[HN Gopher] Resignation
___________________________________________________________________
Resignation
Author : mpweiher
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-02-05 21:24 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.andymills.work)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.andymills.work)
| madrox wrote:
| Perhaps failing is so normalized in tech that I'm naive to how
| the rest of the world thinks, but I don't think failures of the
| kind Caliphate made should cost someone their job no more than an
| outage should cost an engineer their job. A blameless
| retrospective should occur with the appropriate updates to
| process so it can't happen again. This was an institutional
| failure, and I don't suddenly feel better about the accuracy of
| the New York Times because Andy Mills is not there. I doubt
| anyone else feels different.
|
| To me, where this went off the rails was when Caliphate turned
| into a story about privilege and an individual's character,
| regardless of the truth behind it. I can see why it was allowed
| to happen, because it distracts from the institutional pattern of
| behavior by the NYT. Based on the characterization here and my
| understanding of the Caliphate story, this does not feel like
| justice. It feels like a witch hunt.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Pretty crushing.
|
| There is an interesting piece on NPR[1] about the Caliphate
| thing. Note that it was a runner up for a Pulitzer and won the
| Peabody award, and it's primary source was lying.
|
| So to contextualize some of the drama, understand that
| journalists aspire to an award like that. Just as a scientist
| might aspire to a Nobel Prize. And when such an award is won by a
| peer it is celebrated, unless it was won through "cheating."
| Whether it is a journalist who didn't check their source
| thoroughly or a scientist who falsified data to make the numbers
| work. The siren call of the award is a powerful force in blinding
| a person to the possible disqualifying inputs. Very powerful.
|
| I was fortunate to see such an event unfold early in my career
| with someone I respected who could not, or would not see the
| warning signs that their "big accomplishment" was not actually an
| accomplishment. They, like Andy, relied on a third party that
| didn't see the warning signs as the arbiter of correctness. When
| it turned out that their big accomplishment wasn't, they could
| easily blame this third party and present themselves as being
| blameless. And yet, when it became clear that they _should_ have
| seen the warning signs as part of their expertise, then the
| charitable interpretation was that they were just not that great
| an engineer after all. There were, of course, those who felt the
| engineer "knew all along" about the problems and were trying to
| "sneak one by" everyone else. The engineer in question resigned
| and changed jobs and pretty much faded away.
|
| My take away from that experience was a better understanding of
| personal integrity. It is hard to take your own ideas and rip
| them apart, but it is essential that you do so. Because if they
| _can_ be ripped apart, no matter how attractive they seem, they
| aren 't as great as you think they are. I try to cultivate
| friendships with people who will do this for me as well. As one
| of my mentors told me, "Everyone thinks their baby is beautiful,
| few can appreciate honest feedback." And engineers and managers
| (especially senior managers) are trained by experience to not to
| call out the flaws in other peoples ideas to their faces. If you
| are surrounded by people who won't point out the flaws in your
| plan, you are at risk of both your plan failing, and having that
| follow you around for the rest of your days.
|
| I think Andy's resignation post was well written. I'm sorry that
| he had to go through what he has gone through, and I agree with
| him that this was the correct next step for him.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-times-
| retr...
| stephen82 wrote:
| ...so let me get this straight: you are not allowed to make
| mistakes in your life, because everything is digitally archived
| nowadays that can backfire at any time?!
|
| What happened to * learn from your mistakes
| * trial and error * getting wiser as you grow up *
| growing up means talk less and think and act more
|
| and all these kinds of questions?
|
| Where are we going people?
|
| I cannot imagine what young kids go through in this time and day
| when they do a mistake.
|
| Are we forbidden from making something stupid and silly?
|
| This is not normal everyone, not normal at all :/
| keyanp wrote:
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26041829
| ijonas wrote:
| TLDR
| kahrl wrote:
| Today I'm resigning from The New York Times. Those are not
| words I ever wanted to write.
|
| Growing up, I never even imagined that I would get the chance
| to live in New York City or to work in media -- let alone at
| the paper of record. I'm from a tiny town of a thousand people
| in the middle of the corn fields of Illinois. I paid my way
| through Christian College working as a groundskeeper, a
| dishwasher, a roofer, and at summer jobs in factories and on
| farms.
|
| And yet, I ended up having the chance to work for the most
| important news organization in the world. And I have loved it.
| I have been able to collaborate with some of the most talented,
| passionate and creative journalists in the world. I've been so
| proud and grateful for what we've been able to accomplish
| together.
|
| When I was hired as the first full-time audio producer at The
| Times, the audio department was just an idea, nurtured in an
| old closet with grey foam panels glued to the walls on the 16th
| floor. Now it is a pillar of The Times' journalism and a model
| for the industry.
