In my previous post, I got upset about what appeared to be a personal attack on Dan Lyons by Apple. Today I found out that Dan was trying to draw more attention to the Think Secret shutdown which, I agree, we should have all been more concerned about than we were. But Apple never actually went after Dan. I clearly was drinking way too much eggnog to see the joke for what it was. It was kind of ironic that it was a Slashdot post that got me going in the first place.
Before the Internet, shutting down a publication covering a company as a result of talking about real facts would have been nearly impossible but Apple did it in passing, which should have troubled more of us than it did. Granted, it seems that the owner of Think Secret is OK with this , but settlements are like this and often what folks say has more to do with the settlement terms than with what they really think.
So, as we end this year and start another, let’s talk about the power shift that is occurring around companies like Apple and Google and wonder about what that may mean for the future. With the coming of the .com age, we saw change. The change shifted advertising dollars significantly and allowed new properties to rise, most notably Google, and others to fall.
(The world s newspapers largely seem to be on life support now.) We moved, and many older reporters lament about this, from covering the facts to being sensational without a lot of regard for the facts. I think this has created a world that could be more easily manipulated.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.