Tomorrow's Business Today
The misplaced confidence of the tech start-up
Do the tech giants need traditional media?
They plainly think not.
Last week Mark Zuckerberg announced, via a video the New York Times called “goofy”, that Facebook is changing its name to Meta.
I’d have gone for cringeworthy, or, so bad I can barely begin, but there you go.
The great Zuck granted interviews to four media outlets, but “zero of the great American legacy publications”, said the Times about itself.
The lucky four were tech websites and “sympathetic newsletters”.
According to the NYT: “The message of this short list was clear: Silicon Valley doesn’t really need East Coast media anymore.”
It feels to me that it has been like this forever.
I don’t do much tech reporting, but when obliged it is always a somewhat comical experience.
Either the firms don’t say anything at all, or they tell you off-the-record how wonderful they are and expect you to report that without attribution.
I’m not talking about Apple here, I’m talking about nochancestartup.com.
It is hard to see where this misplaced confidence comes from, although reporters being complicit in return for access must be a factor.
All of this surely ends badly. Newspapers are saddled with gung-ho coverage of companies that later fall to earth.
Which they then correct for, with venom. Ask The Hut Group.
And tech companies don’t go through an important part of the process that makes them fit for life as a public business – press scrutiny.
It’s a bad show all round.
Press release of the day
CEOs are under pressure to act on climate change – this from Accenture says they are taking it seriously, but need more help from governments.
The report is based on 1,230 interviews with CEOs in 113 countries and 21 industries.
Only 18% of them say policymakers have given them enough clarity to hit climate targets.