Is tech guru through talking to the business press?

John Abell of Wired theorizes that Netscape founder and tech guru Marc Andreessen may have given his last interview to a business journalist.

Abell writes, “Of course the only difference in a world where a source speaks exclusively to a reporter and a world where s/he speaks to everybody simultaneously doesn’t make a whole lot of difference to the reader. Andreessen will continue to be excerpted by reporters (see above) and even possibly quoted out of context. At least there will be primary record, he asserts, that no one can take away.

“As a journalist I’d like to think I could get to someone like Andreessen if I had a question that only he could answer. I’d also like to think that interviews are more like conversations than interrogations, and I have never objected to being recorded by the person I’m interviewing — for the record.

“There is maybe a little more of a clue about Andreessen’s new laconic style in an earlier post in which he argues that good financial reporting is unusual:

“Financial journalists — who can be outstanding writers with journalism degrees from the best schools, and in many cases know almost nothing about the companies they are covering or the products those companies make, which does not keep them from writing all kinds of nonsense. High-quality business journalism is distinctly the exception, not the rule; every CEO knows it, and the noise from inaccurate bad press can again actually damage your company.”

“Fair enough, but that’s not exactly news, is it?”

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