I think a lot of the ire around Roose's piece has to do with latent ideology in journalism that's a lot bigger than tech. His stated approach ("we need to take this stuff seriously so we don't get surprised by it later") leads to a basically credulous article that, even if it includes significant criticism, aligns a lot of the framing with pro-crypto boosters, and treats it as serious news. He might hope that this makes him dispassionate, amplifying the effect of his critiques; if you think the whole thing is a swindle top-to-bottom, it kind of makes him look like a sucker.
There are some obvious parallels with how the media handled good ol' Don T. HuffPo tried ignoring him, the Times hoped their objective restraint would persuade moderates, Vox tried the Chicken Little routine. (To results of lol, rofl, lmbo respectively)
Ultimately, I think you're spot on that it doesn't really matter what the media "does" about crypto as far as how it writes to its audience about it. Something you didn't touch on w/r/t to Facebook, though, is how media *companies* fucked up in their business dealings with social media--they missed the boat bigtime in the early days, then rolled over and showed Zuck their belly when he told them to pivot to video. I think the media has similarly big decisions to make about how they engage with web3 companies, and those decisions will matter. In particular, copyright and intellectual property are about to undergo a serious tug of war if web3 people keep getting their way. The AP selling NFTs doesn't look like a good start :-/
Yes — funny enough the failure of "the media" to properly navigate the various shifts in distribution and consumption over the 20 years between 1995 and 2015 provides ammo for both the "too skeptical" and "too credulous" camp. In some sense I'm sort of sympathetic... it would have taken a very far-seeing and politically adept publisher to have successfully managed that transition, and if you're far-seeing and politically adept you're probably not wasting your talents in the media business.
I think a lot of the ire around Roose's piece has to do with latent ideology in journalism that's a lot bigger than tech. His stated approach ("we need to take this stuff seriously so we don't get surprised by it later") leads to a basically credulous article that, even if it includes significant criticism, aligns a lot of the framing with pro-crypto boosters, and treats it as serious news. He might hope that this makes him dispassionate, amplifying the effect of his critiques; if you think the whole thing is a swindle top-to-bottom, it kind of makes him look like a sucker.
There are some obvious parallels with how the media handled good ol' Don T. HuffPo tried ignoring him, the Times hoped their objective restraint would persuade moderates, Vox tried the Chicken Little routine. (To results of lol, rofl, lmbo respectively)
Ultimately, I think you're spot on that it doesn't really matter what the media "does" about crypto as far as how it writes to its audience about it. Something you didn't touch on w/r/t to Facebook, though, is how media *companies* fucked up in their business dealings with social media--they missed the boat bigtime in the early days, then rolled over and showed Zuck their belly when he told them to pivot to video. I think the media has similarly big decisions to make about how they engage with web3 companies, and those decisions will matter. In particular, copyright and intellectual property are about to undergo a serious tug of war if web3 people keep getting their way. The AP selling NFTs doesn't look like a good start :-/
Yes — funny enough the failure of "the media" to properly navigate the various shifts in distribution and consumption over the 20 years between 1995 and 2015 provides ammo for both the "too skeptical" and "too credulous" camp. In some sense I'm sort of sympathetic... it would have taken a very far-seeing and politically adept publisher to have successfully managed that transition, and if you're far-seeing and politically adept you're probably not wasting your talents in the media business.