The war between tech companies and the journalists that cover them

Benjamin Wallace writes for New York Magazine about the war of words between the tech industry and the journalists that cover it.

Wallace writes, “But journalism is only as good as its sources. Even if individual reporters aren’t hurt by the hostility — and may be helped by it in certain personal-brand-building ways (maybe resulting in a lucrative Substack opportunity!) — one consequence of the cold war is a distortion spiral, where journalists ignored by company leadership may overweigh the testimony of leakers and ex-employees, resulting in less balanced coverage, which further antagonizes companies, causing them to be even less cooperative, and so on.

“Keeping them in dialogue is likely in everybody’s best interest. ‘Media and tech are in a deep coexistence, and it’s a totally false narrative that it’s some zero-sum game,’ a longtime tech PR person says. ‘I’d be completely out of a job today, and I’m not. I’m busy. I work with journalists every day, and some I’ve worked with for decades. I think there are some people in tech who like to think the media doesn’t matter, but the truth is they totally know it does, and they want that.’

“Lorenz says VCs have courted her, offering her jobs and frequently asking her to come in and talk to them about what she’s seeing on the ground of the ‘creator economy,’ her beat. Andreessen Horowitz pitched her to have an informational meeting with a partner in the past year, but she declined, noting attacks on her by another of the firm’s partners in its portfolio company Clubhouse.”

Read more here.