@gruber I don't know the WaPo reporters on the AI/self-driving car story, but it's pretty clear expertise in technology reporting and editing has crashed with all the buyouts of experienced tech folks (think of a single one left you considered top of their field 5 to 10 years ago), people having left mainstream mags/newspapers for inside work at companies (Apple, Google, Alphabet, etc.), research, or…laid off from the places they went to. I don't think this story would have passed 20 years ago.
@gruber on the AI side, I can't understand how Apple is behind when LLM/generate AI products basically suck and all the proponents can go is claim they will be better in the future or they are good when you ignore how bad they are.
@glennf Domain expertise has been replaced by covering every business as a "business”. In print terms, it's like all that's left are the front (national/world), sports, and business sections of the paper.
@jsnell@gruber I do think you are one of the lucky ones, through timing, planning, and many years of work. It seems like a lot of the people of our slice of time who reported on tech either with a technology or business angle (or both, preferably) tried to find more sustainable career, and few remained actually in journalism. I mean, I’m basically out at this point. I have written zero news articles this year? And did effectively two last year (one didn't run, was paid a superb kill fee).
@glennf@jsnell@gruber Things were always different on this side of the pond (you lot would have been horrified by our rates), and the same has been happening here for years. Most of the folks writing when I started al oat 25 years ago have gone or now do far less. But then there are also far fewer outlets too. Many of those I know went into related careers – PR; management; SEO; teaching. Quite a few split their time between mag work and corporate.
@glennf@jsnell@gruber It’s all quite sobering. Thing is, I always liked that mentality I was taught at art collage: have multiple paintings on the go at once. But the number of mags keeps dropping and dropping. I wonder at what point I’ll have written for my last and fear it might not be that many years from now. At least in print. (Although online consolidation also continues at a rate or knots, resulting in opportunities vanishing. eg Wireframe this year.)
@craiggrannell Given how badly publications usually paid—with some notable exceptions—horrified might be a polite word. Yes, I simply don't have places I can afford to write for among those remaining that would even accept pitches. Most of my editors have retired or moved into other fields. My writing for Macworld is all how-to or reviews.
@craiggrannell technically, the US arm was rolled in to the UK, but it doesn’t make any practical difference. I think it’s not quite understood that the UK publication took over the US one within the corporate structure.
@glennf@gruber Perhaps, but one of the issues here are two inconsistent sets of numbers being cited in the same article. Shouldn’t any editor — not necessarily one with expertise in tech or business — ask, “why did you include both numbers? Do they measure different things? Is one of them inaccurate? If so, should we drop one of them, or possibly add context for why these different numbers are cited by different parties?”
@marinaepelman@glennf In theory it's possible that iPhone sales could be down 20% but overall revenue only down 8%, but in China, if you know anything about how important the iPhone is for Apple there, you know that doesn't add up. Again, back to expertise.
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