Nick Bilton of the New York Times writes about Sam Biddle, who is overseeing a revived Valleywag website that covers Silicon Valley with a large dose of snark.
Bilton writes, “Mr. Biddle has another favorite target: other writers who cover the tech industry.
“He has gone to great lengths to ruffle Sarah Lacy, a former writer for Businessweek and editor at TechCrunch who is the founder of a technology blog called PandoDaily that — in Mr. Biddle’s estimation — does the bidding of the industry it covers. He called Ms. Lacy a ‘free-market monster’ after she wrote a post criticizing a strike by local transit workers; he taunted her for defending the tech industry, and he chided her for becoming part of the stories she covers, considered improper for traditional journalists.
“Ms. Lacy says those criticisms are nonsense. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t think much of what Mr. Biddle is doing. ‘If Gawker thinks the Valley press isn’t uncovering stories, then go do it, because so far I haven’t seen it from Valleywag,’ Ms. Lacy said.
“Ms. Lacy and others question how Mr. Biddle can accurately report on Silicon Valley while he is based in New York. It’s a common complaint: that Mr. Biddle knows little about the industry he enjoys mocking. And they say he hardly practices the high values of journalism that he preaches. ‘Not calling people before you write about them is not noble,’ Ms. Lacy said.”
Read more here.
