Washington Post Story Demonstrates the Perils of Understanding Wi-Fi Developments Through Mainstream Newspapers

[Commentary] Now that I’ve had a chance to read the front-page Washington Post story on so-called “Super Wi-Fi,” I have to confess to being extremely disappointed in the Post.

Like many others, I was taken in on an allegedly new development repackaged in an exaggerated fashion. It is another re-affirmation for me that the mainstream media is no longer up to coverage of important telecommunications-related events. In some cases, this is not the fault of the reporters, who are hard-working individuals trying to “advance” their story in substantive and newsworthy ways. What they are up against, is the medium in which they are operating: the general-purpose newspaper. To get a story on the front page of a major metropolitan newspaper, it has to be sufficiently free of technology jargon. Unfortunately, the careful use of technology jargon is what helps explain — to those who do follow telecom- and broadband-related matters — what really is the “news” of the matter. The Washington Post’s story was really all about the “white spaces” issue.