Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Robinson Meyer is tweeting up an interesting storm about the “death” of “tech blogging” — tied to Gizmodo’s announcement of some impressive new hires today. To get past the scarequotes, here’s Rob.
With @gizmodo’s massive refresh, this feels obvious but worth saying:“Tech blogging”—as the genre was long defined—no longer exists.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
TechCrunch established the “tech blogging” form, when—after going with ~any~ start-up news—it launched a whole blog about phones in ~2006.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
50% start-ups, 50% phones. “Tech blogging” as genre. The NYT’s Bits—a tech blog! at the NYT!—opens shop in 2007: bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/bit…
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
Last Oct., @nicknoted complained about a “general dearth of news” in Gizmodo’s beat: jimromenesko.com/2012/10/15/gaw… Too few new phones, companies.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
(@alexismadrigal called & covered the *reasons* behind tech journalism’s demise all the way back in April 2012: theatlantic.com/technology/arc… )
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
Since spring of 2012, you could watch the tech beat break. What were business stories, media stories, policy stories were labeled “tech.”
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
Slow news day? This science story kinda sorta qualifies as “tech.” And, uh, hey! Here’s an architecture story that involves cell phones!
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
With @bldgblog & @paleofuture, @gizmodo enters (my fav) part of tech: gizmodo.com/new-faces-new-… Structure, history, ethics. Weird Techblogging.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
Tech journalism, ca. 2013: • SAME AS IT EVER WAS: Ars.• COVER WHATEVER MIGHT BE TECH NEWS: The Verge, &c.• WEIRD STRUCTURES: @gizmodo!
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
The death of Web 2.0-flavored techblogging is worth celebrating because—maybe—it’ll end the rampant ahistoricism of technology journalism.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
The best part of Web 2.0, of “social media,” of new(!) smartphones(!) was the rambunctious hope. But you can hope and know your own history.
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
Media has a history & policy has a history & higher education has a history, all of them riven with tech—yay, cover them! When appropriate!
— Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) May 17, 2013
You could think of what he’s saying as the Revenge of the Liberal Arts Majors.
While we’re talking about multi-tweet runs, might as well link to Ben Mathis-Lilly’s defense of new media terminology.
7 comments:
I would only note that his full title is: Rob Meyer, future Atlantic Tech writer. He starts with us in August, and we couldn’t be more excited to have him.
An excellent hire.
Great. Maybe at that point, he can reshape these excellent points into a coherent, readable narrative, rather than a bunch of tweets.
That’s a lot of Tweets from https://twitter.com/yayitsrob
Yes, to some extent “tech” blogging has expanded to cover a much broader range of news because at first it was niche but now it’s mainstream and needs to be monetized. Unfortunately this article shows why… you copied and pasted tweets with absolutely no context (besides a link to a story) and gave no additional insight or thought to them. A worst of all, you had a dramatic headline and nothing to back it up.
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interesting:)
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