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About this siteFor six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul Wednesday, February 02, 2005Hide The Truth, Here Comes Leander KahneyLeander Kahney is a reporter for Wired News. I've been doing a little research into him lately, after being hugely disappointed with his book "Cult of Mac," which is a collection of his Mac-oriented Wired articles. The problem? Kahney's not into facts. Instead, he likes to sprinkle his articles with anecdotal evidence and quotes from a single source, which he then sells as facts. No big deal, right? I mean, that's what most bloggers, tech new aggregator sites, and Mac news sites do too. Sure. But the problem is that Kahney writes for Wired. And thus, he is representing a respected source. That is, people believe this crap.The latest example, an article called Hide Your iPod, Here Comes Bill, alleges that "about 80 percent" of Microsoft employees who own MP3 players actually own Apple iPods. He finds this ironic, I guess, because Microsoft is pushing a thus-far unsuccessful PlaysForSure campaign that pits Microsoft technology and third party hardware products against Apple's offerings. I mean, why wouldn't the Borg units at Microsoft be required to own PlaysForSure devices? Isn't that how Redmond operates? I'm so burned by this article that I don't even know where to start. So I'll start at the beginning. The opening line of the article is classic, reminiscent of Jason Blair's made-up descriptions of Jessica Lynch's hometown: "Microsoft's leafy corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, is beginning to look like the streets of New York, London and just about everywhere else: Wherever you go, white headphones dangle from peoples' ears." Wondering what my problems are with this introduction? First, did Kahney ever visit the Microsoft campus for this story? Or was this creative description, like the overall theme of the report, based solely on his single anonymous source who, allegedly, works at Microsoft? Second, in a classic Kahney-ism, he adds the words "and just about everywhere else" in yet another bid to burgeon Apple's success with a dramatic emphasis that is, in fact, quite off-base. The white iPod headphones are indeed frequently seen in big cities like New York and London. But they're not exactly common in small town America, sorry, or most other places around the world. Little embellishments like that are what separate Kahney's stories from real reporting. His articles are sprinkled with that kind of language. Let's look deeper. He talks about how common iPods are at Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MBU). That's neat. But he doesn't mention that many of those iPods were gifts. From Apple. For their hard work on Mac software. He mentions that Microsoft bloggers frequently discuss the iPod. Well, of course they do. It's a great product, worthy of their attention since they're trying to compete with it. Bloggers don't necessarily represent the wider Microsoft populace, however. He says that Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble is obsessed with the iPod. Scoble, however, basically tells Kahney to get a life. He quotes Mary Jo Foley, who--get this--reads Micrsooft blogs but confesses to knowing nothing about iPod usage at the campus. Seriously. I could go on. But it's just too damn easy. The big question here, of course, is whether iPod usage at Microsoft is unusually high. That is, after all, the point of the article. Or is Kahney just stretching the truth yet again to write yet another pro-Apple story? That one's easy, because I visit the Redmond campus several times a year. Kahney's full of it. Utterly full of it. And I'm tired of this style of journalism. People like Kahney just demean my profession. And people who link to articles like this because it supports their love of the technology they support are just pathetic as well. Sorry, you've been outed. UPDATE: Windows journalist Ed Bott agrees with me (!), calling the Kahney article "a horrible story ... bullshit .... sloppy, sloppy, sloppy." Way to go, Ed. UPDATE 2: I inadvertantly left out the word "Mac" in the phrase "Mac Business Unit," so I've corrected that. [ Posted at 1:16 PM | Permalink ]
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