This is not a story

In my continuing struggle to find quality tech reporting from anyone other than Ars Technica, I was dismayed to read this little tidbit from a techcruch “story” today:

In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too.

(emphasis mine).  That’s from Arrington talking about him having trouble with Google Voice.  No, this isn’t a story.  This is Arrington using his soapbox to voice a technical support problem.  Please don’t make it out to be anything more than that.

He continues with some potentially real news a little bit later:

From what I’m hearing this isn’t a short term surge issue, either. There are issues with Google’s core infrastructure conflicting with the type of system Google Voice needs to operate effectively, multiple sources have told me. And Google to date hasn’t made the investment needed to build a proper back end to the service that scales. That doesn’t really work for me as a user.

Okay, that’s better I guess.  But this vague mention of backend problems does not a story make either.  This is the seed of a story that was rushed out because the author was frustrated.

I, too, am a little frustrated but not with Google Voice (which has always worked flawlessly for me, by the way).  I’m frustrated with fake tech “reporting”.  I mean, it’s a blog.  A blog is where you share your opinion and occasionally mix in some facts but lets not call it a collection of “stories”.  Doing that is an insult to Ars Technica and any other online publication that spends time filling their articles with salient, detailed information.

Also, I really like Arrington’s opinions.  I think he’s an insightful tech blogger whose opinions I value.  But lately I’ve gotten a little touchy about bloggers masquerading as journalists and that one word in Arrington’s blog entry rubbed me the wrong way.

via Google Voice Is A Hot Mess Right Now.