Categories: OLD Media Moves

"Cloud computing" PR spin gets biz reporters

Sam Gustin writes on the Conde Nast Portfolio web site Thursday that savvy public relations people convinced both The New York Times and BusinessWeek to write about the nebulous concept of “cloud computing” recently.

Gustin wrote, “The corporate propaganda is flying fast and furious. Google web-based software that no one uses? Facebook targeted advertising that everyone knew about? Non-existent mobile network unlocking? Call the dead-trees media. They’d be happy to oblige.

“Indeed, the ‘cloud computing’ incident is symptomatic of a growing epidemic in business journalism that is threatening to rage out of control: desperate reporters who, for the sake of the almighty scoop, are willing to publish just about any nonsense that a public relations professional shovels at them.

“So just say yes to ad-free web-based software. And just say no to ‘cloud computing.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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steve baker says:
December 22, 2007 at 9:28 am
Chris, just one point about this assertion that PR people had their way with us. I came up with the story idea from reporting at Carnegie Mellon. They told me how scientists buried in data were aching to get their hands on data-intensive supercomputers like Google's. This started a line of reporting that led me to Google, which, after quite a bit of prodding, gave me one interview, and then 10 days later, another. So, if others have trouble with the Wisdom of Clouds story, or with the use of the word cloud, that's fine. But the story wasn't sold to me by Google's pr team.