Definitions and pontifications in the blogosphere
Gabe Moretti chimed into the discussion on whether bloggers are journalists this week and made some valid statements, although I don't entirely agree with him. Essentially he says that the only people who should get press credentials at a trade show should be people from the traditional press and that all others should be given a secondary level of access that is no more than exhibitor level. I don't necessarily disagree with that, because the only reason I'm going to DAC to do interviews for EDA Cafe, SoC Central and New Tech Press is because I don't have to pay to get in. I would have been happy with an exhibitor badge, but I will make use of the press pass to dig stuff up and get a quiet place to record interviews.
However, I'm not real happy with the idea of keeping a hard and fast definition for who gets a press pass.
I'm not sure Gabe realizes it, but by his definition, he should not get a press pass. Gabe doesn't work for the traditional press any more. His job is to promote DAC. He gets paid to put together the DAC newsletter with the express purpose of getting more people to come to DAC as exhibitors and attendees. I'm of the opinion, however, that Gabe does provide valuable information to the industry and is therefore a journalist. Gabe's definition also excludes people like Richard Goering, Steve Leibson, Brian Fuller,and Mike Santarini, because they are either getting a corporate paycheck or are consulting to companies about communication strategy. It also makes participation questionable by Paul Dempsey at EDA Tech Forum, and Ed Sperling from Extension Media (Chip Design) because both publications' content is heavily influenced by corporate sponsorship. (That position, BTW, is not mine. Those guys deserve to be considered journalists still).
By Gabe's definition, on the other hand, I should receive a press pass because I am not there to represent a client (I have none in EDA). I am there looking for information to post on the various blogs I write on. What's more, I am not being paid by anyone to cover anything at DAC. This is all on my dime. But I know there are a few of traditional journalists who think I should not get the recognition because I've been a PR dude in EDA for a while.
So here''s the thing about bloggers and why they should get the same access as journalists (whether you want to call them journalists is moot). By limiting the definition to only those from the traditional press, you severely limit the number of people who might actually cover the news of the industry. There just aren't many left, folks. But most of the bloggers in EDA are doing exactly what traditional journalists have been doing for the past 5 years when it comes to news coverage -- rewriting company press releases. They are just doing it from an insiders perspective if they are corporate-paid, and from a customer perspective (like Harry Gries). That makes their input even more valuable to the traditional journalist because they don't have to ferret out sources anymore. They can get the input they need on company products from what the bloggers write about and quote them. In essence, thanks to the blogosphere, traditional journalists don't really have to go to trade shows like DAC. They can ignore press releases, not take meetings, just go to the technical sessions and blow off the trade show altogether.
I think it's a paradigm worth considering. And we should all keep an open mind for the time being.
Agreed. Like it or not, everyone can be a "journalist" by starting a blog - and I like it because I get all sorts of useful info from these blogs. I don't like it because "real" journalists have lost their jobs. The investigative reporting of yesterday is just about gone. But back to DAC...yes, the bloggers should get free passes so they can write about DAC and continue to promote it.
ReplyDeleteI have to STRONGLY take objection where you state that I am "rewriting company press releases". As an example, the article that you linked to, concerning Oasys Design was based on:
ReplyDelete1) conversations with 3 separate people at Oasys
2) a conversation with a VC person who knows this company
3) a conversation with Steve Meier (former VP R&D at Synopsys)
4) conversations with half a dozen colleagues in EDA at various companies
5) information gleaned from digging through online resources (their website, blogs, LinkedIn profiles, old Ambit and Get2Chip websites)
6) and my 24 years of personal experience
Maybe the press folks you work with are happy to just rewrite a press release, but I do my homework. Next time, get your facts straight.
Hey Lou,
ReplyDeleteLooks to me like you managed to insult both "journalists" and bloggers in the same post. I'm not sure that either insult was intended, but regardless - there's nothing like a controversial post to get the traffic flowing.
You make journalists look like parasites who aggregate information created by others. And obviously, you managed to insult Harry as well. Not sure why you picked on him, but I'd say he is due an apology.
