Apple’s silence doesn’t help it with biz reporters

John Siracusa, who writes about Apple for Ars Technica, was interviewed by Chris Ip of Columbia Journalism Review about how the tech giant is covered.

Here is an excerpt:

How has Apple coverage changed over the years? 

You had this comfortable equilibrium [in the 1990s] where the Apple fans were the underdogs—the rest of the world more or less ignored them because everybody used Windows and there was the near-death moment where Apple almost went away. We know what happened next: The iMac and the iPod led to Apple’s resurgence, then of course the iPhone and the iPad. Fast-forward to today, and Apple is no longer the underdog. You can’t cover Apple or write about Apple as if it’s the scrappy upstart competitor fighting against the Windows monopoly.

That is what I think is the modern ailment of coverage of Apple: people who remember it back from the day when it was a small underdog and have not adjusted the way they view it to account for the reality of today’s Apple. They are now big enough and powerful enough that you have to watch for their use of that power and that money much more closely.

To the credit of the non-enthusiast media, they never had a problem with that because they were never so emotionally invested in Apple. So when The New York Times did the story about labor practices in Apple’s factories, [Apple enthusiast outlets argued that] Apple is no different from tons of other companies that manufacture products overseas in this respect. But if you had to pick one story, if you didn’t pick the biggest technology company in the world wouldn’t that be weird?

And I don’t think Apple helps with the secrecy. The press wants access, and Apple doesn’t give access. And so there is a resentful relationship between the press and Apple.

Read more here.