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Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

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Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#41

Post by Someone »

bastawhiz wrote: post #16
something2 wrote: post #4

I actually think it's unfortunate that she didn't focus more on fashion. There are so, so many accounts of 9/11 that focus on the facts and the immediate tragedy. But I'm willing to bet that 9/11 impacted industries and people significantly even if they weren't directly involved. I have little to no interest in fashion, but I'd find an article on the impact of 9/11 on the fashion capital of North America a much more…

I think the point was that she was so bad at her job that she wasn't going to write anything about the attack, at all, whatsoever. She spent most of the time trying to dictate things she'd already written over the phone. She didn't have the initiative to walk to ground zero. And then what she did write was a story about how she was sad the fun events were cancelled but she wasn't that sad because she had appletinis.…

> She spent most of the time trying to dictate things she'd already written over the phone

Falling back to ingrained habits is quite a normal response to stress. It also is part of why after an emergency landing aircraft passengers may pick up their luggage before getting out of the plane.

I think that also could explain the martini drinking in the limo. That might be the ‘program’ fashion journalists always run when in long limo rides.

As to the entire article: It’s not brilliant writing, but she mentions what she did, show some compassion with the victims, realizes that he drinking wasn’t very appropriate, and concludes that fashion may never be the same.

I don’t see that as being reason to vilify her.

That may even have been the brief she got from her editor.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#42

Post by ectopod »

NobodyNada wrote: post #32
bombcar wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We say "The La Brea Tar Pits" without a second thought.

But the “The” applies to “tar pits”, not “La Brea”, as in “The Panama Canal” or “The Seattle Seahawks”.

It translates as "The The Tar Tar Pits".

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#43

Post by motohagiography »

ianai wrote: post #31
motohagiography wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who digs up a scan of a pre-internet article to post on twitter to take a shot at someone who is at best a marginal and obscure public figure with an influential job? I wasn't the one who tried to slander someone with decades old pre-internet comments, but I am certainly hypothesizing that the person behind the twitter account is, and that is bog standard politics, as are low quality sock puppet comments in forums.

Google: “ Bernadette Morra. Editor in Chief, FASHION magazine. ” The twitter poster is a buzzfeed news politics journalist.

> The twitter poster is a buzzfeed news politics journalist.

I would say, that this sentence is meaningful expresses the gulf in perspectives on the question quite well. To me, that statement doesn't mean anything. The twitter poster was being small and bullying, and if I'm a conspiracy theorist for making a comment that embarasses some people who got off on it, call me Fox frickin' Mulder.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#44

Post by FearNotDaniel »

bastawhiz wrote: post #16
something2 wrote: post #4

I actually think it's unfortunate that she didn't focus more on fashion. There are so, so many accounts of 9/11 that focus on the facts and the immediate tragedy. But I'm willing to bet that 9/11 impacted industries and people significantly even if they weren't directly involved. I have little to no interest in fashion, but I'd find an article on the impact of 9/11 on the fashion capital of North America a much more…

I think the point was that she was so bad at her job that she wasn't going to write anything about the attack, at all, whatsoever. She spent most of the time trying to dictate things she'd already written over the phone. She didn't have the initiative to walk to ground zero. And then what she did write was a story about how she was sad the fun events were cancelled but she wasn't that sad because she had appletinis.…

I'm not picking on you deliberately, only choosing to reply to this thread because your wording succinctly sums up the underlying mistake in most people commenting here:

> so bad at her job

Her job was as a fashion journalist. Not a news reporter, not a war correspondent, not somebody who was remotely trained or prepared to deal with a situation like this. How often do we tech people get irritated by pointy-haired bosses saying "hey, you're an IT person, can't you just do (this thing that is not remotely related to your skill set)".

It's irrelevant whether you or anyone else here thinks fashion is valuable, or interesting, or worth writing about. It is relevant to question whether all "journalists" are, or should be, interchangeable in the eyes of people working in a completely unrelated profession.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#45

Post by bastawhiz »

something2 wrote: post #39
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that she was so bad at her job that she wasn't going to write anything about the attack, at all, whatsoever. She spent most of the time trying to dictate things she'd already written over the phone. She didn't have the initiative to walk to ground zero. And then what she did write was a story about how she was sad the fun events were cancelled but she wasn't that sad because she had appletinis.…

I mean she's a journalist, but not all journalist sign up for in-the-trenches investigations. I doubt anyone here would expect Marques Brownlee to write about a terrorist attack and be disappointed he didn't try to find his way past police barriers.

