Misplaced Pages

The Inquirer

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dionyseus (talk | contribs) at 01:03, 10 July 2006 (//History). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 01:03, 10 July 2006 by Dionyseus (talk | contribs) (//History)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) This article is about the British technology news website. For Inquirer (disambiguation), see The Inquirer (disambiguation).
File:TheInquirer.gif
The Inquirer

The Inquirer (sometimes shortened to the Inq) is a British technology tabloid news website focusing on the computer and semiconductor industries.

History

The Inquirer was founded by Mike Magee after his departure from The Register, in 2001.

The Inquirer was later acquired by Magee's former employer, Dutch publishing giant VNU Business Media Europe on January 26, 2006.

Writing style

The site hews to The Register's slogan, "Biting the hand that feeds IT", and is known for its early access to industry news based on insider sources. It often runs stories that are less than complimentary to tech companies. When served with "cease and desist" orders, the website often publishes them in full, with commentary. It has also recently started publishing information regarding cheap hardware available in the U.K., U.S.A., France, and other countries.

The Inquirer's articles are written with a subjective and opinionated tone; the site is quite colourful at times and often considered offensive. This is deliberate editorial policy, and mimics the style of reporting common in the British tabloid newspapers (for reference check out The Sun). This often leads to accusations of bias from both sides of a debate, particularly Intel versus AMD.

The comments from the editor (Ed.) often inserted in articles was inspired by Private Eye, including borrowing phrases like "Inspector Knacker from the Yard" there.

The Inquirer has a tendency of manufacturing rumours or speculating aimlessly in order to inflate its number of visitors. Others rebuke these claims, saying it is a byproduct of getting information early, that company's plans change which invalidates earlier information. The Inquirer also has a tendency of manufacturing outright lies, some examples are their May 5, 2006 article in which they claim Nintendo is the maker of the Game Gear, , their August 31, 2005 article in which they claim the Playstation 3's GPU is weaker than a GeForce 7800, , and in their April 13, 2005 article in which they state the R520 is codenamed Fudo and that it runs at 1400mhz.

Some of The Inquirer's writers regularly visit the Ace's Hardware website's message board. In particular, Charlie Demerjian, who uses the nickname Groo_ on the board.

Nicknames and terminology

Like The Register, The Inquirer uses nicknames for many IT firms and persons:

Another Plaice is a pun on the term used in the House of Commons to refer to the House of Lords (another place) and vice-versa.

The Inquirer also uses some terms of their own, like "marchitecture", which stands for marketing architecture, or the process of designing products and naming technologies in a way which will benefit marketing and/or sales. It also refers to the Intel Itanium processor as the Itanic. Lastly, it commonly refers to the internet as the "interweb" in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

See also

External links

Category: