Milo Yiannopoulos, columnist and blogger, has recently bemoaned the state of technology journalism in the UK and Europe. Specifically, he asks why there is not far more commentary, analysis and opinions in the technology media landscape. Whilst he makes some interesting points, and I agree with a lot of what he says, I don’t agree that a lack of ‘good’ journalists is necessarily the issue.

I would argue there are plenty of good journalists out there; the problem is that technology coverage at a national media level is actually quite poor – not in terms of quality, and certainly not in terms of journalists’ interest and knowledge, but actually in terms of the variety and balance of technology coverage.

Lacking in particular are publications willing to make space for broad technology features and commentary – especially amongst national newspapers. There is instead a very narrow focus on news and products that are on shelves today. Of course there is nothing wrong with either of those aspects; however, when technology coverage consists of only those two things to the exclusion of more in depth and ‘big picture’ coverage then I feel readers of national media are being short-changed.

Beyond the usual suspects

The main problem I have is that if you look at some national outlets, both in print and online, you could easily believe that the only technology companies worth knowing about are Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. That is not a criticism of those companies, however there is so much more going on with technology in the world today beyond a handful of very successful software/device companies.

There are rapid technological changes going on all around us today, changes that will impact how we work, how we communicate, how we look after our health and, without wishing to layer on the hype too much, how we live. These things are long-term trends, changes that don’t fit easily into the daily news schedule. Just for illustration a quick search on one national newspaper’s website reveals over 5,000 hits for ‘Facebook’ compared to less than 300 for 4G.

Does that mean these trends have no place in national media outlets today? Are these issues of absolutely no interest to ordinary readers? I would argue no, in fact I would say the opposite is true – this big picture of where technology is heading is both hugely important and something a lot of people would take great interest in.

Getting under the skin of technology

I know from some of my conversations with journalists over the years that this is an opinion many share. And of course there are some titles with a national presence that are producing these features, but I feel there is room for so much more, particularly with national newspapers.

Technology is already a huge part of all of our lives, so why is national media coverage still looking at technology in such a superficial way? Would we accept this from the politics or economics desks at newspapers? Of course we wouldn’t. Journalists need to be given the licence to explore the technology landscape much more comprehensively, and their insight and opinions need to be given platforms in the national media.