Tech Journalists: How Much Street Cred Do You Need?

When I first got out of college and had to get a real job, I met a lot of resistance when it came to technical writing jobs, which was what I originally intended to do. From software development companies to engineering companies, they all said the same thing: the writing degree was fine, but I wasn't a programmer/engineer, and therefore, "couldn't understand." Based on a lot of the documentation I've seen in user manuals and other documentation since then, I'd still argue the same point: programmers and engineers often need a non-technical person to translate their ideas into plain language for average people to understand. However, tired of arguing, I decided if I couldn't beat them, I'd join them, and started doing first system administration, then development.

When I returned to writing, I had the street cred, but no longer the writing experience, and I had to readjust. I've sometimes been criticized for being "too techie" but I try to keep my writing balanced. I can't claim to have developed enterprise systems in my day (I was doing corporate intranets before the days of Sharepoint and wikis), but I have a fair understanding of how all these tubes work and if I don't know something, I know how to figure it out.

Obviously, I have a different perspective when it comes to Web 2.0 issues, especially when it comes to those of the technical variety. I tend to read a lot of things written by developers and recovering developers (like me), but that's a personal interest bias. I've certainly never discounted a blogger for never having written a line of code, but I've seen a lot of criticism when that's the case.

I'm left with the question of how much street cred a tech blogger or tech journalist really needs to have. While I've met a journalist or two who was so out of their element that they needed a new address, for the most part, I believe that journalists can immerse themselves so deeply in an area that they establish credibility. When Mike Arrington recently posted a series of questions to the folks over at Twitter, commenters such as Sandy, Commenter 14, called Arrington out for even attempting to ask questions, since he doesn't personally have experience in architecting a scalable application. If the qualifier for asking questions about anything means you have to have first done it yourself, I'm guessing that the White House press corps can be seriously reduced, so is that really the issue? I never got the feeling that Arrington was telling them what to do, only asking questions that anyone might want answers to. That's the journalist's job.

On the other hand, we have Rafe Needleman's question about Twitter, which Triston wrote about early this morning. Unless I'm missing something in the article, it was one of the most pointless solutions to the Twitter issues that I've ever seen. Anyone from a CS 101 student to a seasoned CTO could tell you that if you have a parallel development process and switch over to the new code that should (hopefully) work. There isn't any need to take it down, and if a spotty service loses users, one that is completely missing would be even worse.

So which is it? Do you need to have a development background to be able to ask these questions and discuss solutions? Or do years writing about the business count as enough credibility?

 No sooner do I post this than I see that Adnan Wasim had an answer before I even asked it.