Thread by @LogTechEric, Who's ready for a mega-thread? Incoming... Let me address what will undoubtedly [...]

Who's ready for a mega-thread? Incoming...

Let me address what will undoubtedly be a sticky subject as it relates to the tech industry’s increasingly tension-filled relationship with what I’ll call “legacy media.” This is bound to rub some people the wrong way, but so be it. Buckle up, this will be a long thread. /1

First lets set some basic ground rules:
- Tech relies on media for coverage of its products
- Media relies on covering tech to drive readership around an industry that's not only interesting on its face, but also plays an ever-increasing role in our lives (in and out of work) /2

Some other basics (as I see them):

- Most people that aren’t in technology believe the media (mainstream and niche) glorifies tech
- The tech community that’s active on Twitter/blogs/social media have an inherent belief that while they are “building something".../3

...journalists sort of piggyback off the success of others. They also believe journalists resent the success of founders and VCs.

So if you assume me to be correct in this and the previous tweet, what does this all mean? /4

Who knows?

In some ways, the Twitter beefs that the tech community has with individual journalists and legacy media means nothing at all. Journalists will line up to defend their profession. The tech community will fall in line behind its anointed Twitter thought leaders. /5

But let’s dig deeper, and get into both that resentment issue, which is at the heart of the whole tech/media civil war, but first the foundation of the misalignment between the two communities: uneven expectations, different sets of rules, and divergent motivations. /6

Obviously founders are beholden to investors, and VCs beholden to LPs, and if they fail too often, they won’t be backable anymore. That’s a given. But people in tech are allowed to make wrong decisions, around product, around hiring, around their general impact on the world. /7

It’s part of the process of building something new. The tech community gets to “break things” and “upend institutions” and “disrupt archaic structures.” You’re necessarily going to break some eggs and spill some milk along the way. /8

Sometimes those eggs and milk will overlap with social, cultural, and moral touchstones. That’s when the tech community comes directly into the crosshairs of legacy media. But they can’t have it both ways. /9

You can’t be the technology that saves the world, and be reported as such, but expect journalists to gloss over missteps. /10

The rules aren’t the same for journalists. Journalists have to be perfect 1000% of the time. Unbiased. Neutral. One serious misstep and we’re out of a job. We’re not allowed to break things and disrupt. /11

Now let’s get to the “trust in the media” part of this. The tech community doesn’t trust media, and not for the normal reasons that people might not trust the media, ie they’ve been wrong too often, are seen to be biased toward some side, have an axe to grind. /12

They don’t trust the media because they believe they see through the “front” of reporting - they see media as a money-making operation, and reporting is the “product” to enable that. /13

This is odd, because why should owners of enterprises not feel other owners of enterprises have the right to be profitable? /14

And furthermore, if it's completely unfettered journalism that they seek, why not stump for taxpayer-supported independent outlets, with literally no ties to any corporation? That, of course, doesn’t jive with the techbertarian position many in the tech community occupy. /15

Which leads to another ancillary issue that I’ll address here: I’m really not sure how incredibly sanctimonious many of the leading voices in tech come off as. /16

These are incredibly smart people who have literally never been wrong about anything. You’ll never see them ask a legitimate question in public (unless it’s an obviously sarcastic or cynical one) because they have all of life’s answers. /17

Politics is beneath them. The Luddites don’t understand their higher plane of thinking. Their role is to dispense kernels of wisdom, to bring the simple-minded folk along by the hand. /18

Some of those wisdom-dispensing accounts in recent weeks have turned from “Deep Thoughts with VCs” to “The Media Hates Us” with increasing gusto. It often revolves around either a sense that legacy media resents the tech community, has a corporate narrative to push, or both. /19

Here’s my caliente take in this thread: the tech crowd resents the voice that journalists have more than journalists resent the lifestyle and success that founders and VCs enjoy. /20

You can see this manifest itself in the way prominent tech leaders have turned to Twitter to grab their own megaphone. And also in the way they proclaim themselves champions of a “new kind of journalism.” /21

This is the “we can do it better than them because we’re infinitely smarter than them” mentality, the idea that “citizen journalists” are the future. The idea that legacy media is an artificial filter on "true knowledge." /22

Here’s another hot take: as stated, media criticism by tech leaders invariably centers around corporate ownership of media, and the trickle down impact that has on coverage, especially of the tech community, so.... /23

...I think this criticism is really the tech community projecting its own obsession with capitalism onto a profession it sees as adversarial. /24

You’ll often see the tech's scathing criticisms of the media come down to its ownership, or more accurately, corporate ownership. According to tech critics, there’s a direct line from the corporate overlords media outlets and the stories that rank and file journalists write. /25

The NYT WaPo, WSJ, even Wired and Recode, are called cartels, syndicates, compared to police forces and crime families. /26

This is an example of the famous correlation is not causation argument. People in tech think they understand the profession of journalism because they consume vast quantities of it. /27

But they don’t understand the job of a journalist any better than journalists understand the job of a software founder (and I freely admit I don’t have the foggiest idea of how to run any company, much less a software startup). /28

It’s like saying I know exactly what it takes to grow, harvest and roast coffee beans because I have four cups of coffee every day. /29

Are there reporters that resent the tech community and are jealous of their wealth and high-flying lifestyle? Do some pine for that VC lifestyle? Of course ( https://constine.substack.com/p/why-i-left-techcrunch-to-be-a-vc)

. Is that the norm? No.

Why I left TechCrunch to be a VC at SignalFire 

There's something electric about hearing a great founder describe the future they're building. I feel like I'm levitating, my head coursing with the possibilities as they plot out their plan to equip...

https://constine.substack.com/p/why-i-left-techcrunch-to-be-a-vc

Most reporters don’t envy VCs and founders and their “fab” lifestyles. They don’t envy the insane amount of work it takes to nurture an idea, build a company from scratch, and sustain it. /31

I’ve said on numerous occasions I am in awe of the grit it takes for a founder to build a company. Also in awe of humble VCs who take great risks in backing early stage companies. /32

What the tech community critical of legacy media doesn’t understand is reporters spend their careers building proficiency both in reporting/writing, but also in learning one or more industries to a high enough level that they can write about it with some level of authority. /33

Reporting is about the time and investment it takes to understand an issue inside and out, upside down and right side up. But it’s also about doing so with no skin in the game. About understanding the different perspectives inherent in every issue. /34

Legacy media, from a journalist's perspective is not solely about taking a customer-centric view of the world and working backward from there. /35

Let me restate this: reporters don’t have skin in the game, other than their credibility. Our currency is not dollars and cents, it’s credibility. That’s how we make our living. And this gets back to the great divide between the tech thought leadership crowd and legacy media. /36

I have never met a single journalist who got into this profession to become wildly rich. Conversely, I’ve not met a single founder or VC who didn’t do what they do to become wildly rich. That’s the end goal - to create or invest in a massively successful company. /37

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with either motivation, but because there are different motivations, there will be different mindsets about the other community. /end

Latest Threads Unrolled: