Slate lone gunman Jack Shafer has the top story on the site today, a slapdown of journalists' obsession with all things Apple. He persuasively makes the case that writers hype Apple's every new product launch (like this week's unveiling of the Video iPod) with the unquestioning enthusiasm of a not-so-bright golden retriever without ever acknowledging the mediocrity of many of said new products (like the Video iPod).

And we agree. It really is irritating when journalists and media outlets keep jumping on that Apple bandwagon:

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UPDATE: A media reporter who's much smarter than we are points out that Slate self-deprecatingly added this tag to address just this criticism. We'd still argue that the fact they podcast anything — given that the podcasting "phenomenon" seems to be entirely a media construct, driven by, among other things, the Applephilia Shafer outlines — our point still holds, more or less. Smarter media reporter replies, correctly: "But you gotta like stack up two stepstools to clamber up to that layer of analysis."
The Apple Polishers [Slate]