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

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

#101

Post by rayiner »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #50
_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…

> You can suggest that coverage is inaccurate or unfair, but suggesting that tech should not be covered with an investigative lens is hard to argue. That's because he's being very charitable to what is happening. In fact, under the guise of aggressively investigative coverage, the media is constantly propagating false memes about the industry. Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech…

Think about this the next time you read a New York Times article on some other bad industry: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

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

#102

Post by testHNac »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #21

"[The NYT] decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry ... the press should try to normalize coverage of the tech industry as just another business sector." The irony here is that a prominent member of the 'tech industry' (with enthusiastic support from other prominent tech industry lumina…

Note - Not an American. Not White. If you are Downvoting please respond. I would like to know if it's due to your political leanings or because of something I can improve upon and learn.

This would be good reporting by NYT if this was not conflict of interest.

Strong Social Media companies give voice to the people, that runs counter to the power of the media.

We have seen many stories run in the last 5 years of Global importance, that NYT, WaPo, CNN etc decided were not TRUE.

And Social Media reacted to the words of these Guardians of Truth. Banning many accounts and even hurting many careers.

Now we see those stories by Mainstream media were either misguided or plain lies with an agenda.

Do we want even News Media to have this kind of power ?

Who is watching them ?

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

#103

Post by testHNac »

RedBeetDeadpool wrote: post #48
matthewdgreen wrote: post #21

"[The NYT] decided tech was a major power center that needed scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry ... the press should try to normalize coverage of the tech industry as just another business sector." The irony here is that a prominent member of the 'tech industry' (with enthusiastic support from other prominent tech industry lumina…

> What does matter: the NYT's decision to focus skeptical reporting on tech as an "important power center" sure seems to have been vindicated. So in effect the NYT which have been an "important power center" of American media since the 1800's, decides that another entity that comes along with too much power needs to be "taken down a peg". Its a power play to discredit a new entrant into a business sector that threate…

What did this person say that was wrong ?

These type of comments are sadly immediately downvoted by the HN hivemind. No credible response is given.

Sad.

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

#104

Post by dan-robertson »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #84
dan-robertson wrote: post #78

Related: https://twitter.com/i/status/1588231892792328192 And the first tweet here: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1588240007000911873 (I think it’s generally right even though I don’t really like the author) I think the general thrust seems pretty reasonable: saying ‘we should cover all tech with an investigative lens’ isn’t actually a neutral policy because if you’re a newspaper then you already want to find go…

> it’s saying that the only stories that go through must be critical or uncovering various hidden harms or issues Speaking outside my circle of competence. But I don't think it's that direct. When a topic is put under an investigative lens, it's assigned investigative journalists. These aren't folks who write fluff. They don't resonate with baseless optimism. They're men and women of hard facts. So they sniff, sniff,…

I think we have different views about what ‘investigative journalism’ is and different expectations for the competencies of journalists. I also assign a lot of importance to editorial decisions: they are a lot of the selection that leads to selection bias in everyone else. Perhaps you assign less importance to those decisions.

An example totally unrelated to tech is that if some politician spaffs tens of millions of dollars up the wall or tens of billions of dollars, the stories can look roughly the same to readers despite 1000x the money being spaffed in one than they other. I think it leads to people assigning badly wrong importances to the different spaffings.

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

#105

Post by swooni »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #50
_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…

> You can suggest that coverage is inaccurate or unfair, but suggesting that tech should not be covered with an investigative lens is hard to argue. That's because he's being very charitable to what is happening. In fact, under the guise of aggressively investigative coverage, the media is constantly propagating false memes about the industry. Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech…

> Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech bros, when in fact it's dominated by highly educated and hard-working Indian and Chinese immigrants.

Those are two related but also completely different things. Just because immigrants work at these companies doesn't mean they have a large impact on the overall culture, especially not the outward facing culture, and they certainly aren't dominating it. If anything those groups are underrepresented in culturally influential positions.

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

#106

Post by ksidudwbw »

swooni wrote: post #105
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can suggest that coverage is inaccurate or unfair, but suggesting that tech should not be covered with an investigative lens is hard to argue. That's because he's being very charitable to what is happening. In fact, under the guise of aggressively investigative coverage, the media is constantly propagating false memes about the industry. Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech…

> Biggest example is the idea that it's dominated by a culture of white tech bros, when in fact it's dominated by highly educated and hard-working Indian and Chinese immigrants. Those are two related but also completely different things. Just because immigrants work at these companies doesn't mean they have a large impact on the overall culture, especially not the outward facing culture, and they certainly aren't dom…

How many white tech bros in india etc etc

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

#107

Post by rubidium »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #84
dan-robertson wrote: post #78

Related: https://twitter.com/i/status/1588231892792328192 And the first tweet here: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1588240007000911873 (I think it’s generally right even though I don’t really like the author) I think the general thrust seems pretty reasonable: saying ‘we should cover all tech with an investigative lens’ isn’t actually a neutral policy because if you’re a newspaper then you already want to find go…

> it’s saying that the only stories that go through must be critical or uncovering various hidden harms or issues Speaking outside my circle of competence. But I don't think it's that direct. When a topic is put under an investigative lens, it's assigned investigative journalists. These aren't folks who write fluff. They don't resonate with baseless optimism. They're men and women of hard facts. So they sniff, sniff,…

If you’ve ever had first hand experience with what investigative journalists write, it’s not all true. The better ones do a good job, in the worse ones their editorial opinion shines through.

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

#108

Post by couchand »

astrange wrote: post #96
couchand wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude's been going on a downward spiral for years. Nothing he says these days follows any kind of coherent framework, it's just something thrown on the wall to see what sticks. He's really honestly describing himself with this take.

MattY is extremely consistent, but also can't help himself and constantly tweets in a layer of irony or two. This causes some people to get extraordinarily mad at him in the replies, at which point I like to play a game of figuring out how they misread the tweet, which they always seem to have done. His actual articles are perfectly straightforward, sincere, and usually on some topic like "Boston subway stations shou…

He certainly USED to write articles like that!

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

#109

Post by SuoDuanDao »

ramraj07 wrote: post #90
throwaway1777 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too on the nose. When I worked at faang almost my entire org was Indians.

Do you mean Indian or Indian looking? Can you generally tell which of them were American citizens vs. immigrants? If not, can you see the pretentiousness in your statement?

People actually discriminate a lot more on accent than looks - which makes sense as an adaptive strategy, since accent is a much better signal of tribal association. And if one pays attention to accent it's pretty obvious who's an immigrant and who grew up locally.

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

#110

Post by javagram »

fmajid wrote: post #39

Was it really a top-down decision by the NYT publisher, or a visceral reaction by the journalism profession to the destruction of its career prospects by the Internet?

The NYT itself has been doing amazing in the internet age. Check their stock price chart.
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