|
| Together with Lisa Tobin, Theo Balcomb, and Michael Barbaro, I
| helped create The Daily in 2017. Since then I've gone on to
| help create and develop series like Rabbit Hole with Kevin
| Roose and The Field with The Times' politics team. And, of
| course, in 2018 I helped create and produce the most ambitious
| project I've ever worked on: Caliphate.
|
| While I remain proud of our team and what we were able to
| accomplish with Caliphate, getting any aspect of any story
| wrong, by any degree, is a journalist's worst nightmare. After
| Caliphate was corrected, in print and in audio, peers of mine
| in the audio industry, from outside of The Times, began to
| raise questions about why I had been allowed to remain in my
| position.
|
| There are answers to these questions: When it came to fact-
| checking support for the project, the Times' leadership told us
| that they had their own internal system in place for stories of
| this nature. That system broke down. And they did not blame us.
| In fact, throughout The Times' reexamination of Caliphate, they
| told our production team that we'd engaged in rigorous and
| careful journalism. One masthead editor even made it a point to
| tell me: "I won't let you blame yourself."
|
| But in the meantime, another story emerged online: that my lack
| of punishment came down to entitlement and male privilege. That
| accusation gave some the opportunity to resurface my past
| personal conduct.
|
| Like all human beings, I have made mistakes that I wish I could
| take back. Nine years ago, when I first moved to New York City,
| I regularly attended monthly public radio meet up parties where
| I looked for love and eventually earned a reputation as a
| flirt. Eight years ago during a team meeting, I gave a
| colleague a back rub. Seven years ago I poured a drink on a
| coworker's head at a drunken bar party. I look back at those
| actions with extraordinary regret and embarrassment.
|
| All of this happened while I was working at WNYC. When my
| managers there confronted me with how my unprofessional
| behavior was making people feel, I was ashamed. I apologized to
| the individuals that I'd learned I had upset or made
| uncomfortable. And I was punished. I received a warning from
| WNYC's HR department that I needed to be more professional or
| look for work elsewhere. I was told to meet with a professional
| work-place trainer. I was a production assistant at the time,
| and the promotion to producer that I had been working toward
| was denied.
|
| I took this reckoning seriously and I continued to work at WNYC
| for nearly two more years without further incident.
|
| When I started working at The Times, in 2016, I was open with
| my bosses and colleagues about this experience and what I'd
| learned from it. They said that they appreciated my candor and
| defended me publicly, including in New York Magazine in 2018.
|
| At The Times, I have strived to continue to grow and be a
| better co-worker and person, and not repeat the mistakes of my
| 20s. All of my reviews have reflected that. Each year as the
| team grew, I was promoted to higher levels of leadership. In
| December, my latest promotion was finalized: I was to become
| our audio department's director of development. "Ride or die
| baby! I'm thrilled about this. You are a treasured colleague
| and an insane talent. So much to come! Looking forward to
| toasting," wrote the assistant managing editor who oversees The
| New York Times's audio report.
|
| But that was not to be. The allegations on Twitter quickly
| escalated to the point where my actual shortcomings and past
| mistakes were replaced with gross exaggerations and baseless
| claims. Several people have even alleged that I am a predator
| and a dangerous threat to my colleagues. I have been
| transformed into a symbol of larger societal evils. As a
| journalist, it has been especially discouraging and upsetting
| to see fellow journalists make such claims or retweet them.
|
| The entire experience has been extraordinarily painful. I know
| I'm not supposed to say that because people will claim that I'm
| trying to make myself the victim. I know that I still have a
| lot of room to grow as a person - I can be overly zealous and
| talk over people, making them feel unheard. I know that this
| whole letter opens me up to more public shaming and ridicule.
| But public shaming is very painful. That is the truth. So is
| leaving the job you love.
|
| And yet, that's what I feel I need to do. As the pressure of
| this online campaign has grown to encompass some staffers of
| The Times, it has led to a climate where, even though I still
| love the mission of this important institution, I feel it is in
| the best interest of both myself and my team that I leave the
| company at this time. I do this with no joy and a heavy heart.
|
| To the journalists, editors, colleagues and friends who've
| reached out with words of encouragement and support over the
| past several weeks, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your
| calls and notes have meant more to me than you can know.
|
| To all my colleagues with whom I've had the chance to
| collaborate on such important and ambitious journalism projects
| throughout these last several years, I will miss working with
| you dearly. I wish you all the very best. I will keep cheering
| you on.
|
| At some point, maybe I'll tell this story more fully, but I got
| into this work to tell other people's stories. And for now, I'm
| going to get back to that.
|
| Andy
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bluntfang wrote:
| >people who make personal boundaries mistakes should never
| have jobs again.
|
| (without having a personal comment on this article ) Is there
| a more nuanced approach here? Having a job is really
| different from being in a leadership position at a company
| that has global reach and impact, no?
