Steve Jobs hates bloggers

Life Technology
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[quote=“Reuters”]Maybe it’s because they got hold of his iPhone prototype. Or maybe he’s just a traditionalist when it comes to reading the news. But one thing is clear: Apple CEO Steve Jobs doesn’t care much for blogs.

During a rare and revealing 90-minute on-stage Q&A at the All Things Digital Conference on Tuesday, Jobs repeatedly let slip his disdain for the new breed of Web-based publications, which he suggested should not necessarily be deemed legitimate journalism outlets.

“When I think of the most important journalistic endeavors in this country, I think of things like the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and publications like that,” he said on the subject of maintaining a healthy free press, which Jobs described as key to democracy and something that he hoped the new iPad tablet PC might help.

“I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” he said.

Later, when asked a question about what he saw himself doing ten years down the road, Jobs took another jab at the blogging set, sounding off for the first time in public about the famous lost iPhone prototype that was purchased by the technology blog Gizmodo and displayed online earlier this year.

“When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people that said you got to just let it slide. You shouldn’t go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and they tried to extort you,” Jobs recounted.

“I thought deeply about this. I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide. I can’t do that. I’d rather quit.”[/quote]

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While I do share concerns about the journalistic integrity of bloggers, I find Mr. Jobs to be a bit of a hypocrite. Blogs are the definition of free press. Anybody is able to log onto the internet and post their opinions online without any censorship. I find his defense of the Times as an important journalistic endeavor especially laughable. So it is OK to have biased reporting and tons of opinion based pieces so long as you are working for a newspaper? How is somebody from the NYT or WaPo mouthing off their beliefs any more valid than a blogger doing the same? I consider traditional reporters opinions less valid because they cannot write truly scathing pieces without being edited into submission. It is people like Jobs who are holding back the information age. Instead of creating new business models and evolving with the times, these old media companies would rather resort to bullshit like this to survive.

I also find his last quote particularly awesome because Apple has gone from this:

To this:

In less time than my lifetime.

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Yeah, well. We all get old, even punks end up in wheelchairs lamenting the old days and wondering why the yoof of today can’t hold their troosers up with a nice pair of braces.

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What was the status of the phone. Had it been reported stolen? Was it really stolen or was it just an employee dropping it and then claiming it was stolen?

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As far as I have read, Gizmondo did not know if the phone was stolen or not. Reportedly the person who found it tried to give it back, but nobody would return his calls. Apple contacted Gizmondo requesting the phone back, and Gizmondo said they would comply provided apple submitted a request for the phone in writing. Once apple submitted the document Gizmondo returned the phone.

Jobs is not mad about stolen property, rather he is angry that somebody broke the apple mystique. Instead of newspapers speculating and working the masses to a fever pitch then posting glowing articles on the unveil, now Apple has major news outlets questioning if the iPhone 4 is enough to wow people based off what they saw from gizmondo.

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I find this really funny because Steve Jobs is the actual arch-typical CEO portrayed by every 2-bit socialist tv and movie director as the poster boy for out of control greed and control issues. Basically Apple has really slick marketing and only lets sell-out promotional journalists get their products for demos. Of course he would dislike having to payoff many people rather than a select few.

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You’re conflating journalism with having a free press. A free press is simply a necessary precondition for good journalism.

Jobs is right: If journalism is reduced to either an average blog (even above average… anything below the top 15~20%), or opinion piece, that’d be bad news for democracy, law and free markets.

Sadly, its sports, comics, gossip and opinion pieces that sell papers, and ads that pay for them. The amount of news – to say nothing of journalism – that slips through the cracks is both meagre and expensive. Most ‘journalistic’ bloggers offer only opinion on what’s published in the Times. Trying to sort through the others for stories of interest requires a serious curator.

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The newspapers do the same thing as bloggers though. Look how many papers or news shows reference news bought from reuters or AP. If all we want to do is keep the idea of good journalism, then we merely need to keep the newswire services alive and kicking.

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Apple is all about control.

Maoist personality cult of Jobs, the hiring of only certain types of people in the early years of the company, the aggressive behaviour with Gizmondo’s editor, profitting from prison-camp type labour [Foxconn in China] despite promoting an aura of progressiveness for their new-age hipster consumers in affluent California, and generally prickish behaviour with colleagues.

