Introduction/Findings     Who Gets Covered In The Business Press?     Business Press vs. Blogs     Publication Profiles

Special Report: Business Press Technology Coverage

Introduction/Findings

U.S. companies still rule the conversation.
Only half of the eight publications we analyzed had a single non-US company on the list of the 10 tech vendors they cover the most. In cases where companies cracked the list, or even got close, it was almost always a mobile handset maker, namely Nokia (Finland), Research In Motion (Canada), LG (South Korea), and T-Mobile (Germany). Otherwise, other countries don't get much attention, especially Japan, South Korea, and China.

The connection between revenue and coverage is weak.
Although 82% of our PR pros surveyed thought the business press focused on companies with "the most revenue or adoption," our own analysis (see this table) showed that there are scores of profitable companies with massive revenue that fly under the radar, while newer companies without the numbers get clips left and right. Ever hear of Emerson? It's a diversified manufacturing and technology company that turned about $2.5 billion in PROFIT last year. If you haven't heard of them, it might be because across these eight publications, they only received two mentions in the last six months. For better or for worse, it seems business press follows the lead of the media at large in focusing on what's new and where the money might be going rather than where the money is now.

Social media's continued dominance.
Would you be surprised to learn the companies that came in #4 and #5 in total business press mentions have yet to show a profit? Forget profits - some people think that Twitter (1336 clips) and Facebook (1314 clips) don't even have business models. Yet over the last six months they each received far more attention than Intel, Sony, Dell, or HP (the largest tech company in the world).

No love for enterprise IT.
Gartner predicted $3.3 trillion in IT spending in 2010. But when we looked at coverage in the business press, enterprise IT themes (enterprise software, storage, networking equipment, etc.) barely register. Sure, there are awesome enterprise reporters at business publications (Steve Lohr, Ashlee Vance, and John Waters, to name a few). But in the overall editorial agenda, enterprise IT is treated like consumer tech's snaggletoothed twin - it barely even makes the family photo. How underrepresented is enterprise IT in the business press? Oracle ($22 billion in revenue, $5 billion in profits) only cracked the top 10 companies by coverage for 1 of the 8 we looked at: Fortune. Cisco ($40 billion in revenue, $8 billion in profits) didn't make it on anyone's top 10 list. IBM ($100 billion in revenue, $12 billion in profits) wasn't even in The New York Times' top 20, and was #19 for The Wall Street Journal.

Who's big on Twitter?
Which business press reporters have the most followers on Twitter? David Pogue wins by a mile:


We also took a look at the five most recent tech pieces from the authors at these eight publications and looked at how many tweets they received. Would you believe that NYT authors occupied all of the top 10 spots? Doesn't it seem weird that Walt Mossberg or Kara Swisher (or anyone else) didn't crack the top 10?:

Business press tech coverage on the decline?
According to the tech PR veterans we surveyed, 46.4% thought that that business press tech coverage is worse than it was five years ago. Only 25% thought it was better.

Overrated and underappreciated tech companies.
We asked tech PR pros to tell us which companies they thought were overrated or underappreciated by the business press. The results:

The Walt Mossberg fan club.
In our survey, we asked the tech PR community what author they would most want to run a great cover story about a client (as if it were that easy!). Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal was the clear winner, with 19% of respondents tagging him as their dream date.

Google gets the most coverage.
Duh. Enough said.