Industry Standard is Back

After a six and half year hiatus,  the Industry Standard is resuming publication today.  There are two great lines in the original self-report of its death.

"The Standard was a victim of many of the same forces that have so damaged the companies it covers."

"The Standard's journalism was highly regarded, as well."

Well, let's see if they can avoid those forces the second time around.  Also, we'll see if the journalism really is highly regarded.  They are off to an inauspicious start.

Perhaps they can attract better writers than this hack.

Comments

[Robert W. Anderson]

I don't know, Peter, the writing seems fine, but I hope the topic of failed ventures doesn't become the theme at the Standard. ;)

Cheers,
Robert

[Steven]

It is interesting to see the revival and wonder what they think they can do better the second time around. Like you, I am a bit skeptical.

With all the valuable blogs out there that have taken over their "space", you can aggregate the data in RSS feeds and get a better pespective of the industry and its goings on perhaps.

I'm with you though on what the outcome may be yet again.

[moishe]

big fan of the prediction market on events, wisdom of crowds concept. even more interesting when you consider the demographic of those visiting the site. moishe

[Steve]

Karlgaard says most business journalists are failed sport's writers, don't know much about business, and aren't particularly friendly to business.

I wonder about tech writers. Do they know anything? Is the Standard just a collection of part-time writers? Not sure, but here's how tech writing looks to me.

They all want to be the first to write about something new, but none want to write about something before anyone else has written about it. You could demo a time machine and a matter transporter to them, and they wouldn't write about it, until someone else did, or was getting ready to. Then suddenly everyone else writes about it all at once and then each claims to have been the first.

What's behind this behavior? They are simply unable to evaluate ideas. Like investors, and the public at large, they simply cannot evaluate an idea on its own, but instead wait until others tell them what it's worth. If you want news before that you have to plain pay for it. Better yet, don't waste your time.

Graham recently commented on how new ideas, even working demos of cool new stuff that did in fact go on to become extremely successful, invariably received contemptuous initial reactions because people just did't get it. And that's because they just don't see the essence of the underlying problem that is being solved - "why would anyone buy one of those automobiles, there's no place to hitch the horses" problem. And my point is that tech writers are no different, and I can prove it.

The Standard? Who knows. Maybe they'll be just like all those newsletters I get with the "cutting edge" announcements of developments I already read about, weeks or months ago.