Pogue, by contrast, exercises nearly superhuman patience. He waits. Sometimes he gets an advance briefing, such as his exclusive hands-on hour with the iPhone in January 2007. Much of the time, though, Pogue hangs back until a point at which any other gadget reviewer would be embarassed to write about, say, the Flip camera (March 20, 2008) or Twitter (February 11, 2009.)
This week, David Pogue finally writes about netbooks, a topic the Standard has been pummeling for months. Pogue's shtick is clever: He plays the role of the buffoon who has belatedly wandered into the action long after he should have, much like P.J. O'Rourke covering the Middle East for Rolling Stone in the 1980s. Like O'Rourke, Pogue serves as a proxy for his reader: Not an insider, but an outsider with questions that would make insiders roll their eyes in contempt.