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I read the whole thing and i'm sorry, but a journalist from the
| NYT complaining about being misrepresented?
|
| lol get that shit out of here
| jjeaff wrote:
| The NYT is a venerable news organization. One of the few left.
| They don't get everything right, but when they get it wrong
| they retract. And in most cases, they also seem to do proper
| due diligence for their stories as well as follow proper
| journalistic standards.
| zepto wrote:
| Journalistic standards like the ones they used with Scott
| Alexander?
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Ever heard of the 1619 Project?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| This used to be the case, but it's laughably wide of the mark
| now.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Cancel culture is a cancer. Having everything documented online
| doesn't help. People are _supposed_ to learn from mistakes. They
| are _supposed_ to make them because we all make mistakes.
|
| There are mistakes that are considered table stakes for a role or
| a job and I'm for demotion of those individuals for it, but I
| don't like seeing this cancel culture ruin lives.
|
| It's very high school and immature.
| [deleted]
| netrus wrote:
| People learn from mistakes when there are consequences. You are
| witnessing consequences. There are far more, specific stories
| of misconduct on Twitter than those acknowledged in this
| article. If they are untrue, why not specifically say so?
|
| Andy Mills is not going to prison. Being called out publically
| for toxic behavior towards colleagues is not exactly a ruined
| life. He will be fine (just not as fine as when peers did not
| speak up).
|
| Also "we all make mistakes". We are talking about an adult, who
| got a grown-up's salary, some mistakes are worse than others,
| and you should not make the same mistake again and again and
| again. Consequences help with that.
| ng12 wrote:
| > People learn from mistakes when there are consequences
|
| Oh please. If cancel culture were about learning from your
| mistakes we wouldn't haunt people for things they did decades
| ago.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Kevin Spacey comes to mind. There is a thing called statute
| of limitations for things. Kevin Spacey probably shouldn't
| have sexually assaulted boys. Because the internet archives
| everything, no one looks at the date and think _how long
| ago was this?_
| jacques_chester wrote:
| I've no idea how you decided this was "cancel culture". It's a
| garden-variety cockup.
|
| Mistakes are not binary, some of them are worse than others.
|
| Messing up the spelling of someone's name is common and a
| subject of regular jest amongst journalists.
|
| Slightly misquoting someone might be subject to some kind of
| internal discipline, it will at least lead to a correction
| being published.
|
| Publishing mostly fiction without the exercise of fact-checking
| is much less forgivable in a news organisation. Willing
| credulity is not the standard journalists should be held to.
| gabereiser wrote:
| A Twitter campaign sounds like cancel culture. There are
| avenues to address misbehavior. There are ways to report
| inaccuracies. I'm not defending the man's mistakes or his
| podcast. Like I said, there are some things that are table
| stakes, telling the truth at a news org should definitely be
| one.
|
| His story isn't unique though about how social media descends
| on an individual to ruin their lives. He mentioned how the
| campaign made its way into the NYT via Twitter. All I'm
| saying is that we are all human, we all make mistakes, we
| should all be given an opportunity to learn from and grow
| from those mistakes.
|
| Does he need to be publicly visible in NYT's, probably not
| considering the history.
|
| Could he produce shows where he's not asked to determine the
| truth but just report it, possibly.
|
| There are levels to mistakes, I hear you, and to make a
| public post about it on his blog definitively shows he
| doesn't exactly know why this is happening to him or he wants
| to make a big grand stand about it.
|
| Doesn't matter. My statement still stands. People make
| mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes have nothing to do with
| their jobs and yet, canceled...
| xupybd wrote:
| Was he fired for his bad journalism or for his past
| misconduct?
|
| I couldn't tell from the article.
| katbyte wrote:
| He resigned do to social media backlash it appears
| ng12 wrote:
| Cancel culture is what happened after the revelations about
| the podcast. Some people got angry they felt he wasn't
| punished enough and turned to cancel culture to punish him
| instead.
| free_rms wrote:
| It's concerning that that's the lever, though.
|
| Break every rule of your profession and publish a bunch of
| BS? We'll give you another chance. Gave an inappropriate
| backrub 10 years ago? You're out!
|
| He should have been fired for Caliphate _and expressly for_
| Caliphate.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Look at the title here.
|
| Look at the author of this piece.
|
| Do you think a journalist who has no journalistic
| integrity is going to admit he got fired because he has
| no journalistic integrity?
|
| Easier to get a sympathy by claiming it was about back
| rubs.
| free_rms wrote:
| Absolutely right, and I should have written that :)
|
| That said, seems like the easier route for the NYT to go
| as well -- they don't have to own up to their editorial
| failures up the chain that way.
| gabereiser wrote:
| agreed
| irateswami wrote:
| Agreed, "journalists" should be held to a high standard for
| the information they disseminate. Have we all forgotten "A
| Rape on Campus" and the fallout for Rolling Stone?
