Ryan Chittum of the Columbia Journalism Review writes about how the business news media is becoming more aggressive in its coverage of Apple.
Chittum writes, “This isn’t to say that there wasn’t a lot of fanboy and fangirl coverage of the event. As is typical with the liveblog coverage, there were lots of pictures of the outside of the venue where the press conference (and make no mistake, that’s what these events are) was held and up-to-the-minute updates on when journalists were in their seats and how comfy they were. ABC posted a picture of the entryway to the venue, and typed, ‘The door to the future!’ When it was inside, it told us that Apple had a ‘very clean stage,’ perhaps hoping Tim Cook would roll out an iMaid.
“Engadget’s liveblog reached parody stage when it wrote ‘iPhone 5! That’s the name,’ followed closely by ‘It’s rising from the floor of the stage! There it is!’ and then ‘Another row of apps! Woo!’ Those were just four of 78 exclamation points I counted in 122 minutes of Engadget’s liveblog, or one every minute and a half!!!
“The New York Times’s coverage was sober by contrast, although putting four reporters on that story was surely overkill. The NYT’s immediate take was that there was no real news at the event, since nearly everything had leaked earlier.
“The Wall Street Journal also did a good job of not playing the fanboy/girl. Even Wired was mostly restrained.
“There’s still way too much parroting of corporate propaganda going on with liveblog coverage, but at least yesterday was mostly an improvement over the slobbering coverage of Microsoft’s Surface tablet three months ago.”
Read more here.
