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Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

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Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#71

Post by philwelch »

Traster wrote: post #41
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine if you disagree, but it would be constructive if you can at least disagree with what was actually written instead of your interpretation of it. Also, please keep in mind that "that tweeter", as you call him, taught bioinformatics at Stanford, has published papers in the field of clinical/microbial genomics and founded a biotech startup that sold for 375M. He's considerably more informed about the topic than…

You want me to be fastidious in my representation of his tweets, but you're okay citing this guy who is literally arguing literally just about headlines of articles. He's not linking to the articles and talking about them - he's literally taking headlines and even then he's misrepresenting them. I'm fine talking about his qualifications, but I think it's unfair for you to talk about his biotech start up without talki…

It was also FDA regulations that made it impossible for the US to perform comprehensive testing early on.

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#72

Post by madeofpalk »

iateanapple wrote: post #28
Traster wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First tweet: Vox saying face masks aren't the best way to avoid Coronavirus. Actually basically the mainstream view in the US at the time, and still arguable. Note how right now the states aren't mandating masks, they're mandating social isolation. Second tweet: Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes. Tweet author editorialises that Vox is telling them not to. Third Tweet: Vox factually rep…

> Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes. Tweet author editorialises that Vox is telling them not to. When you describe techies as terrified in the context of handshakes you make them sound terrified of handshakes which makes them look irrational to the average person. When you immediately follow that up with “experts” saying everything is fine you cement the view in the readers mind that t…

Look, as a journalist, what are you supposed to do? You don't actually know much - its not expected that you know everything about everything (who does). So you do journalism. You investigate and replay back your findings.

"Vox factually reporting the tech industry is eschewing handshakes" Is this a fact, or a lie? Did Vox fabricate this, or did they misconstrue and mislead?

"“experts” saying everything is fine" Did "experts" say everything is fine, or did they not? Again, is Vox outright lying? Did they mislead by picking poor "experts"?

I think that Vox.com's "assertive contrarian" tone-of-voice might have created some posts that look poor in hindsight (erring on the side of "not killing people" is probably for the best), but lets a) actually define the assertions against Vox's journalistic integrity and b) acknowledge that health officials were not exactly clear, consistent, and eventually correct.

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#74

Post by AlchemistCamp »

andrepd wrote: post #58
sampsonitify wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the role of journalists? The defence that "basically the mainstream view in the US at the time" seems to me the antithesis of why we need journalists at all. Far too much journalism is either weakly factual, where ideas like masks are taken prima facie and without much thought, or opinion pieces with an ideological bent. What happened to investigating ideas, to see where they lead? To questioning everyone, no…

It wasn't only the mainstream view in the US, it was the leading medical advice by the World Health Organisation. This isn't a matter of questioning politicians, but of trusting reputed experts and expert authorities on technical matters.

Tedros, the current director general of the WHO, was credibly accused of covering up three cholera epidemics in his home country before he managed to get his current position.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-dire...

Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22872958

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#76

Post by foob4r »

buboard wrote: post #21
foob4r wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost makes you wonder if balajis has a personal gripe with vox or recode or Ezra or Kara. Balaji is a crypto bro and epitome of technocrats who thinks just because they are (rich|famous|networked), they are experts on everything. Fact of the matter is, Balaji doesn't know any more about Covid than what is reported. He's using hindsight bias to claim that media reported was false.

Whatever. Thanks to him i knew about Coronavirus and warned everyone back in February. You re making the exact same remarks that tech hating journos did If you re claiming the journos knew something he didnt, then it means they criminally misreported it

> criminally misreported it

What law dictates that?

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#77

Post by ajross »

samename wrote: post #70
ajross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this point earlier, but contrast the difference in tone between Vox workers and Amazon workers in what is really a very similar dispute. Cultivating a healthy working relationship with your unions means that when the world blows up, making hard choices doesn't get covered as an existential disaster.

Also notice how Vox workers have a union, while Amazon workers don’t.

Which is sort of the point. Amazon resisted unionization (in the US), almost to a fault. And in the process they ended up offering things like salary and benefits that were quite generous within the relevant industries, precisely to prevent unionization.

And yet it's all blown up. Because while sure: they offer a $15 wage and retraining and all that, what they don't have is a union organization on the other side of the table who they trust to act in mutual self interest.

So when Vox runs out of money, their unions are willing to accept that and broadly trust the management to do the right thing for everyone, Amazon's workers are faced with trying to Get Theirs before their employer runs out of cash, because they don't trust Bezos.

And this was all avoidable.

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#78

Post by RickJWagner »

I tend to be conservative in my politics, but I hate to see this. If it had to be some liberal publisher, I'd rather that it not be Vox.

Vox seems to me to be about as left-leaning as you can get, but they do it quite fairly. Example: Vox was one of the first left-side publications to run articles about Joe Biden's accuser. A lot of other publications stayed away from this story-- some still are-- but Vox bravely ran it. (From a far-left position, of course. If you go far enough left, you'll end up close to far-right.) They are the real deal, and for that I respect them.

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#79

Post by jhwang5 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #78

I tend to be conservative in my politics, but I hate to see this. If it had to be some liberal publisher, I'd rather that it not be Vox. Vox seems to me to be about as left-leaning as you can get, but they do it quite fairly. Example: Vox was one of the first left-side publications to run articles about Joe Biden's accuser. A lot of other publications stayed away from this story-- some still are-- but Vox bravely ran…

Serious question. Are you confounding left-leaning with lack of journalistic integrity, and conservative news outlets as having integrity?

Re: Vox Media is cutting pay and furloughing 9% of employees

#80

Post by macinjosh »

camgunz wrote: post #8
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #5

The context is interesting: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1248317812260499456 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1248317824394653697 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1248317820800086016 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1248318363538837504 The same company that considerably increased the damage the virus did in their country is now in financial difficulty as a result. They mocked people for avoiding handshake…

I would say don't use the news that lots of people are losing their jobs at News Outlet X to say News Outlet X is a bad news outlet. Feels opportunistic at best.

If a news outlet is struggling that means readership is down. If readership is down that implies they are not producing a product worthy of people’s time. Seems bad to me.
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