Marc Andreessen is a Twitter natural. The technologist, who developed Mosaic, and co-founded Netscape, is one of the world's most well-known venture capitalists as a partner in the firm, Andreessen Horowitz. He has amped up his tweet stream since the beginning of the year with a style that is a bit like blogging but in short bursts that overall tells a story and expresses his viewpoint. Each tweet he posts represents a new thought, embodied in 140 characters or less. Yesterday he turned his attention to the Newsweek story published last Wednesday that claimed one of the magazine's writers had discovered the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin.

He's a tough critic about how Newsweek treated the Nakamoto story and rightfully so. Newsweek blew it. They have chosen a worn and tired path for the relaunch of their magazine. Focus more on the chase than the actual story. Sniff out the prey and then hold it high for all to see. It's not a sustainable approach. They've set the precedent for the type of coverage they will do. Smell blood? Follow the tracks and hunt it down. It's the type of coverage that people can get pretty easily already.The only recourse is to keep upping the stakes. And that approach simply doesn't scale.

Andreessen represents the other side of the media and the forces that are changing it. Newsweek once thrived in the age of scarcity. The magazine was one of a handful of media outlets that controlled the news. Today, media consolidation has had its toll but the data that we can use makes for new types of news ventures that are far more sophisticated than what Newsweek is offering. It's a time of media abundance. There's Twitter and aggregators like Flipboard. Reddit is a subculture in itself. Techmeme packages headlines and new platforms such as Medium are allowing more peope to be bloggers. A new journalism is emerging that uses data to tell a story. Broad, sweeping media outlets are still quite powerful but face challenges from those that are focused and can go deep.

Andreessen is a profile of what this new media world has become. He is a commentator but also an investor in technology companies. Of course he has a vested interest. Andreessen Horowitz has made investments in Coinbase, a Bitcoin wallet and payment processor for merchants,similar to Paypal. They also are invested in Pando, the tech news blog started by Sarah Lacey.

By turning his attention to the Newsweek story, Andreessen addressed two issues he cares about and has an interest in as an investor, observer and practitioner. He started with this:

Friends in the press are asking me why the Newsweek story has so many techies so upset. I will attempt to explain generalized view...

In subsequent tweets, he explained that the Newsweek story perpetuated "nerd stereotypes", ignoring the technical achievements that makes Bitcoin so fascinating.

3/Second, transforms what many techies think of as important tech breakthrough into human interest freak sideshow devoid of substance.

Even if the story is correct, he calls the forensic analysis for the story a joke. If it is wrong:

8/If story is wrong (not saying it is, but if), then even worse: Innocent man falsely outed, exposed, made vulnerable, life changed forever.

Newsweek chose a story for its relaunch that had nothing to do with the Bitcoin technology Instead, it relied on an old media game: beat the bushes until the hiding bird flies out then shoot it down and publish the details of the chase.

It's not a recipe for success but more so a framework designed to push extremes. How will Newsweek top this story? More outings? More scandals?

Andreessen says there is a better approach:

10/We must build communication, build rapport, build trust. Many great reporters do this every day & are heroes. More of that, less of this.

It's not so out of line for Newsweek to do this kind of coverage. Just look at their cover stories over the past several years and a picture emerges of the empty type of media that we see so much of today.

Techies should be upset about Newsweek's story about Nakamoto. And so should the rest of us, too.