Let me share an anecdote on the traditional journalists. I covered ISSCC in February in my role as an analyst for DIGDIA. I saw plenty of journalists in the press room, but not a single one in any of the technical sessions I attended. My guess is that they spent their time in pre-arranged interviews, based on what they wrote.
That makes sense, because I don't think any of the journalists have the technical depth to digest and report on the papers presented. And that is the point with EDA bloggers as well. The value they add is that they understand the tools they work with and write about, well BEYOND what appears in a press release.
-Mike Demler
Hi Lou,
ReplyDeleteYou didn't insult me, at least. I thought you gave us corporate bloggers credit for providing the industry with valuable content. I don't rewrite press releases (that's boring), but I do offer my opinion on topics related to them (and link to them).
Maybe I have a thicker skin than other bloggers. After all, The Standards Game has made me "The Titanium Woman"! (Gabe's nickname for me).
-Karen Bartleson www.synopsysoc.org/thestandardsgame
Hi Lou: Harry has over 20 years experience in the industry and he talks to a bunch of sources in his network. His blog and other EDA blogs like Paul McClellan's are both of high quality and not just reiterated press releases. I would say this is much better than the average EDA journalist even before the recent meltdown. While I had the greatest respect for quality EDA journalists like Richard Goering, it is a reality that there are no true quality EDA journalists remaining. Rather than deny the bloggers, EDA and DAC should embrace and support them as quality objective information and public analysis makes for a more vibrant industry.
ReplyDeleteHarry, sorry you took what I said as an insult. Wasn't intended as such. Re-reading it I can see where you might take what I said as insulting, especially if you were looking for it.
ReplyDeleteThe point of this post was not to say what you did was invalid, useless, lazy or lacking depth. My intention was the exact opposite.
Gabe is one of the people that doesn't see the value in social media and blogs. He wants everything to go back to the way it was. Frankly, I do too, but I don't see it happening. But there is controversy regarding how tech trades view bloggers and what kind of access they should have.
My point is that in the current paradigm -- or lack of one -- we should keep an open mind and see what is working out. That's why traditional journalists need to look at the content of blogs and social media, rather than news releases. That's why what you do should be valued and not dismissed as "the sparkle of social media," as Gabe puts it.
The context of my comment that referenced you was that you write about the stuff floating about called marcom collateral and strain it through your "user-perspective" sieve. So traditional journalists need to look at you and the rest of the engineer/bloggers out there as the source of insight that they no longer have time to ferret out. Because of bloggers like you, traditional journalists don't have to settle for re-written press releases. They can take the release and look to see what you will write about it.
I can see a time coming when marketing people will no longer seek out meetings with journalists at DAC and tradeshows like it, but will have to go to you and other bloggers first. that will be come the real filter for the information.
I hope that you don't find my characterization of you as what I would consider a "real journalist" as insulting.
Mike, to your comments, I'm not sure where you got your interpretation that I was insulting journalists or anyone else. The fact that most of them are just rewriting press releases has been stated by better people than me, including Mike Santarini and most of the marketing people in EDA. I've even heard it from a few working journalists (although the one's making the comments were referring to journalists working for competing publications.) I've also heard the complaint from working journalists that they just lack the time to do anything else. So it's not like I invented the concept.
I see you managed to say that journalists at ISSCC lack the technical depth to cover the technical sessions. I'm sure Rick Merritt appreciates the insight regarding his coverage of networking and wireless research.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteYou are aware there are something like six to eight parallel tracks at any one time at ISSCC? Even then, based on your Highlights report I'd say there was a good chance that Paul Dempsey was in one of them and possibly someone from the The Register,as well as Rick Merritt. I'm a little unsure as to why you felt the need to turn up as most of that Highlights content I could have cobbled together from the Digest (maybe you didn't make it to the author interview sessions?). But, I guess different techniques work for different people.
