I Am Deleting the Blog • Hacker News Board

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#301

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #261

npstr wrote: post #111

Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.

I first heard this explained by John C. Dvorak and it has terrified me ever since. Originally I just believe that journalist just had a terrible understanding of IT, but when you think about it, there's no reason why it's just IT. Why would journalist have a better understanding of medicine, politics, climate, finance or any other topic covered. Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly spe…

> This raises the question: Are journalists actually required?

Depends. The alternative is bloggers.

This situation is ugly. All sorts of motives are being tossed at the journalist, here, but it may be as simple as they think they have a “scoop,” which is pure gold, for journalists (especially young ones).

That said, there are standards that journalists are supposed to meet; usually about things like the number of independent sources they use, and whatnot. It’s fairly obvious that many journalists don’t meet those standards, but they are supposed to.

We’ve all seen what happens with bloggers. There’s good ones, which are basically the same as top-quality journalists, and there are bad ones, which are nightmares that make Joseph Goebbels smirk from his lava pool.

I have been getting downright despondent over the quality of the writing in today’s journalists. I see at least three typos in pretty much every publication I read, every day. Sometimes, terrible ones, in the headline.

I think it’s a shame that the first ones out the door were the editors.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#302

Post by forgingahead » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:41 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #290

Historically many well regarded news sources have had a public editor[1] or ombudsman who takes complaints from readers and looks into matters of ethics. It is the public editor of the New York Times whom one would ideally complain to about something like this. The New York Times didn’t have one for most of its history, though they had one from 2003 to 2017. Other cash-strapped newspapers have been removing or weaken…

"Cash-strapped" is a disingenuous way to describe them. The NYTimes is a $6 billion dollar media corporation with $800million in annual recurring revenue, and the Washington Post is owned by the richest man on the planet, whose company is currently worth 1.3 TRILLION dollars.

Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#303

Post by ceilingcorner » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:43 AM UTC

I grew up in a tiny town in the Midwest, idolizing the NYT as representative of a NYC intellectual culture that was sorely lacking around me. I used to read the Sunday edition every week at Starbucks, which was something of a novelty for the area at the time.

It has been deeply disappointing to watch The Times devolve into a highly-partisan, clickbait, unprofessional shadow of their former self - the exact opposite of what we need a news organization to be in this day and age.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#304

Post by lazyjones » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

ve55 wrote: post #3

perditus wrote: post #2

This was in a piece specifically about the blog that was going to be positive, which makes this all the more inexplicable.

A lot of political extremists hate people like Scott, and it has caused him a lot of trouble in the past. This is why anonymity is more important now than ever, because just writing a scientific blog about interesting topics can make you the target of witch hunts designed to ruin your life and kill you. It's hard to describe how bad these things can get out of nowhere without having been through some of it or seeing…

> But, having your real name attached to posts that are against certain political topics or narrives, can be borderline-lethal in 2020

It's also unavoidable in 2020 to be doxxed eventually if you have a lot of enemies, unless you take care not to publish any personal details and hide your identity with the best methods available from the beginning. But when you make it easy to identify you with details such as those on the RationalWiki page, all bets are off and it's a bit late to mourn now.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#305

Post by AtHeartEngineer » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:44 AM UTC

Uhrheber wrote: post #75

I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…

I had a similar experience in Iraq. I had saw an attack happen and then heard the CNN report about it a few hours later and it wasn't even in the realm of what happened. It was surreal.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#306

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:45 AM UTC

jwilber wrote: post #128

I’ve seen a lot of criticism for the NYT as of late, and, sadly, it’s almost all been warranted upon inspection. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad. Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).

[deleted]

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#307

Post by dan-robertson » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:47 AM UTC

forgingahead wrote: post #302

dan-robertson wrote: post #290

Historically many well regarded news sources have had a public editor[1] or ombudsman who takes complaints from readers and looks into matters of ethics. It is the public editor of the New York Times whom one would ideally complain to about something like this. The New York Times didn’t have one for most of its history, though they had one from 2003 to 2017. Other cash-strapped newspapers have been removing or weaken…

"Cash-strapped" is a disingenuous way to describe them. The NYTimes is a $6 billion dollar media corporation with $800million in annual recurring revenue, and the Washington Post is owned by the richest man on the planet, whose company is currently worth 1.3 TRILLION dollars. Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?

There are many newspapers that do not have as much money as the New York Times or Washington post, and many of them struggle with tight margins.

It also seems likely that there would be other costs than the salary of a public editor: typically they would have a column which costs space on paper and the results of the editor’s opinions on ethics could increase other costs for the paper (higher standards, more discarded stories, being slower to print because of higher standards, possibly higher employee turnover or hiring difficulties or exposure to lawsuits)

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#308

Post by mekoka » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

zoul wrote: post #106

Uhrheber wrote: post #75

I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…

That was bad journalism. Would you also stop trusting all doctors after meeting a bad one?

How many bad doctors do you need to meet before deciding that they're also human? As the saying goes, "trust, but verify".

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#309

Post by ajb » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:48 AM UTC

This is sad. Scott's writing is almost certainly more valuable than anything this NYT journalist will ever produce.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#310

Post by FrankDixon » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 9:52 AM UTC

Wielding the spotlight of your publication as a weapon sounds like an interesting business model too. Like a private detective being payed by a group of subscribers, interested in finding wrongthink.

Given the current climate and the pretty safe assumption that the NYT author knows that the general public would never read through SSC (because the posts are too long and you actually have to make an effort to "consume" that blog) make me suspicious of the "positive" piece.