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New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

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Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#91

Post by comex »

slg wrote: post #64
clamprecht wrote: post #15

I think a lesson everyone should have in life is witnessing something first-hand in real life, and then reading about it in the media, and seeing how incredibly inaccurate media articles are. Anytime I read an article about a subject I actually have first-hand knowledge of, it reaffirms the lesson.

That is very true, but you also have to keep in mind the flip side of this. The people who know the most about a subject, including ourselves, are likely the ones who will be most biased about it. Not saying that is exactly what happened in the NYT piece, but that is certainly feasible in situations like this. The first person who writes the article is the person who was on duty in the newsroom or its virtual equival…

In this case, Mike Isaac, the original writer, seems to have a good amount of domain expertise, as starting last week he has been posting frequently on Reddit in an official role, discussing/answering questions about his reporting on the site. (Also claims to have been a redditor for five years, presumably on some other account.)

Oddly, all of his official account's posts have been in the GamerGate subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/user/MikeIsaac

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#92

Post by nailer »

jpmattia wrote: post #24
clamprecht wrote: post #15

I think a lesson everyone should have in life is witnessing something first-hand in real life, and then reading about it in the media, and seeing how incredibly inaccurate media articles are. Anytime I read an article about a subject I actually have first-hand knowledge of, it reaffirms the lesson.

> I think a lesson everyone should have in life is witnessing something first-hand in real life, and then reading about it in the media, Even better: Saying something to a reporter, and then reading what you supposedly said within quotation marks. (Although perhaps my data is old and things have gotten better since adequate interview-recording equipment is now on every smartphone.)

Conversely, from when I used to write professionally, people would often not recall saying something I had recorded them saying on tape.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#93

Post by rory096 »

DanBC wrote: post #65
rory096 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be clear. I do not support the offensive behavior on reddit. I just think censorship and moderation is not an effective or desirable solution.

The only good bits of Reddit are heavily censored by reddit users, not admins. Admins have not censored unpleasant subs; admins have removed subs that engaged in active harassment of people in other subs, in other forums, or AFK. EDIT: also, parent comment being downvoted and flagged is ironic.

Sure, but the article is talking about the stuff on reddit that wasn't removed. Doesn't calling it "out of control" imply a desire to start controlling it?

(grandparent was edited after flag, even more ironically by a mod I think)

EDIT: In fact, let's all just take a second to appreciate the irony here. A guy made a throwaway account, called me an idiot, and (lamely) doxxed me – all in order to argue for restricting lowbrow content on internet forums. Love it.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#94

Post by exstudent2 »

tptacek wrote: post #72

I'm not clear why I'm supposed to be alarmed by this. The update neither changes nor removes any of the substantive material from the original story (look carefully). It adds additional material, and fleshes some of the previous material out. It seems like standard practice at newspapers to get a first take on a story and then flesh it out later. It's certainly standard practice at The New York Times, as even a casua…

You should be concerned because:

1. the rewrites weren't noted in the article, thus undermining the authoritativeness of ALL NYT pieces.

2. They added a bunch of opinion to what was a fairly neutral piece.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#95

Post by toufka »

tptacek wrote: post #81
toufka wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the log would also reflect internal editorial struggles within the NYT. If you scroll through the future changes since the major change, you see Silicon Valley described "sexist" then "male-dominated" then "sexist" again [1]. Seeing the flip-flopping edits would surely affect how the article (and SV) is perceived beyond the words themselves. [1] http://newsdiffs.org/diff/934591/934616/www.nytime…

The newsroom must be deeply divided on the handsomeness of Omar Sharif, too: http://newsdiffs.org/diff/934092/934104/www.nytimes.com/2015... You can browse NewsDiffs for all sorts of NYT stories. This story was heavily edited, but it isn't the only heavily edited NYT piece, and there doesn't seem to be an agenda connecting which pieces are heavily edited and which aren't. The more likely cause is that pieces that hav…

Those edits regarding Mr. Sharif's handsomeness only go one way though. His description never increases in subjectivity.

It's not to say the NYT has an agenda here, but rather that there is division, at least between authors and editors. If the paper wants that division to be opaque, and hierarchical internally, than such real-time edits do it a disservice as they bring into the public those debates. If real-time edits are required to break a fast story, then either 1) they should not break stories quickly and wait to publish until their internal debates have settled - penning only 'news of record', or 2) they really should make those debates part of the public record, and not feign historical steadfastness - a timestamped 'record of news'. But to be a news of record where the record is changed is dishonest.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#96

Post by notahacker »

tptacek wrote: post #72

I'm not clear why I'm supposed to be alarmed by this. The update neither changes nor removes any of the substantive material from the original story (look carefully). It adds additional material, and fleshes some of the previous material out. It seems like standard practice at newspapers to get a first take on a story and then flesh it out later. It's certainly standard practice at The New York Times, as even a casua…

And if anything it's the opposite of "internet journalism"; it's part of an age-old newspaper tradition of adding the revised story into exactly the same slot in between print runs rather than the internet approach of "there's no daily space constraint; let's put Pao's background and court case in another follow-on article and leave the old one alone.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#97

Post by ihsw »

pcrh wrote: post #35

I wonder how much the stability of the URL influences this sort of editing. If traffic is coming in via a site such as reddit, a new article with a new URL might not get as much traffic as an edited version of the original article.

Internet popularity should not take precedent over journalistic integrity.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#98

Post by verifiedbyvisa »

yzzxy wrote: post #62

NOTE: Techraptor is a site set up by Gamergaters to talk about games and tech news without reprecussions from people who find their views exclusive of progressives, minorities, feminists, and LGBTQ folks. They call this "ethical journalism" because they claim to not receive kickbacks or have special relationships with their journalistic subjects, as they perceive their ideological enemies do. The quality of journalis…

Isn't that he same point the article is making? People in both GG and anti GG were both doxxing, making sock puppet accounts, closing each other's events with threats. It was reported as 'internet people hate women' the same way this was.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#99

Post by mingus68040 »

leereeves wrote: post #84
mingus68040 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article was exactly on point. If you think this is off-base then you've been living in a reddit filter bubble; the dialogue there is skewed toward outright slander and misogyny from the most juvenile perspective.

And how does that relate to the complaints from the moderators of IAmA, Science, etc? Are you calling them juvenile and misogynist too?

Insofar as they went along with the overall thrust of the "blackout", yes; that is support of a mysoginist agenda. However /r/science tried to sit on the fence by claiming they had to make their subreddit private due to its frequent collaboration with /r/IAma -- a reason which was nonsensical. None of this began until Reddit's administration indicated its intention to begin banning certain subreddits. The mindless culture of harassment and hate which has festered on reddit over the last couple of years couldn't tolerate a woman of color being behind this perceived attack on their majority-young-white-male "freedom". It's a joke to think that any of this would have happened with a white male as CEO.
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