Joel Johnson is back at Gizmodo, and if you haven’t seen his first column, every Street Tech reader should check it out. It’s a sober call to arms to cut the crap and stop the endless parade of breathless gadget hooting and cat-calling found on most personal tech sites. It completely captures the sentiments that lead to the creation of Street Tech in 1997. We were tired of seeing this kind of rip n’ read tech journalism (read the press release, write a preview of how awesome and cool the gadget is going to be, and then never even bother to write an actual review. Or the review is written after a company-sponsored trip to the factory in some exotic local, or gifts arrive on your doorstep, or promises of ad buys. Bribery, in other words.).
Reading Joel’s piece, I don’t feel as thought Street Tech has been too guilty of breathlessness or corruption, but it saddens me that we haven’t been able to deliver more on our mission to suck less, to offer our honest and informed take on what passes our bullshit detector. I’m hoping that, with our Federated Media alliance, and with some other changes coming to ST this year, we can deliver on at least a little more of that promise. We’ll certainly do our best. And a million thanks to Joel for shaking the chrome plating off of the industry-allied chrome-plated turd that passes for much of personal tech journalism. Let’s hope it makes a difference.