Of course, he doesn’t like a free press. He’s probably pissed off that so many people are writing bad things about Apple and Foxconn in China. He’d prefer newspapers to be controlled by uniformed people that see things his way. China had its Red Guards, but Jobs would like the journalists of today to be black-uniformed Apple robots that exert the same kind of control.

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[quote=“Chewycorns”]Apple is all about control.

Maoist personality cult of Jobs, the hiring of only certain types of people in the early years of the company, the aggressive behaviour with Gizmondo’s editor, profitting from prison-camp type labour [Foxconn in China] despite promoting an aura of progressiveness for their new-age hipster consumers in affluent California, and generally prickish behaviour with colleagues.[/quote]
Not all Californians are hipster prickish Apple users. :wink:

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[quote=“jashsu”][quote=“Chewycorns”]Apple is all about control.

Maoist personality cult of Jobs, the hiring of only certain types of people in the early years of the company, the aggressive behaviour with Gizmondo’s editor, profitting from prison-camp type labour [Foxconn in China] despite promoting an aura of progressiveness for their new-age hipster consumers in affluent California, and generally prickish behaviour with colleagues.[/quote]
Not all Californians are hipster prickish Apple users. ;-)[/quote]

Not most Apple users are Californian. :wink:

In all fairness, that “Think Different” poster is rigged and probably out of context. Many schools are issuing MacBooks / MacBook Pros as the default machine that’s included in tuition. As an example, RISD used to issue the same Dell laptop to everyone but now everyone there has a MBP 15.

Dangit, really wish my Milestone was a Droid right now. Want to try out 2.2, although fearing it might be really doggy on a Milestone. Anyone got a spare N1 for sale?

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Eh you would be surprised about macs in college. A significant number of students buy them now. I taught a 101 lecture and that photo was on the money. Then again I don’t think macbooks are bad computers(I like OSX), I just think they are too expensive. Had I not received mine for 50% discount I would not have purchased one.

The picture wasn’t my point though. I think journalistic integrity and free press are discrete things. You will find bloggers that do not usually accept corporate handouts and will write a full disclosure if they do. Then you have the established media outlets giving glowing reviews of a product neglecting to mention they received it early, free, and at a swanky event that made them feel like a rock star. I don’t see a decent into a nation of bloggers as a bad thing. A world with individuals providing honest and clear journalism outside of the established structure is a good thing. The new “news media” would be sites which sift through the noise and collect the best writers. Sure there will be lots of uneducated and ignorant crap produced, but would it really be any worse than Fox News or the NYT?

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[quote=“djlowballer”]As far as I have read, Gizmondo did not know if the phone was stolen or not. Reportedly the person who found it tried to give it back, but nobody would return his calls. Apple contacted Gizmondo requesting the phone back, and Gizmondo said they would comply provided apple submitted a request for the phone in writing. Once apple submitted the document Gizmondo returned the phone.

Jobs is not mad about stolen property, rather he is angry that somebody broke the apple mystique. Instead of newspapers speculating and working the masses to a fever pitch then posting glowing articles on the unveil, now Apple has major news outlets questioning if the iPhone 4 is enough to wow people based off what they saw from gizmondo.[/quote]
If you look at the actual email exchange between Gizmodo and Apple, you can see why Jobs would be pissed.

[quote]Something like that — from you or apple legal — is a big story, that would make up for giving the phone back right away. If the phone disappears without a story to explain why it went away, and the proof it went to apple, it hurts our business. And our reputation. People will say this is a coordinated leak, etc.

I get that it would hurt sales to say this is the next iphone. I have no interest in hurting sales. That does nothing to help Gizmodo or me.

Maybe Apple can say it’s a lost phone, but not one that you’ve confirmed for production — that it is merely a test unit of sorts. Otherwise, it just falls to apple legal, which serves the same purpose of confirmation. I don’t want that, either.

Gizmodo lives and dies like many small companies do. We don’t have access, or when we do, we get it taken away. When we get a chance to break a story, we have to go with it, or we perish. I know you like walt [Mossberg, of the Wall Street Journal] and [the New York Times’ David] pogue, and like working with them, but I think Gizmodo has more in common with old Apple than those guys do. So I hope you understand where I’m coming from. [/quote]
If someone found my lost / stolen property and I had to “negotiate” to get it back, I’d be pissed too.

