Washington Post
Steve Jobs enjoyed almost worshipful media coverage, says Paul Farhi, and his death “was met with the journalistic equivalent of a public rending of garments.” Given Jobs’s record, the quasi-religious hosannas were predictable, notes the Washington Post press critic.
Journalists may have been Apple’s original fanboys (and gals). Early on, the company presented an irresistible underdog story, the garage start-up taking on the corporate behemoth — a narrative Apple stoked in its “1984” and “Think Different” ad campaigns. It’s true, too, that many reporters were early adopters of Apple products, and many use them to this day, surely enhancing positive media feelings.
Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg tells Farhi that Jobs viewed the media through a complicated prism, shrewdly sizing up who could help the company and who could hurt. “It’s pretty hard for me to generalize because he had different relationships with different journalists. A lot depended on whether you were a reporter covering the company or a reviewer of its products.”
Gawker media writer Hamilton Nolan said in his “Steve Jobs is Not God” post that “when even the journalists tasked with covering you and your company are reduced to pie-eyed fans apologizing for discomforting your insanely powerful multibillion-dollar corporation in some minor way, some perspective has been lost.” Nolan’s item has over 1,000 comments, including one from Forbes media writer Jeff Bercovici, who says that “canonizing him is a form of narcissism on our part.”
> There have been 2.5 million tweets mentioning Jobs since his death
> Check out the words most frequently used in tweets about Jobs
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