By Caitlin Mattias
Newspapers, and the publishing world in general, are in crisis. We’ve watched as the biggest names in national news have floundered to regain subscriber numbers by alternately posting free content online, despairing at low advertising returns, erecting paywalls and tearing them down again. Meanwhile, print subscriptions continue to be cancelled and aggregators like Google News have become our go-to source for news in real time.
Many journalists have given up the industry altogether, heading for greener (and more secure) pastures practicing public relations for companies they once reported on, or even launching their own venture capital fund, e.g. Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund. With fewer overall journalism jobs, the competition is fierce…but no less fierce than the fight for readership.
Our world is now driven by metrics like page hits, retweets, and Facebook “likes.” Though many publications have denied using web traffic as a metric in performance reviews and layoffs, there’s no denying that some journalists and bloggers have risen from the masses as pseudo-celebrities. This is especially true in the tech world.
These big names – think Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of Wall Street Journal’s All Things D, Nick Bilton, David Pogue and Jenna Wortham of The New York Times – are becoming more relevant in a changing culture where trust is the true coin of the realm. In an online ecosystem where rumor abounds and the allure of page hits often trumps verifiable facts, readers have developed highly-sophisticated radars for paid content. We can smell thinly-veiled advertising a mile away and don’t turn to that blog or news source again as we make purchasing decisions.
All the statistics will tell you that we first trust “people like us” more than any journalist or so-called expert, but this mindset only extends so far. Especially as consumer electronics companies rely on the live media conference launch of Apple fame, we have no other choice than to turn to reporters who were front-and-center to drill down the facts for us. The question is – have these reporters developed such cache that we’ll follow where they lead?
Earlier this year, popular consumer technology columnist Rob Pegoraro left The Washington Post, but hasn’t seem to affected his invites to major product launches, like the recent launch of the Kindle Fire. He’s been enjoying his time according to his blog, spending time in the garden, but has been recruited as a freelancer by the Consumer Electronics Association and Discovery. He doesn’t get the scores of replies he was used to while working for the Post, but it’s clear that he’s still viewed as a credible source of gadget knowledge.
Josh Topolsky and a whole host of Engadget’s greatest writers left the site last spring and are close to launching The Verge,what’s sure to be a new competitor in the tech blogosphere. Knowing the quality writers backing this project, I’ll be sure to drop in to check it out at the very least.
Only time will tell how this trend continues, but do you see yourself following the journalists you trust from publication to publication? Or are they only the cogs in the wheel of great journalism that’s sure to continue with or without them?

