Ask a tech journalist about the latest cool features from the likes of Google Maps or Spotify, and they are likely not only to be able to rattle them off, but also to give astute opinions about whether those features position a product for success. But ask a tech reporter whether Foursquare was built in Objective-C or Java or something else, and it’s quite likely they’d have no idea.
Tech reporters largely focus on the same aspects of the product that consumers do: what’s on the screen, the features, and maybe the user experience. And this focus on interactivity rather than construction may be doing readers a disservice, one akin to covering policymaking in Washington exclusively by reading the text of enacted legislation.
“I think the gap between developers and tech reporters is unsustainable and will damage the public’s ability to understand the technology/IT industry,” says Sam Petulla, an editor at Contently. “Often people ask developers questions about a product just to get an opinion about a technical issue, but often they are also aware of ways in which technology is deployed that has much larger stakes. If you take the time to dig into what they are thinking about on a technical level and how it connects to broader societal problems.”
While it may not be necessary to know how to use Ruby on Rails, journalists will do better reporting with fluency in technical language. It might help if to have some idea why a developer would choose to use it, for example, as opposed to Python.
“This stuff isn’t magic,” says Manoush Zomorodi of WNYC’s New Tech City podcast. “Understanding even just a little bit about how code works gives consumers the power to question the choices these engineers have been making for us.”
But getting into the weeds in the tech beat can be stymied by PR gatekeepers. Publicists speak of a company’s engineering in generalities, calling it “cutting edge,” for example, without saying how, according to Ben Fischer, of the New York Business Journal. “I think it only adds to their narrative, to be frank, if they believe they’ve really solved an unusual challenge on the back end. And if that means they’re five months later to market, then, well, being able to articulate why makes a great story,” he said.
Some more consumer-facing tech reporters may not report on technology’s building blocks because they think their readers don’t or don’t want to follow it; more business-oriented reporters may not think the undergirding technology is that relevant to competitiveness; and very few reporters have the engineering training to make them fluent in the language of programming. And little is likely to be volunteered about the engineering in materials PR teams put out. But tech reporters can get more into the meat of their beat by opening the conversation with their sources. Here are a few questions to jumpstart the process:
–What tools does your team use for product development? (such as for testing, visualization, error checking, or task management)
–What are your user experience principles?
–How much open source are you using? How much are you contributing?
–After a big update, how many lines of code did your code base change by?
–Cale Weissman, a reporter at Business Insider, previously at PandoDaily, recommends asking about the planning process, before the coding began, and then about bugs along the way. He adds, “Of course, getting a forthright answer is another thing altogether.”
–Fischer suggests asking about technical differentiations between competitors, and/or about the technical skills they would look for in a CTO.
–Zomorodi said to ask about how the engineering team organizes itself, such as the methodology they use to adapt and improve software, how frequently the team commits to updates or iterations, and its approach to innovation.
Reporters who attempt to explain these questions in an accessible way could themselves be reaching an underserved audience. According to Francis Tseng, a developer working on a Knight Foundation Prototype Fund project called Argos to make it easier to track or catch up on long-term news stories, there is very little good work being done by tech journalists in this space. “No one publication comes to mind. All the major ones seem to just be focused on the business,” he says. “To dig into the technical stuff, I usually have to go to a company or dev’s blog. A lot of companies are founded on code, so it’s strange there’s such a dearth of coverage of it.”
Developers are doing much of their own self-reported coverage now, such as Etsy’s developer group blog, Code as Craft. The work there can be tough for non-technical people to follow, though. Some of this gap between where devs talk to each other and reporters talk to the public is being filled by venture capitalists, such as the Andreessen Horowitz’ a16z newsletter and podcast and First Round Capital’s Review–all of which suggests that there’s space here for reporters to move into if they start asking the relevant questions about how the digital products get made.
Brady Dale lives in Brooklyn and writes regularly for Fortune, Technically Brooklyn, and Next City