The high-tech media food chain

How the computer trade press paves the vaporware trail

By Doug Fine

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Apr 22, 1996 | My neck hurts. My modem won't connect. Somewhere in the non-dimensional,quark-sized bowels of cyberspace, I just lost a story that was due yesterday, and I've been on hold with Microsoft's decidedly not toll-free "support" line, on and off, for several months.

I feel like a cybergeek version of Michael Douglas' character in "Falling Down." I have no control over my life.

Where, I might ask, is the individual empowerment the Digital Era promised? (I'm sure someone [Ian Shoales on virtual post-modernism] had promised me this.) How do all these semi-compatible, not-ready-for-prime-time, almost-functional products make it to market?

But I know the answer already. I worked for a year in the computer trade press -- and still write for it when financially necessary.

Go to the Source

In 1977 Ed Pettit wrote a book called The Experts, more than 400 pages of official sources stating, on the record, deliberate or ignorant untruths about the situation in Vietnam between 1957 and 1975. I read the book after my stint at InfoWorld, and felt eerie shocks of recognition. In the trade press, as in "official source" quotes from the Pentagon during wartime, certain authorities -- and every new reporter learns very quickly who they are -- can be counted on to say certain things at deadline time.

Publications of repute, such as InfoWorld (a weekly with a 310,000 circulation), have an admirable three-source rule. The problem is, too often, all these sources are ignorant fools bucking for press, evangelists with an interest in a certain model or product, or just, as in the case of Pettit's book, misguided and overpaid "experts."

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