ISSCC is unusual in the IEEE conferences in that it attracts a large number of general technology reporters as opposed to people working primarily in electronics. It has something to do with no-marks like Intel turning up to preview processors that will be hitting manufacturing later in the year. Sitting through three days of other stuff isn't really a very good use of their time. They also have a better understanding of their respective audiences - something that tells them that reporting on a natty clock skew fixing scheme is not as useful to readership as describing how shrinking a processor down to 32nm from 45nm is going to affect them. Some conferences it makes sense to see the talks; others you are better off arranging short interviews. Reporting is about doing things that work not scoring brownie points so you can wave a big "I'm more hard-core tech than you" banner around.
On the more general point about blogging/journalism. Anyone who thinks a wide spectrum of customer/user bloggers are going to be willing targets for press releases and kind of brain-deadening Powerpoint trade hacks have been subjected to for the past 20 years has got to be kidding themselves. If I was working at a customer and marketing from some EDA company told me I had to go meet them instead of an engineer competent to demo a tool, I don't think I'd be very pleased. And people doing marketing and PR are going to have to understand that very quickly.
It's interesting the Gabe defines a blogger by what he or she is and not by what he or she does. Personally, I find the "does" aspect far more relevant. I publish two blogs on sites that are clearly journalistic sites (EDN and low-powerdesign.com). I've passed muster with the chief editors that run those sites but not with Gabe? Something's very wrong about that. There's also something very wrong about someone making such public declarations when they work for DAC but don't make the relevant decisions. Gabe is a pseudo-authoritative spokesperson for DAC.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I got a call from the DAC registration people. I had two badges lined up. One was my press badge. The other was for speaking on the Hogan's Heroes Pavilion panel. I've had multiple DAC badges for decades because of necessity: press, exhibitor, speaker, they all confer different privileges on the wearer. The caller claimed they were cracking down on multiple badges because they wanted correct counts. Gabe's piece makes me wonder just what's going on. Will DAC truly bite the hands that feed it for the "cost" of a badge?
Chris, well said. One of the more difficult tasks for a PR hack in this time is getting a member of the press to take a meeting at a trade show. Richard Goering stopped taking meetings at DAC 10 years prior to his layoff and even Ron Wilson consistently says he's only going to be attending sessions. The downside of that practice is that it limits the visibility of members of the press so many people in marketing no longer know, exactly, if that person in the front row of a session taking notes is a journalist.
ReplyDeleteTo your last point, I agree that customers need to go to competent engineers to get information about products, but there are technically competent bloggers out there (JL Gray, Harry Gries, John Ford, etc.) who have working knowledge of many of the new tools and techniques and write about them. That makes them excellent sources of research for customers as well as journalists... plus you don't have to slog through an army of marketers and lawyers to talk with them.
As the practice grows and is weeded out, I think we will find it to be extremely valuable to everyone. We just have to give it some time.
I really don't think DAC is going in that direction. It seems they are honestly trying to figure out the best way of doing things and from my perspective, it looks like the exhibitors that provide a great deal of the revenue for the show, want to have bloggers identified as journalists. And the customer is always right.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong: I absolutely mean that JL, Harry etc are good sources on the value of individual products. What I meant was, and I can't speak for them: if I was in their shoes, I'd be pissed off if my blogging meant that I wound up getting worse information from vendors than if I was a non-blogging customer. It's a continuing irritation to me that the same question from a journalist and from an engineer will often net a different response. And that is just one of the dangers of marketing assuming that sector-specialist bloggers will simply replace the trade press.
ReplyDeleteAh, now I'm on the same page. I blogged about that exact subject last week and several people took exception to it. I'm wondering how the engineer bloggers will respond to being spun the way journalists have been for years. I'm not sure any of them have ever experienced it and this might be the year of revelation.
ReplyDeleteMay I remind you that some of us journalists started as engineers. When we're spun, we asked more probing questions until we either got the technical answer we wanted or gave it up as a lost cause. Get the right person for an interview and the spin quickly melts away.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I'm well aware that there are many journalists with engineering degrees and experience. I'm also aware that many engineer bloggers lack any real journalism experience and have never really encountered true "spinning." I would very much like to know what their thoughts are after getting a thorough seeing-to by a marketing VP and how they end up writing about it.
