They call it the trade press. It`s a name that must have hurt once, and so it stuck. No matter that nowadays this branch of the media uses other channels to reach its audience, such as e-mail, the Internet, mobile devices and television, and can`t very well be called "press" anymore. It`s still called the trade press.
And no matter that some of them are actually quite good - in that they understand their audience`s business needs, and are literate, mostly, given the gobbledygook fed to them in the form of press releases. Or that they often come up with rather good angles geared towards making the reader`s life easier or at least more interesting, or that these days they don`t particularly care whether their stories make the advertiser look good or not.
It`s the trade press forever more. Well, nobody said it was supposed to be fair.
Just desserts
Sometimes we deserve it. Trade is, amusingly, accused of inventing gladiatorial contests to sustain industry interest. CNet editor-at-large Michael Kanellos calls it the "Battlestar Galactica" principle, which goes as follows: "If the domination of the universe isn`t contested on a weekly basis, ratings will go down." Analysts, reporters, consumers and executives need a contest of epic proportions to keep the job interesting.
It`s the trade press forever more. Well, nobody said it was supposed to be fair.
Carel Alberts, Special Editions Editor, ITWeb Brainstorm
Interesting. And to think we`ve been doing this intuitively. The latest gladiatorial contest, CNet reports, is between the new Cell chip and whatever else they put in cellphones, TV sets and PlayStations today. The only trouble with the unbelievable hype over the Cell, says Kanellos, is that it`s huge (twice the size of certain CPUs in much bigger devices), and it runs hotter than most notebook CPUs. So we`re guilty, some rags will say. So sue us. And to these mags even a fellow "trade" journo has to say - you`re on your own.
Trade mags and zines also (sometimes deservedly) stand accused of going about their reporting uncritically or without adding value. A quick look on Google News tells me IBM predicts more viruses this year.
I`m ashamed to read this. Not one, not two, but a ton of magazines unthinkingly picked up this (apparently) self-evident drivel and ran with it. And the ignominy! It got millions of hits. Well, the downside to knowing your market is having to give them what they want. Virus stories are among the most well read in the ICT business - telecoms, open source and WiFi, until recently, being others - and you`re guaranteed interest if you run the stuff.
Of course, if sleeping at night is a priority, you try to do so with integrity, a critical approach and a modicum of context. But of course, some trade pubs don`t do that, and one must accept that the industry deserves some of the flak it gets for this.
Incidentally, a closer look at the IBM virus stories, all similarly headlined, reveals that the hysteria concerns embedded computers, PCs and handhelds, which makes it a slightly different ballgame (it`s more current than it first appears). It means the writers concerned are at worst guilty of poor headlining, which, I would guess, is probably a factor of the manic schedules and slim staffing that most trade publishing houses get by on.
By comparison, ITWeb is a proud success story, but this is not the norm. So instead of slating trade, the sector`s sheer devotion should be praise-sung in Parliament.
Of course trade mags labour on at getting better and better (not too good, we hope, or ITWeb would have more than 100% of the market, which seems a dangerous anomaly). And surely, if you compare trade to broad-based media, we don`t compare too badly?
Moan and wail
Let`s say ITWeb were a highbrow weekly. Chances are we`d have our own foibles. We`d have highly, and I mean HIGHLY bitchy reviews that complain, with not the least bit of unease, about a particular actor`s eyes being too small*. We don`t do that in trade, surely. But imagine the possibilities! In an industry dominated by males, beauty must definitely be a differentiator.
Or we could be the government broadcaster and insist on calling ourselves the people`s broadcaster. We could carry truckloads of government acolytes, replete with Political Comms 101 credits, so that, no matter how incisive the questioning from an outside journalist, we can always fudge that the reporting isn`t biased.
Or we could keep David Bullard as a columnist, and be sure of one thing at least - the self-fanned notoriety, the tiresome, point-missing superiority, will always satisfy some basic instinct in the pack animals who sometimes impersonate readers. And if that doesn`t work, we`ll put boobs on the backpage.
*This link can be accessed only by Mail & Guardian subscribers.