Here are the first few paragraphs of a well thought out medium long article on, what the writer believes is, the pathetic state of techno journalism. Think about it - read the whole article if you'd like and then think about it some more, and tell me - is he right?
7-28-06
Column: Get That Out of Your Mouth #27
The Next Gonzo Journalism
Column by Chris Dahlen
I keep hearing the same gripe from the critics of the critics of pop culture: Today's writers eat it. Nobody knows how to cover music, or movies, or video games, or any of the other media that matter. We need someone to swoop in and save us: We need a new Lester Bangs, or a new Hunter S. Thompson-- one of those guys who made criticism and alternative journalism seem so vital back in the 1960s and 70s. Where they hell did they go?
Chuck Klosterman writes in Esquire about the failure of the gaming press to cough up a single critic who embodies whatever Bangs was doing when he told people to listen to the Troggs. Old school fans of music crit watch the field slip into the morass of mp3 blogs, message boards, and kids who just shout, "Hey, can you YSI that to me?" every time a new album leaks-- and they wonder, what happened to the great critics? They want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments.

But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.

Oh sure, we cover tons of stories about technology. We write up every new thing from could-be-big trends-- whatever happened to the podcast revolution, anyway?-- to tiny but buzzworthy ones, like that "personalized" Jessica Simpson download they're selling at Yahoo! Music. The problem is that every time we write about some new technology like podcasting, we go through the basic template-- explain how it works, decide whether grandmothers will care about RSS feeds, and so forth-- and we quote the same types of people: The early adopter, the industry analyst, the skeptic. And no matter what context the story falls into and how important the subject may seem, the overall tone is always the same: whatever it is, it's "neat."