ReplyDeleteThis is funny--great seeing you folks at DAC. I really wanted a press pass so I could catch up with some old friends who inevidably are hiding from the pr folk outside the door. I think some of you have a strange interpretation of what folks like Chris do and what I did when I was a reporter.
ReplyDeleteIt all comes down to disclosure to me. If you are upfront about who is paying the bills--(if anyone is) then it's all cool to me. Once upon a time, if you were a bad, unethical reporter you were fired and pretty much blackballed—ed departments (trained in ethics) policed themselves. The big difference is today pretty much the entire burden is on the reader to determine who is credible and who isn't, what is BS and what isn't. At this point, if readers don't have that latter skill, they probably lost access to the computer along with their life savings sponsoring a Nigerian general long ago. Reporting is simply reporting: you present people's claims about their products and write what they said and keep your opinions out of it and let folks who have money decide what is and isn't kosher. You do that enough, you learn what questions to ask, how to read people, you connect dots. When you get good at all that, you get investigative, you still let other people's opinions and actions determine the story—you are aggregator, organizer and ultimately the messenger. I never went to J-school--I was trained by the best in our biz. Back in the day we took most product interviews under embargo weeks in advance of a release (to hit timely print deadline) so you couldn't go talk to competitors. Quite frankly if you did, would you expect the competitors to say, "they're really going to kick our asses with the new tool?" The idea was to simply get information about what wasn't in the press release--what formats go in, what does it do in the middle, what comes out of it and maybe tell a bit about the competitive landscape and the bigger issues the tool could possibly tackle—is even the most experienced engineer turned technical reporter/blogger an expert in every tool discipline from design entry, verification, synthesis through P&R (have they used every company’s latest rev)—in both digital and analog? You let the reader decide if they want to know more by calling the vendor for further info or a demo. Harry are you claiming that everyone should cancel their other synthesis licenses and buy Kaul’s tool? I doubt it. I think you bring a valuable voice to the table, but no one out there as far as I can see is telling us what’s on the DAC/EDA menu with any description of what each offering is. Personally, the real test for me as a journalist, personal test, was to cover court cases. That is sit in court every day covering a high profile case for a month or three and then after every day in court, write until midnight and post what I’d written to keep readers informed. Then I’d go wrap with the defense attorney (inevitably the one most likely to take offense to coverage) of the article about the coverage. (oh, you can't bring a tape recorder into court, btw). I was never scolded by the defense attorney or asked to leave by the judge, let alone later sued for slander by the attorney (who has a court reporter snapping down every word) to back them up. Those were fun days.
Worthy of a DAC press pass? You "journalists" can have mine. Next year, I’ll see you on the show floor—that is if the eda industry doesn't burst into a million stars and fluffy bunnies with all the love and interoperability and triple digit revenue growth and explosion in DAC attendance that I gleaned from the cacophony of tweets this week.
(Is it just me or does anyone else find it interesting that the winner of EDA’s top blogger competition was a corporate blogger for the biggest corp in EDA rather than an indy blogger? Bloggers who lost, what does that say about your readership?)
Can't really disagree with anything you said Mike, except the press pass thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_pass). I think the whole debate about what access bloggers should get was pretty much resolved with the Democratic and Republican national committees granted press passes to bloggers a decade ago. EDA just seems to be catching up with the trend.
ReplyDeleteNot everyone with a press pass got the identical access at DAC. All it got me was access to the press room where I could meet with people in relative quiet so I could record the interview, which is all I was looking for. Not all the bloggers got press passes because they didn't ask for them, or they paid for full conference access.
If a company wants to meet with bloggers like they are journalists, that's their right. if a blogger wants to follow the traditions and ethics of journalism, that's cool, but it shouldn't be forced on them and everyone can call what everyone else does whatever they want to call it. At least for now.