By Thom Stark

The straight press' coverage of computer industry news makes me sick. And the computer industry trade press makes me really sick.

They share one problem in common: too many of their reporters simply don't understand the technology they're attempting to cover. In large measure, that's because a majority of "technology" reporters were English or journalism majors with no useful background in computer science and absolutely no real-world, hands-on experience with the technology they cover.

That's one issue -- and it's a big one. Still worse is the adverse effect the economic model on which most trade rags are based has on their independence and credibility.

In both sectors, fundamental reporter incompetence and laziness result in lightly-warmed-over press releases being published as "news". But, much too often, the trade pubs' economic model tempts them to permit large advertisers to literally dictate editorial content -- and here, I'm not just talking about clearly-identified opinion pieces, but actual product reviews and comparisons.

It works like this: most industry magazines are controlled circulation publications. That means they pick their subscribers based on their "qualifications" as self-reported on those obnoxious multiple-choice forms with which those of us in the industry are so familiar. They choose only those subscribers that those forms tell them will exercise substantial influence or control over purchasing of their advertisers' products and they then base their advertising rates on the number of readers with "big ticket purchasing authority" that they can deliver to those advertisers. And, because their readers are selected to match as closely as possible their advertisers' target demographic, they can charge sky-high rates for ad space.

It's a very profitable business model -- much moreso than supporting a magazine from subscription fees.

The problem is that the real customers of controlled circ pubs are their advertisers, not their readers. And that, in turn, means that it is the advertisers, rather than the readers, to whom they cater. And that, in its own turn, means that large advertisers can exercise an enormous degree of control over actual content decisions.

And they're not shy about exercising that control, either.

Apples vs Pomegranetes

Microsoft, in particular, is infamous for sponsoring purposefully skewed "benchmarks" alleging its products outperform those of its competitors, such as the recent one that purported to show NT and IIS beating Linux and Apache by a factor of 150-270%. Of course, the NT configuration, running on a four-processor machine, was painstakingly tuned -- while Microsoft contractor Mindcraft not only failed to tune the Linux installation, it actually worsened the defaults by turning off Samba NT services' "widelinks" parameter.

In a notorious incident from the early 1990's, the Redmond juggernaut paid Infoworld to publish a similar trumped-up comparison between LAN Manager and NetWare 3.11 as if it had been conducted by Infoworld's own testing staff. Just recently, the DoJ's suit against the Windows technopoly has forced Microsoft to be more circumspect about throwing its weight around in the press -- but the advent of Windows 2000 with its dot-zero Active Directory facing off against Novell's vastly more mature NDS is likely to result in a flood of bought-and-paid-for advertorials singing the praises of AD.

And Microsoft isn't the only offender -- just the largest and most visible. Other major vendors also exercise their advertising dollars' influence to extract favorable stories from the trade rags whenever they can. And I don't blame them -- or Microsoft, for that matter -- for doing so, because it doesn't matter how many buyers there are, unless someone's willing to sell out.

Instead, I blame the trade press for allowing their advertisers to bully them into behaving like two-dollar whores.

Say "Goodnight", Chet

So, what can you do about it?

Start by letting your "qualified" subscriptions lapse. You don't need them -- not any more. Every single bit of real news they contain breaks on the Web first. And do you really have any interest in their fake "news" -- the vaporware announcements and the lightly-rehashed marketing gobbledegook?

I sure don't.

And, as for their product reviews and comparisons, my own experience has so often been diametrically opposed to the conclusions reached by the trade press' labs that I place zero faith in them. And you should do likewise -- particularly when making as fundamental a decision as on which NOS, or browser or productivity suite to bet your enterprise.

The good news, as far as I can tell, is that the days of dead-trees editions of the trades are numbered -- and those numbers are almost up. A big chunk of their advertising dollars have already moved to the Web. And, because advertising is among the first expenses companies cut when times are bad, the next sustained economic downturn in the technology sector should pretty much starve them to death.

And that -- IMHO -- is a Good Thing.

(Copyright© 1999 by Thom Stark -- all rights reserved)

back to the top