Intellectual dishonest in tech journalism

Ricard Bilton of Digiday spoke with Techmeme’s Gabe Rivera about the current state of technology reporting.

Here is an excerpt:

The list of tech sites gets longer each day, but a lot of them seem to be doing the same thing. Are you optimistic about the industry?
There’s a lot to be optimistic about. There’s never been a better time for readers wanting to keep up with what’s happening in the industry. A big reason for that is, of course, all the new news organizations that now have resources to report. But another factor is all the writing outside the confines of “journalism”: commentary on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., from analysts and participants in the industry. You actually need to take that into account in addition to the “journalism” to get the most complete pictures of what’s happening (which is precisely why it’s Techmeme’s job to summarize all that in one page).

But there also lots of reasons to be pessimistic as well. 
On the down side are a lot of things you’ve heard already. Like the pervasiveness of churnalism, and how writers at news publications aren’t nearly as knowledgeable as they should be to cover their beat. These are real problems, but hard to counter given the tight supply of good writers. Another problem: lying by omission, hyperbole and other forms of intellectual dishonesty are creeping into more tech reporting.

Read more here.