Basically, The Verge is being accused of not being sufficiently pro-Apple in its coverage. It's like people who sit around watching mainstream media all day and scream at their TVs "But, but but, you forgot to mention there are 5 scientists who disagree about global warming!" in every story on the environment.
It would be an interesting experiment if every story about an Apple launch contained references about prior devices that did a feature first.
I work in and around politics, and in our business we have a term (lifted from the sports world) for this sort of behavior. It's called "working the refs."
An example: American politicians from the right are constantly complaining about the media being biased in favor of the left. Why? Because the calculus of whether or not to make such a complaint is pretty simple: complaining costs nothing if you're wrong, and if you're right you cause PR problems for the publication you're criticizing. So you make the complaint whenever you have even the slightest reason to do so.
Each complaint forces the publication to respond. (If they don't, you just scream louder about how they're so biased they won't even hear you out.) And each response creates tedious work, going back through old stories and checking them with a fine tooth comb for any hint of bias. This establishes a classic conditioning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning) cause-and-effect relationship: writing a story that the complainer won't like results in extra, redundant work.
Eventually the reporters -- the refs in the game of politics -- pick up (consciously or unconsciously) on the connection between the stimulus and the response, and start gravitating towards the less painful option: framing their coverage in ways that the complaining politician likes. Those stories yield no loud complaints, which means no need to go back and constantly defend yourself. So your reporting gets compromised without you even realizing it.
Marco and Gruber are working the refs here. If you're an Apple fan, it's in your interest for every review of every product even remotely similar to an Apple product to mention that, since doing so both positions the reviewed product as a cheap knock-off and reminds the reader that Apple exists and sells the "real deal." So they've picked this particular review and raised a stink about it. And it's already worked, because Topolsky felt the need to stop whatever other thing he was doing and write a response.
But that's not the real goal of the working-the-refs strategy. The goal is that next time a review of an Apple-ish product crosses Topolsky's desk, he'll ask himself: does this review sufficiently do justice to Apple's competing product? And if it doesn't, is it easier to go through another big public fight defending the story, or to just kick it back to the writer with an editor's note to add a sentence mentioning Apple's offering?
Now go through that thought process enough times and the writers (who don't want to be constantly rewriting their stuff) get the message and just start inserting the sentence on their own. Mission accomplished: the refs have been worked.
Agree 100% about writers following editorial lead.
Copy and publication editors always prefer anodyne comments in my experience. Almost every time I stated a strong or very strong opinion, I was encourage to moderate my tone. Regardless of how strong the evidence was to back up my statements.
Not quite sure that Arment/Gruber are "working" the refs as much as feeling like they need to continually remind people of how things used to be. Apple users (I'm one) have a lingering sense that things might revert to how Apple was during the Dark Times when Jobs wasn't around.
Gruber's tone and attitude are definitely heavily informed by the experience of the "beleaguered" era. (For those who don't know, this adjective was seemingly tossed in front of the company name almost any time Apple was discussed in the press, enough for the word itself to become a joke about perceived anti-Apple bias in the media.)
A lot of Apple fans are still playing a game where they're rooting for the underdog against a world that doesn't appreciate good UIs, well-built computers, or value over cheapness. The situation used to be clear: Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Intel, were the forces of darkness, building a huge market share by saddling the world with cheap crap, while Apple struggles on making something better. Now that narrative doesn't work anymore, but you can see people like Gruber search for new oppressive enemies to try to carry on with the same story. RIM, Google, Samsung, and even Microsoft's phone and tablet division get slotted into the same old story.
Personally, I think you're right that things might revert to how they were during the Dark Times, but that Apple is by far the most likely candidate for the oppressive and massively successful company, and cheerleaders like these guys are helping that process along.
Comments
Basically, The Verge is being accused of not being sufficiently pro-Apple in its coverage. It's like people who sit around watching mainstream media all day and scream at their TVs "But, but but, you forgot to mention there are 5 scientists who disagree about global warming!" in every story on the environment.
It would be an interesting experiment if every story about an Apple launch contained references about prior devices that did a feature first.
I work in and around politics, and in our business we have a term (lifted from the sports world) for this sort of behavior. It's called "working the refs."
An example: American politicians from the right are constantly complaining about the media being biased in favor of the left. Why? Because the calculus of whether or not to make such a complaint is pretty simple: complaining costs nothing if you're wrong, and if you're right you cause PR problems for the publication you're criticizing. So you make the complaint whenever you have even the slightest reason to do so.
Each complaint forces the publication to respond. (If they don't, you just scream louder about how they're so biased they won't even hear you out.) And each response creates tedious work, going back through old stories and checking them with a fine tooth comb for any hint of bias. This establishes a classic conditioning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning) cause-and-effect relationship: writing a story that the complainer won't like results in extra, redundant work.
Eventually the reporters -- the refs in the game of politics -- pick up (consciously or unconsciously) on the connection between the stimulus and the response, and start gravitating towards the less painful option: framing their coverage in ways that the complaining politician likes. Those stories yield no loud complaints, which means no need to go back and constantly defend yourself. So your reporting gets compromised without you even realizing it.
Marco and Gruber are working the refs here. If you're an Apple fan, it's in your interest for every review of every product even remotely similar to an Apple product to mention that, since doing so both positions the reviewed product as a cheap knock-off and reminds the reader that Apple exists and sells the "real deal." So they've picked this particular review and raised a stink about it. And it's already worked, because Topolsky felt the need to stop whatever other thing he was doing and write a response.
But that's not the real goal of the working-the-refs strategy. The goal is that next time a review of an Apple-ish product crosses Topolsky's desk, he'll ask himself: does this review sufficiently do justice to Apple's competing product? And if it doesn't, is it easier to go through another big public fight defending the story, or to just kick it back to the writer with an editor's note to add a sentence mentioning Apple's offering?
Now go through that thought process enough times and the writers (who don't want to be constantly rewriting their stuff) get the message and just start inserting the sentence on their own. Mission accomplished: the refs have been worked.
Agree 100% about writers following editorial lead.
Copy and publication editors always prefer anodyne comments in my experience. Almost every time I stated a strong or very strong opinion, I was encourage to moderate my tone. Regardless of how strong the evidence was to back up my statements.
Not quite sure that Arment/Gruber are "working" the refs as much as feeling like they need to continually remind people of how things used to be. Apple users (I'm one) have a lingering sense that things might revert to how Apple was during the Dark Times when Jobs wasn't around.
Gruber's tone and attitude are definitely heavily informed by the experience of the "beleaguered" era. (For those who don't know, this adjective was seemingly tossed in front of the company name almost any time Apple was discussed in the press, enough for the word itself to become a joke about perceived anti-Apple bias in the media.)
A lot of Apple fans are still playing a game where they're rooting for the underdog against a world that doesn't appreciate good UIs, well-built computers, or value over cheapness. The situation used to be clear: Microsoft, and to a lesser extent Intel, were the forces of darkness, building a huge market share by saddling the world with cheap crap, while Apple struggles on making something better. Now that narrative doesn't work anymore, but you can see people like Gruber search for new oppressive enemies to try to carry on with the same story. RIM, Google, Samsung, and even Microsoft's phone and tablet division get slotted into the same old story.
Personally, I think you're right that things might revert to how they were during the Dark Times, but that Apple is by far the most likely candidate for the oppressive and massively successful company, and cheerleaders like these guys are helping that process along.