Back in December of 2012 I watched Leo (a veteran of "technology reporting ") lament how he seem...

[G+_Harry Chaffee]

Back in December of 2012 I watched Leo (a veteran of "technology reporting") lament how he seems less able, these days, to determine who his audience is.  He explained how he discovered the 'narrowness' of the audiences is now so thin as to make his efforts less and less effective at gathering a meaningful audience for his programs (properly defined as large enough to satisfy his advertising clients).  Leo has many years in the technology reporting business so I can easily understand his predicament.  I dare say I think I understand it better than he does.

 

One of the yardsticks I use to determine if a particular reporter, blogger, journalist, or publication has what I consider to be a "proper take" on the impact of technology is to put it under the microscope and see if they are seeing things in a particular way.  That is to say – whether they are reporting on the tech business, tech people, or tech innovations, or engineering, or trends, or who is investing in what – they report only on "What it is".  When a source starts to display a tendency in this direction then I don't invest much in what they have to say.  There are any number of outlets, sources, and RSS feeds I can go to if I want to find out what it is.  I certainly don't see them as helpful in answering any of the questions which usually come up (for me) when any new technological innovation appears.

 

I struggle with this all the time.  Should I waste my time reading reviews of technology, gadgets, software, or peripherals to computers when what people write or say or comment shows little or no understanding of what these things mean.  When I come across reporting which simply describes what is, or indiscriminately suggest possible futures resulting from their subject-of-the-day, instead of remarks which might try to ask and answer what it means to the lives of people who will use these things, I am less inclined to take any time to read them to the bottom or watch them to the end.  Journalism (and I mean by that the real thing) in the technology "sector" of our economy (not to forget our culture) has a long tradition of rushing judgement and declaring a brave new world long before (or long after) it appears.  It is much like how movies get it wrong about hackers (so also the internet, computer geeks, and nerds) when they portray them in such stereotypical ways, thereby betraying their remarkable ignorance of such things.

 

On the other hand, when I come across someone, or some site, or some discussion, in which people are genuinely seeking to exchange views on what it is all going to mean for today and tomorrow, I am prepared to invest my time and attention into learning what they have to say.  So, in essence, the difference between these two viewpoints boils down to whether they are just telling me what it is or they are telling me what it means.

 

My free advice to Leo about his frustrations in trying to provide for ever-shrinking audience segments is to tailor your content and discussions toward what these developments mean.  The larger and more homogenous audience has not stopped seeking to understand what is happening around them (as well as to them) but they are now leaping from lily pad to lily pad in search of people and groups who are willing to spend some time looking into and reporting back on what it is which might (or will) change their lives.  Douglas Rushkoff said as much on a recent Triangulation episode.  These reports and discussions may help audiences determine which technologies to invest (their time and money) in to be more functional and effective in their personal and professional lives.

 

No matter which audience segment you want to cater to the message would be the same.  If it is about Gaming then address the larger (and ultimately more difficult) questions about how this will change our idea of movies, entertainment, storytelling, and friendship.  Seek to answer questions about the end of the PC box in applications related to workplace, home user, public access, data archiving, and distribution of information necessary for the everyday working of the world.  Can a Netcast or blog about mobile devices help your audience understand the changing nature of mobility itself?  Can it investigate in what ways mobility of data (and data capture) is changing the very institutions we count on for the longevity of our culture and our history?  Has any tech-related programme aimed at the tablet "market" taken the time to investigate and discuss how children, learning, or even personality development is being affected by the widely adopted capabilities of these devices?  Some of these issues pop up in discussions on many TWiT programs.  They are not pursued with the vigour I believe your audience would appreciate.

 

I am not steeped in traditional market analysis, demographic profiling, and target audience fundamentalism.  One only needs to re-examine the current infrastructure to see how it can be successfully mined for these new opinions.  The same guests, hosts, journalists, bloggers, and personalities can be brought together for a new purpose.  They can be asked to help explain what they believe will be the impact of any particular technology.  They can be asked to bring with them their own experiences of how these things have been changing them as people or has changed their relationship with the world around them.  The Verge has attempted this and GigaOM has some who do this as well.  I believe more news outlets are making these attempts to a lesser degree and are finding some success in attracting audiences to those reports (NYTimes?).

 

It is not an easy transition to make – from talking about what these things are to talking about what these things mean – and it will have its share of detractors.  Who should dare to tell others what these thing mean?  You should dare.  You should have the courage to speak clearly every day from what you have been learning about the impact of technology in every aspect of people’s lives.  From reproduction all the way to burial we are seeing new engineering, new applications, and new implementations of technological innovation.  Things are being transformed and dis-intermediated to the degree people are becoming uncertain about whether the benefit balances the deficit.  What do we lose when we gain these new services?  Will we trade freedom for ubiquity?  Will isolation result in despair or will we be transformed?  Can humanism be renewed or will it be under attack?  Is the interconnected exchange of data serving an ultimate good or will it be subsumed by greed and avarice?

 

These are all heady and heavy questions.  It takes courage and conviction to even dare address them.  It also takes some keen and creative minds to take up these questions and to invest time into finding possible answers; to revise those views over time to hone them and make their conclusions more precise.  But I believe it is inevitable some will catch on and adopt this strategy ultimately to reap the rewards of providing a platform for the exchange of these ideas and helping broader audiences to understand their relationships with media; and media devices; and media services; and media creators; better than they seem to today.