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http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back

While it served an ulterior purpose, I see nothing underhanded with wanting a documented request for return of the item. If I have your lost/stolen property I expect to see a police report or something to verify it is actually yours.

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I do wonder if it really was stolen. All the initial reports say that it was left by the engineer (who himself did not report it as stolen) and it was only after the Gizmodo leak that Jobs/Apple Legal came out saying it was stolen. Of course whether it was lost or stolen is a world of difference in the ability for Apple to pursue legal action. Do I think Gizmodo was right to do what it did? As long as they did not knowingly buy stolen property (and we have established above that it is highly likely it was not stolen to begin with) and they did not sign a NDA with Apple prohibiting them from disclosing anything, then they have no legal obligation here. That doesn’t mean that outfit isn’t staffed by a bunch of asshats-- it is.

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Under California law, the guy who found the phone had no right to sell it, and Gizmodo placed itself in legal jeopardy by buying it.

As for journalistic ethics, payola journalism is far from laudatory.

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[quote=“djlowballer”]http://gizmodo.com/5520479/a-letter-apple-wants-its-secret-iphone-back

While it served an ulterior purpose, I see nothing underhanded with wanting a documented request for return of the item. If I have your lost/stolen property I expect to see a police report or something to verify it is actually yours.[/quote]
By this point, they had already taken it apart and knew it was Apple’s. Apple had already confirmed this by asking for it back. The documented part was solely for being able to show their readers that it was real.

In any case, Gizmodo has now been banned from Apple’s iPhone 4 release event. Should make their live blogging of the event a little harder to do.

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I was a bit skeptical about this, until I looked it up myself and apparently you are correct. The original finder of the prototype purportedly contacted Apple before attempting to sell it, but they did not address his claim, so legally the finder should have then turned the property over to the police department.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/CIV/5/d3/4/6/4/1/s2080.1

You can’t (and shouldn’t) expect much from a “blog”.

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I will play the world’s smallest violin for them.

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[quote=“Adam_CLO”][quote=“djlowballer”]
By this point, they had already taken it apart and knew it was Apple’s. Apple had already confirmed this by asking for it back. The documented part was solely for being able to show their readers that it was real.

In any case, Gizmodo has now been banned from Apple’s iPhone 4 release event. Should make their live blogging of the event a little harder to do.[/quote]

I could take apart your iPhone and see the same things Gizmondo found. Should I return it to apple? It doesn’t matter what Apple said. Words are off the record and not legal by any means. If you go to a police station, you must sign something to claim property. Many venues require you to sign to pick up something you left. It was to prove readers that it was real, but it also was not entirely unreasonable. Think of it from legal perspective. Apple takes it without paper and they can make up any story they want about how they got it back, or how unreasonable Gizmondo was. Now it is documented that Gizmondo said “no problem, request in writing” then complied.

[quote=“jashsu”]
You can’t (and shouldn’t) expect much from a “blog”.[/quote]
I disagree. We should start to expect more from blogs. They can be a valuable tool for information and expression when used responsibly.

I agree. Hence why I am always skeptical of any Apple announcement or initial review. They have reporters dancing to their tune who sing on cue. If you can’t keep step they cut you off. Similarly I stopped reading most video game or entertainment reviews/news. Being given a game/tickets removes a whole lot of objectivity in my book.

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[quote=“Adam_CLO”][quote=“jashsu”]
You can’t (and shouldn’t) expect much from a “blog”.[/quote]
I disagree. We should start to expect more from blogs. They can be a valuable tool for information and expression when used responsibly.[/quote]
That’s wishful thinking; blogs (from personal up through commercial) are by their very nature relatively unedited compared to mainstream established media. That’s not to say that blogs do not often contain useful information (in many cases information which has increased value by its timely reporting). However, to say that you should expect blogs to achieve the same standard of separation between reporting and opinion, as well as informational accuracy (through time-consuming verification processes) is to want to call something by that which it is not.

Further compounding the problem is that simply, many blog readers (particularly of commercial blogs) prefer this fast-and-furious “publish first think later” sort of journalism. That demand drives continued production. If you want to demand accountability from blogs, then you need to start with the readership.