The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage • Hacker News Board

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#11

Post by fullshark » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #5

fullshark wrote: post #3

> As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of media professionals I can promise you that working journalists derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this. Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new verification system from many journalists this past week have shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems…

Most of the journalists I've seen have expressed just the oppossite, an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted, what makes you say that " A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems wrapped up in their twitter audience frankly."

Ehh this is all so vague, both Yglesias's original thread and my disagreement with it, and I"m not sure it's benefited from getting specific. Who cares if I find some random tweets supporting my point, I'm sure you can find counter tweets. This ironically is the problem with a lot of modern journalism in a nutshell, tweet hunting to support narratives.

In any case my opinion is that a lot of journalists (at least the active ones, not the ones with auto-tweets of their stories) really enjoy twitter and really enjoy being "a blue checkmark" and are annoyed that their club is no longer exclusive. This annoyance has been verbalized in a myriad of criticisms of musk, the new system, etc.

Edit: because I can’t completely punt I did remember seeing this tweet which amazingly has 85k likes https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729

Which blew my mind, oh course not completely representative of all journalists

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#12

Post by ForrestN » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

_zgx0 wrote: post #2

>Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. ... >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change, for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the merits. The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject to inv…

He's not saying that they shouldn't be subject to coverage "with an investigative lens." He's talking about the adversarial, negative tone of the coverage, relating to the tech industry primarily as full of bad actors rather than a power center worthy of investigation that also does some good things, say. I don't think Yglesias would say we shouldn't investigate these companies, but rather that we should paint a more wholistic picture about both the good and bad contributions of these companies that better matches reality.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#13

Post by asdajksah2123 » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

Tech has received almost universally fawning coverage for the at least 2 decades that I've been following it. The only tiny hints of holding it to account came from the RMS Free Software folks.

The idea that the press should be focusing on fawning coverage instead of highly investigative reporting when there's a whole ecosystem of tech news, Youtube videos, and conferences and WWDCs and Google IOs to do that seems completely nonsensical.

The correct criticism of the NYTimes here should be why their investigative coverage does not extent to other areas where it might be missing.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#14

Post by asdajksah2123 » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #3

> As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of media professionals I can promise you that working journalists derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this. Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new verification system from many journalists this past week have shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems…

The most prominent complaint came from Stephen King.

Not a journalist. And he definitely doesn't have his self worth tied up into his Twitter audience.

But anyways, by your logic, the entire HN audience's self worth is tied up in whether an iPhone has an audio jack or not, because this audience spent way more time and energy on that issue than journalists have on the blue checkmark.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#15

Post by AlexandrB » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

_zgx0 wrote: post #2

>Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. ... >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change, for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the merits. The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject to inv…

The tech industry needs more investigative coverage, not less. The reason disasters like Theranos or Nikola were able to waste as much time and money as they did is because most of the tech press is focused on regurgitating press releases and hyping up the next big thing.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#16

Post by m0meni » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 10:02 PM UTC

I feel like people are forgetting the real value of verification. If you aren't verified, someone will pretend to be you on Twitter. Prominent people aren't paying $8 to get a check, they're paying $8 to make sure they can't be easily impersonated, which I think is really worth it.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#17

Post by Overtonwindow » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

_zgx0 wrote: post #2

>Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very tough investigative lens — highly oppositional at all times and occasionally unfair. ... >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change, for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the merits. The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject to inv…

A major problem with the technology media is that they don’t investigate the companies, because they have to stay on their good side in order to be invited to the events, and to get the information. When they criticize the company the company freezes them out; i.e. Apple.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#18

Post by webmobdev » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

m0meni wrote: post #16

I feel like people are forgetting the real value of verification. If you aren't verified, someone will pretend to be you on Twitter. Prominent people aren't paying $8 to get a check, they're paying $8 to make sure they can't be easily impersonated, which I think is really worth it.

Identity theft is a crime. If a platform facilitates this, it should be liable.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#19

Post by livueta » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #5

fullshark wrote: post #3

> As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of media professionals I can promise you that working journalists derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this. Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new verification system from many journalists this past week have shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems…

Most of the journalists I've seen have expressed just the oppossite, an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted, what makes you say that " A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems wrapped up in their twitter audience frankly."

> an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted

I'll believe that one when I see it; feels very much like celebs announcing they're moving to Canada.

More broadly, I think the original tweet thread picks up on something interesting: that blue-check group is bifurcated into actual-clout-havers, e.g. Steven King, who really could/would walk away, and epsilon-from-irrelevant journos who have it as a facet of their employment, who really couldn't. There's a small overlap of journos-with-actual-clout, but they're the exception.

Low-clout journos are riding on the cachet generated by the other group, and benefit more from Twitter than they contribute. This is obviously anecdotal so I can't cite or anything, but in conversations with non-tech people IRL I tend to notice a stack of assumptions: Steven King == blue check == important =?= rando journalist =?= also important? If you're a reporter in Columbus, OH or whatever, the effectiveness of that platform, handed to you by the Twitter gods, vastly outstrips your "actual" impact.

Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely cares.

Re: The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech coverage

#20

Post by sharkjacobs » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #3

> As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of media professionals I can promise you that working journalists derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this. Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new verification system from many journalists this past week have shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems…

I haven't observed any journalists reacting the way that you describe