In the tech industry we definitely make celebrities of the wrong people. I can't recall a single other industry where journalists are the top-tier talent attraction, and I can't explain why that is. The closest in influence is perhaps the top editors in fashion - but otherwise we are in a league of our own (I have seen small-time contributors to Techcrunch get mobbed at tech events).
I have watched new tech bloggers starting out in the right direction and then getting dragged in by the mob to insert themselves into the story. The entire context of tech journalism shifts from reporting the facts to reporting on them reporting and before you know it every half-wit tech blogger has their own column where they endow the world with their opinion of things. Before long they are opining as 'we' - meaning they are speaking on behalf of everybody else (which for me is a lot worse than the worse style of 'I' editorial). There are more opinion-style journalists in tech than there are straight up reporters, and that says something.
And it is the entire audience that is culpable, not just the lovers, but the haters as well. If your intention as an opinion journalist is to get a reaction from people, then the haters are participating and perpetuating just as much as the fans are. I know a lot of tech bloggers who would furiously refresh the comments after they post the piece and look forward to the hate as much as they look forward to the applause. A lot of them intentionally rile up their audience just to get that reaction - sometimes even publishing a point-of-view they don't believe in just to get that rise out of the haters.
It may be because the real heros of this industry are less accesible, so we turn those who we have ready access to into faux heroes and villains. The movie and film industry has privacy invading gossip pages for readers to get their gossip fix from, they also have regular movies and awards shows. We don't have that with Zuckerberg, so we do it to whoever is next in line.
You can't observe tech gossip or talk about it without participating in it. All you can do is completely ignore it - but ignore it without saying that you are ignoring it, because that means you really aren't ignoring it.
I don't think that will happen though, there may be less interest in some stories at times but the gossip will always be there, it is part of human nature. We just gossip about the wrong part of the industry in tech.
I think you mean "tech journalism industry" maybe?
My perception from back when i was reading lots of tech blogs is that tech journalists are just not good journalists, almost all of them (I can't think of an exceptional case, no offense intended). They almost never do real world research, just rely on google, big newspapers, press releases, the random dude who calls to promote his new website and lately on HN / reddit (that strikes me as extremely lazy). You almost never read discussions or interviews with actual tech people in a calm, focused tone (a-la charlie Rose), their attention span is that of the average redditor and the thought process is usually shallow. Articles go out in minutes, they wait for commenters to correct them, and the opinions are tailored to the fan crowd in order to provoke the usual fan/troll replies and pageviews. You say that the "real heroes are inaccessible", but i wonder if tech bloggers try hard enough to access them.
I have found that more recently some of the most interesting writing has been done by part-timers on their personal blogs. Security and privacy investigations, analysis of markets and startups. HN is a good way of aggregating the best of those posts.
I have watched new tech bloggers starting out in the right direction and then getting dragged in by the mob to insert themselves into the story. The entire context of tech journalism shifts from reporting the facts to reporting on them reporting and before you know it every half-wit tech blogger has their own column where they endow the world with their opinion of things. Before long they are opining as 'we' - meaning they are speaking on behalf of everybody else (which for me is a lot worse than the worse style of 'I' editorial). There are more opinion-style journalists in tech than there are straight up reporters, and that says something.
And it is the entire audience that is culpable, not just the lovers, but the haters as well. If your intention as an opinion journalist is to get a reaction from people, then the haters are participating and perpetuating just as much as the fans are. I know a lot of tech bloggers who would furiously refresh the comments after they post the piece and look forward to the hate as much as they look forward to the applause. A lot of them intentionally rile up their audience just to get that reaction - sometimes even publishing a point-of-view they don't believe in just to get that rise out of the haters.
It may be because the real heros of this industry are less accesible, so we turn those who we have ready access to into faux heroes and villains. The movie and film industry has privacy invading gossip pages for readers to get their gossip fix from, they also have regular movies and awards shows. We don't have that with Zuckerberg, so we do it to whoever is next in line.
You can't observe tech gossip or talk about it without participating in it. All you can do is completely ignore it - but ignore it without saying that you are ignoring it, because that means you really aren't ignoring it.
I don't think that will happen though, there may be less interest in some stories at times but the gossip will always be there, it is part of human nature. We just gossip about the wrong part of the industry in tech.