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5G Got me Fired

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Re: 5G Got me Fired

#21

Post by exikyut »

ghaff wrote: post #3

There's some sort of weird redirect loop going on if you do a Google search and try to go to that link: https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/com... CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the sorry state of so ma…

/!\ Working link

Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating, two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows the old article. Nice one.

Since this'll probably be "fixed", I fed the URL to archive.is: http://archive.is/KbsW8

[Also, for posterity, the view of the 403: http://archive.is/ggMat - thanks to whoever added this]

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#23

Post by davidmr »

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened?

So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the head?

I don't buy it.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#24

Post by busterarm »

I did post about this in the other thread and folks piled on calling me a conspiracy theorist, but in the letter JCD received from his editor, they said they were shutting down all outside columns.

This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while continuing to have articles published.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#25

Post by busterarm »

adamrezich wrote: post #13
randall wrote: post #10

Dvorak is a troll. I could go show the reasons, but he's all about saying inflammatory things (mostly at apple fans) and getting them to buy magazines / click things. This is a continuation in that trend, but may or may not be true.

Dvorak has been known to troll but when you write a typical Dvorak-tier skeptical piece on 5G then new management fires you and suddenly your 5G-skeptical piece has been replaced by a pro-5G piece, I don't see how you can reach any conclusion other than the same one he did in this post. Did you even read the post?

Especially since they presented demonstrably false pretenses in their notice to him as to why he was being let go.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#26

Post by ghaff »

xevb3k wrote: post #15
yholio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what was the cause of him getting fired, but he certainly SHOULD be fired for such a sleazy sensationalist piece: > When you do a search for "5G is Safe" on Google and Bing, you get a number of negative stories and a laundry list of why some people believe it's unsafe. Companies may as well begin to market a 5G mobile phone with a skull and crossbones on it. Really, the entirety of his journalistic resea…

I guess we read the article differently. Because he didn’t seem to be saying 5G was dangerous, more that this was the public perception, and that vendors are doing little to manage the PR around this.

If that's the intent, it's poorly written.

It's fine to observe that search results pop up a lot of pieces and discussions about 5G health concerns. And those may lead to adoption problems whether they're true or not. But if you're writing a good column, even though it is an opinion piece, you should probably then point out things like: XYZ studies dispute these health effects and that these sort of concerns have been brought up with pretty much every new radio technology.

If you just say there's a bunch of scary information out there (without even pointing to anything specific), you leave the impression that there's likely some truth in all of it.

Dvorak at least was a pretty high profile tech columnist. But he's tended toward a clickbait style even before there were links to click on.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#27

Post by closeparen »

dev_dull wrote: post #16
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadc…

I don’t think there’s any change needed. Why prop up the status quo with bureaucracy? Mainstream media was shedding eyes and under scrutiny well before “fake news”. Let MSM die its slow death while new and better services make their debut.

Mainstream media had what was called the “Chinese wall” between the ad business and the newsroom. For a sales guy to even speak with an editor would be highly inappropriate. It wasn’t perfect, but exceptions would have at least violated social and professional norms with rank and file journalism school graduates. Alternative media (like what the corpses of the old mainstream press have become) don’t even pretend to have that sort of discipline. Their funding model is to promote an individual, business, or political agenda, straight up. On this one, I mourn the loss of the traditional press.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#28

Post by ghaff »

davidmr wrote: post #23

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite…

It's entirely possible that this not very good column was some sort of final straw and there's some history we don't know leading up to it. The story as told still seems very odd but, of course, we're only hearing one side of it.

Re: 5G Got me Fired

#30

Post by gcb0 »

Nokinside wrote: post #18
technologia wrote: post #5

He raises many good points about the potential downsides of 5G. US telecom corporations are rushing to beat China Telecom companies & South Korean companies to the punch. The US is definitely not going to have the same dominance in 5G that they had with 4G, especially if they take hazardous paths to a nationwide rollout

> US telecom corporations are rushing to beat There are no US based mobile infrastructure companies competing for 4G or 5G installations. Qualcomm is lower level supplier providing components and competing with MediaTek, Samsung and Chinese. There is only 5 major players left: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, ZTE and Samsung. Two Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and South Korean.

I don't know based on what you are saying that, but all US cellular operators already told shareholders their billion dollar plans for 5G as far as last year.
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