CES is waste for tech reporters

Farhod Manjoo writes on Slate.com about how useless the Consumer Electronics Show going on this week in Las Vegas is for most tech journalists.

Manjoo writes, “The fact that CES is an enormous waste of time isn’t news to tech journalists. In private, gadget reporters will tell you that covering the show is a tremendous hassle and rarely yields any interesting news. But because CES demos make for great headlines and visuals — hey look, Steve Ballmer unveiled a tablet PC even before Apple did! — and because of the sheer volume of new stuff to post about, CES is a boon for gadget blog traffic and a honeypot for advertisers.

“To be sure, I’m very grateful that my reporting colleagues are all out covering the show; in the unlikely event that something of consequence is announced at CES, I’ll happily scour Engadget, Gizmodo, and other sites from the comfort of my home.

“But I doubt that’s going to happen. The last time we saw something interesting unveiled at CES was in 2009, when Palm showed off its Pre phone. (The Pre didn’t actually go on sale until June that year.) But that was a rarity. Most of the groundbreaking products to hit the market over the last few years — the iPhone, the iPad, the Kindle, the first Android phone, the Chrome OS, and pretty much everything else — were announced elsewhere. Apple always skips CES, and even the companies that attend seem to phone it in. Microsoft’s two great products of 2010 — the new Windows Phone and the Xbox Kinect — were nowhere to be seen at last year’s show.”

Read more here.