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.
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I have nothing but respect for Ms. Lacy. When writing her book about emerging country entrepreneurs, she visited India to learn more about a solar powered telecom company that was bringing GSM and high speed broadband at a cost where telecom operators could still make a profit on $3/mo per user. She was sick, yet still traveled with me to remote villages in Rajasthan, where she met with village leaders and saw how the tech was changing the lives of rural families in a poor, under served part of India with little to no electricity. This was not to get in with the local VC and cozying up to angel money, but reporting on tech around the world that can change our world. I respect her for doing this. She changed lives by reporting these stories. Give her credit where it's due.