Why tech gadget lovers sometimes hate biz reporters

CIO staff writer C.G. Lynch assesses the relationship between business journalists and their readers and comes to some conclusions as to why lovers of everything Apple, Linux and Facebook, to name a few, sometimes hate the reporters who write about those products.

Lynch wrote, “One is spineless web-rage. The ability for fanboys to post anonymously, or, in this case, to shout like mongrels from the middle of a conference venue, has allowed them to cross the line into being downright disrespectful while hiding behind their strength in numbers.

“Secondly, collective intelligence (as spawned by user generated content and social technologies) and the mob mentality aren’t one and the same, and these fanboys have frequently opted for the latter. They go after the messenger rather than the actual facts. If the journalist says or writes something that displeases them or is construed as slighting their technology (or hero) of choice in any sort of way, they lose it (and usually go over the top, because you can tell they enjoy the sport of it).

“The last issue: a great many business journalists, often concerned with the big picture, don’t always write stories and ask questions with the type of granularity that fanboys might like. The Facebook keynote served as a fine example of this. If people were expecting a BusinessWeek reporter to ask the world’s most exciting new business leader nitty-gritty questions about application development and widgets, they might have hired the wrong person for the job.”

Read more here.