I Am Deleting the Blog

No, I don't think harassment in any form is acceptable.

I do think the case of Hsu is worth using as an example here: an intra-university conflict; a group of grad students is petitioning for a professor that they believe is actively harmful to the institution to step down as director of research. Now, I don't think it really matters what you or I think about any of this--whether or not we agree with the students or the prof is immaterial. This is an issue for the university, the students at the university, the professor, and any professional relations the professor has within his field of academia.

If I'm a student at the school, and I'm pro-grad student faction, I'd probably be rightly annoyed and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting an erroneous cause via his immensely popular website.

If I'm a professor at the school, and I'm pro-prof faction, I'd probably be rightly bewildered and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting, albeit for a good cause, via his immensely popular website, with no apparent reason to do so, seeing as how he doesn't seem to be a geneticist or faculty. It would definitely give me pause, to say the least.

I can think of things even in my personal life or business where, if an outsider were involving himself trying to "signal boost" a resolution (even if in my favor), I think I'd very rightly want to know the motivations and identity of said person.

The above examples don't illustrate that he should be identified, rather, that he's presenting people with a compelling reason to want him identified. I don't think he should be ID'd, but if a campus paper wrote an OP-ed about it, I'd have a hard time faulting them.

I don't think anyone should harass anyone else, which I think is somewhat what Scott has been doing (perhaps for a righteous cause) with this affair (as, by nature, signal boosting pro-prof draws some fire upon the grad student faction in question), so his response here rings a little bit hollow to me. But, to be crystal clear, even if I think Scott is using his platform to ever so slightly browbeat institutions via his followers (in the most mild sense & with the best of intentions), I still think the NYT is very much clearly in the wrong.

First and foremost, I hope that the journalist gets revealed and fired. NYT is a reputable journal and shouldn't tolerate such unprofessional and potentially dangerous behavior. The person breached a few lines of ethical journalism, and for no justified reason:

First, purposefully using an incorrect name (and Scott Alexander's online identity is Scott Alexander). In many other cases, even if the name is known publicly, and it is (or was) a legal anme, a journalist does not need to write it.

Second, for everyone having vocal opinions, it puts them in real danger. If revealing someone's identity (or a threat of such) makes someone close their blog, the journalist have already made their damage.

Third, it erodes trust in journalists. Such journalists make any other journalism harder, as people have justified reasons not to talk. Not every person wants to increase their risk.

I hope that until the journalist gets fired, no activist, whistleblower, a person who wants to speak about professional malpractice, controversial artist etc. won't talk to NYT. For their own safety.

Would it be worthwhile to create an index where people that are experts in something could vouch for the journalists that seem to know what they're talking about?

E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or anyone following infosec twitter really). But that information could be useful for someone else and in return I would like to know which journalists actually know a thing or two about say ML/AI or astrophysics.

> specially the NYT,that earns more money in real state

This is verifiably untrue. As a public company, their balance sheets are public, and almost 90% of their revenue is accounted for by subscriptions and advertising.

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007...

>> Where do I find quality investigative reporting?

One that is limited, but wonderful is: ProPublica