I’ve known Dave Burstein for a few years, largely via the FOJ (Friends of Jeff–as in Pulver) circle that gets acquainted at VON events. Without being asked Dave jumped to my defense after the Nick Carr commentary on my poor typing and lousy spell checking. Dave sent Nick and I a note, and then he gave me permission as he only has a newsletter, not a blog over at DSLPrime. Burstein is someone who knows a lot about the DSL and network market. A lot more than I ever will. Whenever those kinds of questions get served up to me by a mainstream media member I almost always refer them to Dave. He knows his stuff and he’s super credible. That only adds more reason why when I read his note I had to sit back and say…WOW. To say the least, I’m touched. To say more would be too much. All I can say is with friends like Dave it’s a really good feeling to know sometimes just how other really do admit to knowing me.
Here’s Dave’s very honest note of his feelings to Nick Carr….Thanks Dave!!
Nick
I’m a regular reader of your often very original and imaginative blog, but I think you were “uninformed” in your piece about Andy, a friend.
Easy to find rough spots in the piece by Andy, partly because like most bloggers he doesn’t have the editor in the middle to catch things like that. (My dad did 20 years of re-write at The Daily News. Reporters without an editor suffer, myself included.)
But if you had read more of Andy’s reporting, you’d probably come to a a different conclusion. By traditional standards, he’s done some excellent reporting. He’s had a series of legitimate scoops that would be impressive for a typical tech reporter.
Beyond that, the analysis and ideas in his reporting typically outclass most of the telecom reporters in the major papers. Unfortunately, that’s not a very high standard these days. Only a handful of telecom reporters match the depth Andy (and Jeff Pulver, Om Malik, James Enck and several others) bring. The result, sometimes even in the world’s best telecom team at the WSJ, is not just shallow work but far too often incorporates hype and propaganda.
This came clear recently when online media actually read the AT&T/BellSouth merger agreement and discovered a loophole big enough to make it hollow. The “IPTV exclusion” happened to cover the main method AT&T intended to use to prioritizes traffic, which was obvious to those who knew how the system was designed. Mike at Techdirt, Jeff Pulver, David Isenberg, Susan Crawford, and I picked that up Thursday night and Friday morning when the text came out; by the end of the day when the deal officially went through, our work was picked up in every newspaper account. Knowing most of the reporters on the telecom beat and being in the middle of this story, I think it would have been completely missed without the online journalists.
I’m sure you can think of your own examples. While you certainly can find fault with some of Andy’s work, and should, he doesn’t deserve the dismissive tone of your piece. He’s done plenty of work you’d respect if you had seen it.
db
Editor, DSL Prime
Contributing Editor and Publisher, Future of TV.net
Author, DSL, a Tech Brief (Wiley, 2002) with Jennie Bourne
Producer, Jef