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I Am Deleting the Blog

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#681

Post by kerkeslager »

stupendousyappi wrote: post #656
kerkeslager wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I don't know if I'd draw the cause/effect so directly. To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that. I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.

I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.

I think any amount of money from advertisers is toxic.

There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#682

Post by Fellshard »

hackissimo123 wrote: post #569
Fellshard wrote: post #407

It's specifically telling that they would choose to do this with Scott Alexander and not another psychiatrist prior to this point: the NYT has in the last few weeks been overcome from the inside by a new moral zealotry, and Scott makes a prime, juicy target for the moral assaults that will gain it plaudits among other zealots. This will make the backroom media Slack quite pleased, I'm sure, especially if the article…

"In the last few weeks"? The NYT has been going in this direction for years.

Correct, but the Tom Cotton op-ed in context of all other events lit a spark that caused a lot of internal tension to snap.

One of the most interesting pieces of insight we got at the time was from Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media, who tweeted[1] about discomfort with what was going on in a private media Slack group the day the NYT was reportedly going through turmoil. The tweets were shortly deleted, for clear reasons. From his description, it sounded like an effective struggle session was taking place in the Slack channel, which had been kicked off by the Cotton op-ed.

So the direction has been mounting for years, yes. But the significant shift in internal leadership, direction, and principles within the last few weeks cannot be overestimated.

[1]: https://twitter.com/JimLaheyTPBs/status/1268718489654697984

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#683

Post by nillium »

alecbenzer wrote: post #605
kerkeslager wrote: post #543

Damn. I've been reading Slate Star Codex for a long time, and he's always been one of the most insightful voices on the internet. I'm really sorry to see him go. After reading this, I looked up NYT's policy of using real names, and it turns out this isn't the worst time that the NY Times has done this[1]. I've long said that if you want to know who an organization serves, see where its money comes from. The NY Times…

The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?

Advertisers do not directly care about real names.

What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#684

Post by catacombs »

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…

How do you stay informed?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#685

Post by Stronico »

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.

Gell-Mann Amnesia

In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#686

Post by dcolkitt »

nlpprof wrote: post #619
tinyhouse wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking about this now after reading attacks on Yann Lecun on twitter. He's a prominent AI figure (head of facebook research and turing award recipient). My interpretation - he was saying that bias in AI is mostly a problem of data. He didn't say there's no bias or that you can't solve bias with modeling. Just that the model itself isn't what causing the bias. One woman researcher started attacking him an…

I'm in the field - though not as prominent as Yann (who has been very nice and helpful in my few interactions with him) - and your interpretation is off. People are disagreeing with his stance that researchers should not bother exploring bias implications of their research. (He says this is because bias is a problem of data - and therefore we should focus on building cool models and let production engineers worry abo…

> He works for Facebook. He's paid with Facebook money. So why draw this imaginary line between research and production? He is paid to do research that will go into production.

This is a silly standard to uphold. The sizable bulk of American academic researchers are at least partially funded by grants made from the US federal budget.

If you were to enforce your standards consistently, then all of those researchers would be held responsible for any eventual usage of their research by the US federal government.

I really doubt you apply the same standard. So, the criticism mostly seems to be an isolated demand for rigor. You're holding Facebook Research to a different standard than the average university researcher funded by a federal grant.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#687

Post by lvh »

nillium wrote: post #683
alecbenzer wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?

Advertisers do not directly care about real names. What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.

An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#688

Post by asveikau »

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 noticed this as a teenager.

But I think in the time since then I have allowed for the idea that it's more complex than this. The "getting it wrong" part is not universal - some people do better than others. Further, when we are experts in something, we are more opinionated, and those firm opinions are not always universally held or appropriate for a general audience, they may even be distracting.

I think the more general thing to say is it's hard to assess the quality of reporting and quoted sources when it's a topic we're less familiar with -- not that the reporting is necessarily all terrible.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#689

Post by gwern »

catacombs wrote: post #673
gwbas1c wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.

Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession. In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story. Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter i…

Using anonymous sources to relay secret information like government insiders is very different from public pseudonymous writers. 'Scott Alexander' is of interest only as 'Scott Alexander'; he is famous for writing as 'Scott Alexander'; if you want to find criticism of Scott Alexander, you will find it by asking people about 'Scott Alexander'; and he blogs about general topics with reference to publicly verifiable things like scientific research, as opposed to focusing solely on his anecdotal experience; what does knowing his real name add or let a journalist verify? Does it somehow let you verify that he does in fact blog at SSC...? (Yes, he sometimes talks about his psychiatric patients, but like all psychiatrists, he blends and tweaks stories to protect his patients, and knowing his real name is John Smith gives you no more way of verifying said stories than when they were written by 'Scott Alexander'.)

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#690

Post by vlthr »

stupendousyappi wrote: post #656
kerkeslager wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I don't know if I'd draw the cause/effect so directly. To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that. I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.

I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.

I take the point about subscribers being hard to count to mean that even though most of the money comes from subscribers, each individual subscriber doesn't have much leverage or bandwidth to communicate their desires to NYT. On the flip side, each individual advertiser commands some sizeable chunk of NYT's revenue as leverage.
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