A journalist is NOT a technical writer [LWN.net]

A journalist is NOT a technical writer

Posted Feb 2, 2006 8:48 UTC (Thu) by guybar (guest, #798)
In reply to: Technical Writer by erwbgy
Parent article: OSDL and the kernel community

Indeed. I wonder if we could get OSDL to pay for more of Mr Corbet's time to work on this, since he does a lot of it already.

While I'm sure this proposal is good-intentioned, and even though I'm confident of both the OSDL's and LWN's staffs decency and good faith, a situtation wherein the subject of the articles has the journalist on the pay is NOT a good idea.

It will actually make LWN's job harder, IMHO.

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A journalist can be a technical writer

Posted Feb 2, 2006 15:37 UTC (Thu) by The_Flatlander (guest, #19245) [Link]

Ummmm... you should search for your [humble] editor's name on, say, Amazon.com, I believe you'll find that along with two other folks he's written the standard text on Linux Device Drivers. I've read it, and I would not rate it as great journalism, but it is a *fine* bit of technical documentation. (It's well written, approachable, logically laid out; it is arguably perfect.)

I suppose your point is that he could not say, for example, if he was in their employ, that the Directors of OSDL are a bunch of numb-skulls, and you could well be right. On the other hand, I bet he could and would never-the-less find ways to be honest with us.

The Flatlander