[alephnerd]

The issue is these old school blogs aren't some random dudes eating ramen who love technology for the sake of technology anymore.

They are now owned by press wire publishers and corporate conference owners, and as companies have increasingly moved away from both these options, the tone has become increasingly uneven.

Look at how much RSA flamed Palo Alto Networks for deciding to quit RSA and how Register never uses snark in the articles it writes with CEOs, leadership, or companies who invite Register to their conferences.

It's basically an attempt at extortion, not the truth. The practitioners who are technical don't write for these rags. And most of the Register's (and at all their parent companies publications) are non-technical journalists for whom this is a dayjob which they'll inevitably leave to become a Comm Marketer at a Vendor like the dozens I've worked with.

> especially has most other tech press at the time it was created in the 1990s had conflict of interest relationships with tech companies

So does The Register. I've literally wined and dined their writers at RSA years ago.

[AtlasBarfed]

You might be right, but at least it is SOME skeptical source to fight back against the unending gusher of marketing bullshit.

The fact they may preferentially apply the snark based on "extortion" isn't great, but at least they are SOME voice, and like comedy some snarky sarcasm is often much more incisive that (shockingly) fluff.

And considering the gushing amound of shadow-sponsored fluff in other magazines, aka the flip side of your alleged "extortion". If anything, the non-snark is an honest signal to an informed reader.

[alephnerd]

> is SOME skeptical source to fight back against the unending gusher of marketing bullshit.

They aren't though. They are also marketing bs. If you work at a vendor, go slack your content marketing team for a coffee chat to understand how it works.

This is the managing company for The Register [0]. We'd work with AMs at Situation Publishing to be looped to the right magazine (Register, Next Platform, Blocks and Files, etc) and could complain to them if we gave enough business to them.

[0] - https://situationpublishing.com/

[hylaride]

You're complaining about the news/publishing industry in general, though.

As I mentioned earlier, the register isn't on my radar anymore and obviously sold out. In your original post, you had a hate-on with their tone, but it was their tone that (originally) made them refreshing. The discourse without it would be have reporting on corporate release announcements and various reviews by people who don't use the products day-to-day in their actual job.

Snarky tones about Larry Ellison needing yacht money or referencing whether a good or useful IBM product was worth having to deal with their aggressive sales people was the indications that the writers (again at one time) got or understood the industry.

Of course, that's not sustainable as a business model...

Anyways, my main point is that it's not the tone that's the issue, it's the publication industry for reasons that you stated.