A couple weeks ago, a rant of mine on technology journalism kicked off a firestorm that has yet to fully subside. The talking points have evolved beyond my initial ones and yes, I too have re-fueled the flames a few times. 

I knew the reaction would be strong (for obvious reasons), but I didn’t expect the tech press to get as riled up as they have for this extended period of time. In my 5+ years covering a whole range of topics in technology professionally, I have never gotten as many requests for comments, interviews, etc, as I have about all of this. Which is pretty silly when you think about it.

The tech press, like most everyone else, clearly loves to talk about itself. The difference is that we have a bigger soapbox from which to do so. And the past few weeks have resulted in more mastubatory self-reflection than usual. 

The other day, I got an email from a gentleman named Seth. As a regular reader, he wanted to give me some honest feedback on my writing as of late. I wanted to share a portion of what he wrote:

Today:

Conflicted blogger: Breaks major story about an Apple acquisition.

Enlightened savior of journalism: Day two of Scoblegate — the deep dive into Robert Scoble’s desire to start a venture fund. Related: day two of eating shit and looking like a total jackass.

Earlier today, I broke some news.

I don’t typically do this anymore given my new job. But from time to time this will happen. But if you read The Wall Street Journal, you’d never know. Why’s that? Because they’re fuckheads who don’t credit actual sources of information.

I know, I know. I’m ranting again. But indulge me for a few minutes.

I broke the news that Apple acquired the app search/discovery platform Chomp at 4:01 PM today. At 6:06 PM — over two hours later — WSJ reported the story as well. But oddly, with no mention of my original story. 

This was odd both because, again, I reported the same information two hours earlier. And because it was at the top of Techmeme, which everyone in the industry reads. And every single other publication linked to my story. 

Yesterday, Christopher Mims of MIT’s Technology Review took on the challenge of taking a step back from the screaming to look into what’s really going on behind the latest Bitchmeme. Reading his take, it occurs to me that Mims, and probably many others, are completely missing something very fundamental going on here.

Mims argues that investments make us unreasonably biased and conflicted, yadda yadda. Same argument, different day. He even cites this tweet:

Reporters in Silicon Valley get scoops on the startups THEY HAVE THEIR OWN MONEY IN.It’s hilarious, like if ESPN also owned the Lakers

— Downtown Josh Brown (@ReformedBroker) February 14, 2012

…which is funny because from 1997 until 2005, Disney owned a Major League Baseball team, the Anaheim Angels. Guess who else Disney owned during that time? Yep. ESPN. 

From 1993 until 2005, Disney also owned the National Hockey League team, the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Again, they owned ESPN at the time as well. 

If you want one other example (there are many), how about the fact that The New York Times owns a stake in the Boston Red Sox.

Weird, huh? This all must be very hilarious to Downtown Josh Brown. 

Anyway. The very obvious point that Mims and others fail to mention is that no one is forcing anyone to do anything. If you don’t want to read what Michael and I write, don’t.

If you think we’re unreasonably biased and conflicted, do not visit our sites, cite our work, etc. Why would you? 

The real problem our critics have is that an ever-increasing number of people do read what we write. The old guard doesn’t like that one bit because we’re not doing it their way. But they can’t do a damn thing about it besides bitch and moan. Too bad. The readers ultimately decide, not you.

Meanwhile, our conflicted coverage of the Path situation this week included information such as the fact that while there was no question that Path needed to (and did) fix the issue, many others were guilty as well. As was Apple. And we noted that Apple was on the verge of fixing this whole situation.

Sure enough, scanning the news today: Yep. Yep. And yep.

You could have gotten early insight into all of today’s news by reading our posts over the past week. Instead, the cycle turned into a shitstorm of nonsense that ultimately doesn’t matter in the slightest. 

The fact remains: if you want to read, great! If you don’t, great! It’s completely up to you.

Looks like someone woke up from his nap of the last three years and is hungry. Sadly, I don’t have much food for him. I’ll keep this as brief as possible — and I promise this will be the last thing I ever say about Dan Lyons, as he’s clearly done.

Feel free not to read. Or read Michael Arrington’s post on the matter. He takes a higher road than I’m about to. I’m just sick of Lyons’ bullshit.

The truth is that I pre-responded to Lyons earlier today before he even wrote his post. You could see it coming. What I wrote yesterday directly attacks the way he makes a living. When you do that, people get irrationally upset and write posts like the one Lyons just wrote. Just to reiterate, the line that applies here from the film Moneyball:

The reactions to my rant yesterday have been fascinating. The vast majority have been overwhelmingly positive — except from one sector where it’s more like 50/50. No surprise which sector that is: technology writers/bloggers/journalists. About half thought the post was great/honest/inspiring. The other half think I’m the devil. 

I’m reminded of one of the best parts of last year’s film Moneyball. Red Sox owner John Henry (Arliss Howard) says the following to Billy Beane (Brad Pitt):

It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy.

If everything I said yesterday is true, technology writers, be it short-term or long-term, are fucked. Either they’ve already sold their souls for the pageviews and the subsequent paychecks or they’ll eventually have to make that choice. The best know this and I suspect many of them won’t be in the game in 5 years. But the ones who have been in the game too long to change… the ones holding the reins… well, they’re going bat shit crazy. 

This morning, I woke up and read Nick Bilton’s weekly New York Times’ column. Nick is a friend and one of the best bloggers/writers/journalists out there. But with today’s column, he was way off base. 

Having already said what I wanted to say about the Path situation, I debated if I should weigh in again. Then I read Nick’s column again. There’s a way to say what he wants to say, but he goes about it the complete wrong way. I felt like I had to respond. 

But before I could, my CrunchFund partner Michael Arrington wrote almost exactly what I would have written — but in a more effective way. As a dog owner/lover, Michael thought up a great analogy: “So the belly is shown.”

In the don’t-call-them-comments notes section on my post about Tumblr’s new Highlighted Posts feature, Jenna Wortham brings up a good point:

Def agree its smart of Tumblr to try new things - but the return here seems minimal. You aren’t broadening yr audience by highlighting content to people who already read you. Best case: Someone spends an extra 5 secs looking at your post. Then what?

On the surface, true. But I think there are several interesting things this feature opens up for Tumblr. A “Highlighted” area is the most obvious. Or maybe something like: pay $1 to highlight a post to your followers, pay $10 to highlight to all of Tumblr. That would probably get a bit spammy so maybe you see the option to highlight to all only if you got enough “hearts” from the $1 highlight to those following you. 

That’s just a few quick ideas. There is a lot of potential here. 

But even the most simple angle may be interesting. You pay to highlight and your post get more hearts and reblogs as a result, so perhaps that post is seen by many more people than they normally would be. Doesn’t seem like a bad bet for $1.

More importantly, if Tumblr can get more credit cards on file for one-click transactions… a whole new world opens up.