Interview with Jeff Wiss July 25, 2016
You’ve said that the tech press is great at telling you about the new iPhone but not so good at doing investigative journalism. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about why that is.
I think with Wall Street reporters and D.C. reporters, there’s a price for being obstreperous. Access and other things. One of the good things about tech is there’s all these really cool products, there’s cool things to write about. It’s really interesting to write about the topics that are changing our society. It’s easy to write about the shiny new object. I don’t think we’re flacking for it, I think it’s really genuinely interesting. Some of these ideas about how we change the way we eat, or how we change the way we communicate, or the impact of technology on our culture — these are all really fascinating stories.
I think where it falls down is in criticizing this group of people. First, they’re not used to criticism, and unlike, say, a banker who sort of knows they’re kind of sketchy, people in Silicon Valley really think of themselves as world-changing, good people: “We know best because we’re so smart. And obviously we’re rich, so we know best.” So what you get is, if you write something that’s positive, they say, “Oooh, good journalism,” and if you write something tough, they’ll say, “Oh, that’s clickbait.” (That’s Trump’s favorite word now.) So if anything is even slightly critical they call it clickbait and they either get mad and deny access or they go right to Peter Thiel–ville, which is an appalling example of someone who clearly was wounded by press, doesn’t like that they wrote he was gay … and then pretended he was funding a lawsuit against Gawker for philanthropy. I don’t mind a good revenge plot, but I wish he would just say, “I don’t like that they did this to me and I’m getting back at them.” But his whole speech about how he’s helping humanity by putting this media company out of business is sort of the logical conclusion of people being very sensitive about things that are written about them.
But when coverage in general is softer than normal attention seems invasive.
We did a great piece today about the LinkedIn sale. We were slightly more critical, because I think it was a real tough decision. Everyone else was celebratory. But you don’t sell your company if you’re in great shape, you know what I mean? You just don’t. We were trying to say, look, he was in a jam. He created a great company, but it still wasn’t Facebook, you know? Facebook was the one that really reached escape velocity, and a lot of these companies haven’t, and it’s okay to say that: “Good try, nice work, but you needed to sell.” That’s a fair assessment of what went on, but they even get mad when you do that. It’s great for him to get the price he got (although it’s not as big as it used to be), but, like, everyone wants kudos for what is essentially a sale? You never say, “Okay, that didn’t work out.” No one wants that to be said.
Because?
They have to maintain this illusion that even in failure they’re successful. Sometimes failure is just failure. And it’s okay. One of the good things about Silicon Valley is that it’s okay to fail. I firmly believe that, too, but at the same time we can call a failure a failure, rather than a “pivot” or an “iteration.” There are all kinds of euphemisms. Rest of the Story.