Why the scarcity of local IT news?

Mon Lizardo of Inquirer.net tells Aileen Apolo that there aren’t really much IT news in the Philippines. She was basically “ranting about the lack of Philippine internet news. I read a lot of local tech blogs and news, but there are just aren’t any stuff about local IT stuff. How come?”

Though most tech bloggers and journalist alike would concur to this observation, I think I have a different angle to this. Let me give you a backgrounder. I bumped into an old friend while heading to the gym last night (Fitness First at The Fort, anyone?) and he told me a really juicy scoop about a local music company trying to dip its hands into the iTunes industry. Sadly, he says I could not blog about it even after I promised I won’t mention his name as my source. I told him I always get that sort of thing — juicy but non-blogable local IT story.

So, now you see why we lack IT news? It’s because these stories don’t often see the light of day. They always end up like any one of these:

• Praise Press Release or Advertising. The really good Philippine tech news almost always end up in the papers or TV as the company’s press release or as an advertisement of a new product or service. Just look at Smart 3G, PLDT WeRoam or Globe Visibility. First time the masses heard about them was thru an advertisement. The ad dilutes the real news story behind it.
• The Clone Mentality. Yes, like the Chinese we’re also very fond of cloning — a copy of Yahoo, Friendster, Facebook, Digg, iTunes. Lack of innovation. Nobody want’s to pick up your story if you’re just another clone. Well, we can always settle for stories like “Fake iPods hit the streets of Manila” or “iTunes clone launched in the Philippines“.
• Conflict of Interest. MSM can’t ran a (distateful or controversial) story about their biggest ad buyers. That’s just how capitalism works.
• Super Secret, Non-Disclosure or Scared Source. This is the one that I’m talking about in my encounter above. I get a lot of stories from people in the know, yet I can’t blog about them. Either the story is super secret as told by the company executive, the developer signed a non-disclosure with the client company, or the employee is scared of getting fired if the story gpt leaked out.

Mostly these stories are not good news but still they are relevant stories, right? Some of them maybe just rumors, a whitewash or the plain but aweful truth. Maybe that’s the reason why we don’t have our own ValleyWag or AppleInsider. But, if you’re just looking for “good” news then I’m sorry because there’s really not much to go around.

So, anybody out there got some juicy stories to share?