The weblogs shall not kill us trend piece has been put to bed for the night, replaced by the please read our weblog trend piece. Honestly, we’d rather read about the trend of PTAs going cash crazy. At least then the copy isn’t drenched in tears of self-pity.

City slicking’s opinion is that weblogs, and on-line publishing in general, do not threaten the viability of traditional journalism. They force it to better itself. This weblog is obsessed with criticizing the newspaper, but we hope that the NYT ship will someday be so tightly run that we’ll have nothing to criticize. Or at least, that it’s not so damn easy. Seriously, we’re lazy, and if the paper is 99 percent unsucky, we will not have the energy to find that one sucky percentage.

But one “occupation” is threatened by the explosion of mass media into the masses’ media: that of quote-factory analysts. These self-proclaimed analysts form symbiotic relationships with the press, whereby they gain notoriety and journalists get processed meat for their stories.

For example, say you’ve been assigned yet another item that must have Apple in the headline. How do you make your piece timely? It’s easy. Call Rob Enderle, he’ll say something ridiculous about Apple which you’ll put in quotation marks followed by says Rob Enderle, analyst for the Enderle Group and boom you’re done! You’ve got your story, and Enderle has his notoriety. Everyone wins!

Except anyone who cares about the subject of the story. There is no motivation for the quote-factory analyst to adhere to reality or predict anything plausible, as that would be boring. Instead, his M.O. is to engage in absurd speculation and doomsaying. Surprising and dramatic quotes make a better story for the reporter, who rewards the analyst by never looking into the veracity of past claims or the outcome of past predictions. Perversely, poor performance is the path to analytical fame.

All that’s left to do is cash in. First, the semi-honest way. As the analyst builds up a laundry list of quotes, he becomes more attractive to big, dumb corporations looking for bullshit technology consulting:

Uniquely Informative Talks: What IT Clients are looking for and what sales, development, and/or service can do to best address these needs.

This consulting is lucrative, but perhaps that’s not quite enough dough for our analyst? Of course, then he can branch into public relations:

We can take the press calls and provide documentation and quotes related to the actual success of the effort. These quotes are substantially more powerful that the typical inane analyst quotes…

So when he’s not spouting off his own “inane quotes” for free, he’s selling better ones to the highest bidder. Now the money’s rolling in, but what if he still needs to finance that infinity pool? Enter crisis public relations:

[Counterpoint] provides consulting services during the review process of a poorly founded negative piece on a vendor or its products and, should it be needed, will showcase the research errors, statistical mistakes, and unfounded conclusions that often define such a piece.

While engaging in, promoting, and benefiting from “poorly founded negative” technology journalism, you can offer high-priced protection from it. The Godfather would be proud.

The closer you look at the “Enderle Group” (composed of Rob and Mary Enderle, a relationship curiously unspecified), the more it resembles a public relations firm with that does analysis (whatever that is) on the side. But far from being tangential, the quote-factory operations are their secret weapon: firstly in building press contacts (job number one in any P.R. firm), and secondly as free advertising. This analysis front operates at zero cost and requires no real credentials other than its own self-perpetuating notoriety.

Like the corrupting influence of public relations in general, City slicking finds this parasitic and dishonest flackanalyst business extremely distasteful. Fortunately, the salt for these slugs is on its way. Lazy and inaccurate criticism of cult technologies will earn you no shortage of enemies, and thanks to media upheaval those enemies now have a voice. Try googling “Rob Enderle.” Here, we’ve done it for you:

So, let’s say your readers—no let’s say your editor wants to see who this Rob Enderle guy is you’ve so confidently quoted in your latest cheaply skeptical technology story. He queries, and finds that the very first non-autobiographical link says that Enderle puts the ‘anal’ in ‘analyst’. If your editor wants to, he can click through to read one of the many Daring Fireball posts dissecting Enderle’s anti-wisdom. Or maybe he doesn’t bother; you can’t go to press with a primary source that Google calls a “jackass.”

Robby, you might want to put the third infinity pool on hold.