If there's one person in the Valley who you can ask difficult questions, it's Bill Nguyen. Instead, the author asks him about whether his wife likes the house on Maui.
A pop artists sells music, a company sells a product or a service. I'm not predicating my use of facebook based on whether or not Mark Zuckerberg did pot in college or got blowjobs from his secretaries.
So when you interview someone who isn't selling themselves, you don't have the freedom to ask those kinds of questions. Unless maybe you don't that person to ever grant you or your magazine an interview ever again.
Fast Company has always been breathless and brainless. They always present "business" in such a way to make it seem like all you need to be a rich, successful, famous, sexy entrepreneur is "a great idea" and maybe some fun personality traits.
They aren't in the business of reporting, they're in the business of titillating, teasing, and making their reader think "that could be me!" - exactly, in other words, the stuff I've dubbed entreporn:
http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/09/entreporn-dictionary-def...
"I've got a pizza here with extra sausage." "Ohhhh, we lost our purses, however can we pay?" -- I DELIVER PIZZAS… IT COULD BE ME!
Fast Company and Inc. are both owned by the same firm, and they try to portray a more humanistic view of business, ie. social capitalism, the belief that entrepreneurs can one day solve all of the ills in the world. Its a very uplifting philosophy, and I for one find it encouraging.
I've never heard of the term entreporn though, if you coined it then congrats! I like the term, and maybe it is apt. Maybe that's precisely what someone is curious but hesitant about entrepreneurialism needs.
People just need to understand what they're reading, and why they shouldn't place their trust in its realism. What I see here on HN all the time is a refusal to question the motives or background of the speaker/writer/what-have-you. It's considered ad hominem, a fallacy. But it's not. It's just good thinking.
Political journalists encounter the same thing, but their success is less dependent on this availability - and people are buying their content for that criticism, not puff pieces.
Also there is the question of talent - don't you think a more diligent reporter would rather be working for a publication/in a subject area with more prestige?
I haven't visited the site since.