit and retain the brightest staff when most of their job now is copy editing a press release (which the PR then gets paid by the client for the "opportunity") Being a staff journo on an IT publication is a young person's job because the pay is so bad. At 30 you either go freelance, make it to editor (still badly paid) or go into management (or into PR of course).
    If you are a vendor, get a blog or publish your own mag if you want to tell your story.
    #stewartbaines

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