 

Audiences already tire of hearing the same marketing messages wrapped up in different contexts.  Does Windows 8 represent a big enough effort for Microsoft to "win" again in the marketplace?  Audiences tend to know the question should be a different one.  It isn't whether Microsoft is relevant in a world of “apps”, it is more important to reflect on the question of whether "doing something with a computer" is even relevant in today's world.  Were people ever really doing something with a computer in 1999 or were they simply doing the thing they did before but now through a computer device.  Were they forced to change the way they were doing something because of the development of the internet (which extends that "doing" across long distances)?  Are there any things people are doing now which they were not doing before computers put a screen between them and another person?  There are answers to these things.  Just report what the innovations are "doing" and what the people who make them have been "doing" with them.  I am suggesting TWiT has failed to keep track of what these innovations have been "doing" to us.

 

IF Leo can retool his programming toward looking only at what these technologies are doing to us I believe the audience will grow larger.  It doesn't matter if its a particular operating system, technology platform, programming application, or battery operated device the report is aimed at.  So long as your audience hears from people in those discussions something which helps them understand the impact these things are having on their daily lives, to family members, their emotional development, their inter-personal relationships, to career directions, or their world view they will return again and again to hear those stories.  They will reflect on those questions and come to some conclusions for themselves about "What it Means".

 

As a viewer of TWiT programs I grow tired of hearing from people about the features of “the latest release”.  I am tired of being told I can do new and fantastic things.  I want to know why I am growing tired of these things.  I want to know when I might actually need to know this stuff.  I want to know what it all means; not what it does.

[G+_Darren Keith]

Dave Trautman amen and AMEN!!!

[G+_Peter Phillips]

I think he has way too many shows on his network.

[G+_Chris Porter]

Well put, Dave Trautman. This is my biggest pet peeve about reporting in general nowadays.  Everyone is running madly to be first to the story without realizing that the actual story is the analysis of the raw information that everyone else is just restating.

[G+_Darren Keith]

Chris Porter - You hit the nail on the head. We live in an era now that it's now Report NOW...retrieve the facts later Too many times now I'm hearing tech pundits give thumbs up on a product then the following week "poo-poo" the item. Everything is RUSH RUSH to judge a product now. Too bad. I know I can't turn the hands of time back but I miss the days when we could just savor tech gadgets. To be honest we still can as consumers.

[G+_Dale Weber]

As a frequent viewer of many TWiT shows, I'd really like to see Leo Laporte take his network in this direction. He can, and should, lead in this. He has the people and resources to do this, and he should "just do it." TWiT is in a perfect position to do this.

[G+_Zulhaimi Abdul Hamid]

There is however the need to catch news while it is newsworthy. Hence the reason why journalists have to depend on what companies show them at launch - features. For in depth review on usability, there is Before You Buy. Sites like Pocketnow also has segments called After the Buzz which captures usage experience after initial launch reviews.

[G+_Dave Trautman]

And this is part of the point of this thread.

 

Competing with other sites and services to just talk about the hardware or the software or even the apps will have a fluid and transient audience. But if you provide depth and integrate some discussion of cultural consequences for these developments (or product categories) it would be a more informative discussion between guests.

 

Two examples come to mind. TWiT did a great service to the tech community by hosting a discussion primarily about Google Glass and the implications.

 

Over the years since the phrase "Post-PC" was proposed to describe the modern era some of the discussions around this idea have produced some of the best episodes of MBW (as well as others) because they discussed a possible future in which the desktop PC vanishes and is replaced by a host of other "service" dependent apps and mobile devices. It doesn't matter what device or hardware is involved because the whole idea of computing is being challenged by these new, small, mobile, and very capable gadgets.

 

So, the discussions are there to be had at almost (almost) every opportunity, but to just rely on the announcements and press release information there would be little to distinguish TWiT from any of the other "sources" of news.

 

Personally I'm not tuning in to TWiT generally for the news. TNT is a good source on a daily basis to review what's been happening, but they too also make lots of room for commentary on those stories and this is the value which TWiT offers over the others.

[G+_Nathan Erickson]

"Good balance" is exactly the phrase I had intended to use. TWiT itself (maybe not some of the other shows on the network) strikes a great balance between the reporting of details and the discussion of impact. On the news side, TWiT is valuable because the expert guest panels are poised to not only discuss the latest tech on the market, but also the state of the market itself. However, Leo's discussion often goes even beyond that and delves into the political and sociological issues surrounding modern technology, at a level of depth few can match. That is what first attracted me to TWiT and continues to hold my attention. The recent debate about reconciling the need for information technology in American crime fighting with privacy rights, in light of the PRISM scandal, is a perfect example of news reporting supplemented by thoughtful, future-minded commentary. While I agree that the latter quality is Leo's chief advantage over all his competitors, I agree with Jose that TWiT currently strikes the perfect balance. I'd like to see similar discussion in Leo's other shows, such as All About Android.

[G+_Nathan Erickson]

Now, an additional show on a monthly basis or so, paneled by experts on the philosophical side of the tech spectrum and dealing with the "state of technology" and how society is being changed by it....I'd pay to watch that.

[G+_Dave Trautman]

Great idea Nathan. Monthly would give participants time to reflect on developments in tech and come up with cogent opinions and not just reactions to things.

 

I also think some of what's been said about balance on TWiT is correct J. Torres. I cannot disagree how there is already a lot of it. But I was addressing the question of a splintering of the audience and recommending a method to bring those fractured segments back together using all of the TWiT shows by leaning toward informed analysis and not just reporting. I do agree there is a degree of analysis by the guests and this, I believe, could be encouraged even further and enhanced when drawing up the run-down for any of the TWiT shows.

 

I also think being in good humour is a HUGE advantage because Leo does not take himself seriously most of the time. Too many podcasts are too dour and serious. I can confess the VERGE makes a pretty irreverent netcast once in a while.

 

Hopefully someone in TWiT sees this "once-a-month" show idea and gives it some serious consideration.

 

Thanks to everyone for all your great comments.?