The BusinessWeek cover story Google and the Wisdom of Clouds weighs in at over 4,100 words over eight prime pages and there is a grand total of one industry analyst quoted: IDC’s Frank Gens with a 19 word tid-bit. Geez. And this lack of analyst quotes is not uncommon in the business press.
If the IT industry analysts every want to expand beyond of the corporate IT shop and IT vendor markets then they have got to do a better job reaching out to general business publications. Scoff all you want at the nuance, depth and technical sophistication of a magazine like BusinessWeek, but it is read by way more decision makers with a lot more budget than the readers of the IT trade publications. Perhaps there is an opportunity for analyst boutiques or solo analysts to offset the Big 3’s greater size by aggressively going after business publications and dramatically increasing their visibility.
Update: In the Saturday New York Time’s business section, the article Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft is 3,600+ words long… and devoid of named analyst quotes.

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