But she didn't even have to do in-the-trenches investigations. Like you said: you wished she had written more about fashion in the context of the attack. She didn't. She wasn't looking at how people dressed or how they used their clothes after the attack. She really didn't even try. The best she did was note that the stores on Fifth Avenue were closed before describing an expensive limo ride. I would bet that if she hadn't been pressed by her editors, she wouldn't have mentioned 9/11 at all.

To be placed front and center to write one of the most important stories of your career and then do the absolute bare minimum at the behest of your bosses is either laziness, apathy, or profound ignorance.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#46

Post by tinalumfoil »

RubberbandSoul wrote: post #27
tinalumfoil wrote: post #17

A lot of journalists covered 9/11, so I'm not sure that this particular fashion reporter didn't seem to care is all that interesting. I do think it's an interesting case in the level of acceptability in the actions and admissions of semi-public figures like journalists. Today there's lots of commotion about people posting their hot takes on the Queen's death, a lot of which obviously regrettable. There's lots of even…

Depends on the context, I think. She took the limo ride because it's was available. Alcohol is alcohol. What if it was another person sitting in an ordinary cab drinking whiskey straight out of the bottle saying to his/her friends "Thank God we're getting out of THAT, right?"

> Alcohol is alcohol

The reporter could've left out that they were toasting Sour Apple Martinis in a $2,000 limo, but she didn't, so we know they weren't somberly drinking from whiskey bottles. That might be the craziest part to me. They could've not included the limo ride or passed it off as something else, but it's explicitly pumped up as something luxurious.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#47

Post by bastawhiz »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #44
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was that she was so bad at her job that she wasn't going to write anything about the attack, at all, whatsoever. She spent most of the time trying to dictate things she'd already written over the phone. She didn't have the initiative to walk to ground zero. And then what she did write was a story about how she was sad the fun events were cancelled but she wasn't that sad because she had appletinis.…

I'm not picking on you deliberately, only choosing to reply to this thread because your wording succinctly sums up the underlying mistake in most people commenting here: > so bad at her job Her job was as a fashion journalist. Not a news reporter, not a war correspondent, not somebody who was remotely trained or prepared to deal with a situation like this. How often do we tech people get irritated by pointy-haired bo…

To the grandparent's point, though: she didn't even write about fashion. Even if she didn't write yet another news story, she seems like she was entirely prepared to write absolutely nothing. There was no natural sense of curiosity: even though I'm no SRE, I'm still going to observe the worst outage in software engineering history. Maybe there's lessons that I can take away. Maybe there's an interesting observation relevant to my expertise that I can point out.

If your job is to write about fashion, and you can't even be bothered to really write about that, what are you doing?

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#48

Post by nineplay »

I hate to make everything gendered but I have to wonder if a sports reporter who wrote about the impact of 9/11 on the baseball and football seasons would have received the same level of derision. This twitter thread boils down to "person who doesn't care about derides article written about ". Why has this taken up so much of his headspace?

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#49

Post by digitaLandscape »

motohagiography wrote: post #25
tantalor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone appears to be making a play for her magazine editor role and this is basically oppo-research on behalf of whomever they want in place. What, are you just making this up?

Who digs up a scan of a pre-internet article to post on twitter to take a shot at someone who is at best a marginal and obscure public figure with an influential job? I wasn't the one who tried to slander someone with decades old pre-internet comments, but I am certainly hypothesizing that the person behind the twitter account is, and that is bog standard politics, as are low quality sock puppet comments in forums.

No post body was provided.

Re: Unfortunately for the Star, that person was their fashion editor

#50

Post by 1123581321 »

I like her piece much more than the commentary from that twitter account. I’m not sure they understand what it was like that day. Most of us were helpless, regardless of proximity, and just got on with our pre-siting assignment if we weren’t able to or allowed to fixate on the TV or hold a vigil yet. It happens that she was able to document her helplessness—so what?
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