Categories: OLD Media Moves

Easier to fawn over tech CEOs than write hard news

Eric Bovim writes for Salon about why we’re seeing the beginnings of another tech bubble and how financial journalists are contributing to the problem.

Bovim writes, “Many in today’s financial press are doing a fine job as present-day pasticheurs of dot-com era vanity. But why? Why their reluctance to deliver real, incisive business journalism? Why give a free ride to the Mark Zuckerbergs and Marissa Mayers of the Valley? Well, to put it simply: For these journalists, it’s simply more fun to write ‘features’ rather than do the hard work of writing hard news.

“I could, if necessary, refer to the Vogue spread on Mayer in August; the juicy bits about how she made excel sheets to document her favorite cupcake recipes, or how she slips quietly upstairs mid-party, her ‘CEO exit’; the 3-foot tall frog statues in her backyard (‘sprinkled,’ the piece goes, with Mozart concertos). Of course, Vogue could have nested this trivia within a candid portrait of Mayer’s Yahoo tenure, major accomplishments being: redesigning the corporate logo; overseeing the development of what Vogue calls ‘a gorgeous new weather App’; and the $1 billion acquisition of Tumblr — yet another Web platform without a revenue stream and a vaporous business model, which, in Yahoo’s earnings statements, was revealed to have been valued at around $750 million in goodwill. (In other words: Mayer assessed its potential value at nearly $1 billion.) Unfortunately, goodwill does not sustain jobs. Then again, bad press does not sell fashion magazines.

“I could likewise refer to Forbes’ feature on Elon Musk last spring. An ideal way to ensure that you gain entrée for future interview requests with a billionaire is to do a piece that fawns.”