| sadgrip wrote:
| Did you read the article by chance? The author wasn't
| "cancelled" on account of the misreporting. That was just
| what put a spotlight on him leading to cancelling him for
| unrelated actions.
| threatofrain wrote:
| At the root of cancel culture is the freedom of association.
| Ultimately people either feel fraternity amongst each other or
| they don't.
|
| I might argue that the freedom to not bake cakes or employ gay
| people with regards to religious rights is also part of the
| freedom of association. People either feel the love or they
| don't.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Except for discrimination laws...
| threatofrain wrote:
| My latter example would be with regards to US
| Constitutional rights, and is possibly something that won't
| change in your lifetime. If anything, there was political
| energy to Constitutionally define heterosexual marriage as
| the only marriage, as it was a presidential get-out-to-vote
| issue for George Bush Jr.
|
| But it does motivate discussion on fraternity.
| hilbertseries wrote:
| > And, of course, in 2018 I helped create and produce the most
| ambitious project I've ever worked on: Caliphate.
|
| > While I remain proud of our team and what we were able to
| accomplish with Caliphate, getting any aspect of any story wrong,
| by any degree, is a journalist's worst nightmare. After Caliphate
| was corrected, in print and in audio, peers of mine in the audio
| industry, from outside of The Times, began to raise questions
| about why I had been allowed to remain in my position.
|
| I can't speak to the rest of this resignation, but it's sort of
| wild to see Caliphate described this way. When my understanding
| is that the main person they interviewed was lying and the
| podcast is mostly fiction. And then he goes on to say that he had
| "engaged in rigorous and careful journalism".
| dfabulich wrote:
| Indeed. Those who would like to know more may want to read the
| NYT's own repudiation of Caliphate.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-t...
|
| This Vulture article is a good overall summary of the timeline,
| which I would absolutely call a "scandal."
| https://www.vulture.com/2021/01/caliphate-controversy-new-yo...
|
| Those who are replying here to decry "cancel culture" are
| falling for his story. This guy is resigning in disgrace for
| producing journalism so bad, so false in every regard, not just
| in one article but in an entire podcast spanning months, that
| his employer had to _return his Peabody award._
|
| Andy wants you to think that he's leaving because a Twitter mob
| is mad at him for giving a co-worker a back rub, and if you
| fall for this, you're Andy's next victim.
| chmod600 wrote:
| It seems he should have been removed. But it also seems like
| the "why" is important -- was it job performance or digging
| into his history?
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| Damn, Vulture pulling no punches
|
| > The Verge's Ashley Carman echoed this critique in her piece
| on the Times' December determination, when she identified
| this as an expression of the dangers around the modern media
| intellectual property gold rush, which podcasting as an
| industry has aggressively internalized as a growth hormone
| benzible wrote:
| Yes, this is well worth reading:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/business/media/new-york-t...
|
| An excerpt:
|
| > The assignment, Mr. Flood recalled thinking, was both
| hopeless and quite strange in its specificity [...] Ms.
| Callimachi was singularly focused. "She only wanted things that
| very narrowly supported this kid in Canada's wild stories," he
| told me in a phone interview.
|
| > Mr. Flood didn't know it at the time, but he was part of a
| frantic effort at The New York Times to salvage the high-
| profile project the paper had just announced.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| and this: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/18/944594193/new-york-
| times-retr...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >But in the meantime, another story emerged online: that my lack
| of punishment came down to entitlement and male privilege.
|
| The current concept of "privilege" whatever its good original
| intention, has I think turned into a huge toxic mess.
|
| I think it is something that you should bring up about yourself,
| ie "I have these privileges in life", but never something you
| should bring up about anyone else.
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| Saw a good sticker the other day:
|
| Giving rights to others is not taking rights away from you.
| It's not pie.
| jansan wrote:
| This has a very strange format for reading. Is it intentional or
| is this formatted for mobile devices?
| Centrino wrote:
| What surprised me: I didn't see any date on that blogpost. So I
| had to search the name of the author in Google News to discover
| that he indeed resigned today, and not a few days/weeks ago.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| I actually like it. No distractions, easy to read. It was so
| good that when I read your comment I didn't even remember what
| was the format I was reading! I had to click again and re-
| check. I did remember it was black text on white background.
| Ekaros wrote:
| More that on my screen it's around 320 pixels or so wide...
| 1/8 of my screen resolution... I would expect at least double
| of that for reasonable reading experience...
| natrik wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/business/media/new-york-t...
|
| "The Times cited an institutional failure and determined the
| "Caliphate" team gave too much credence to the claims of a
| supposed former terrorist."
|
| Relevant to authors story.
| iorrus wrote:
| Assuming his claims are correct it seems a pity to resign due to
| online pressure.
|
| In his position, and provided I had the support of the management
| I would have stayed and not let a baseless online smear campaign
| force me out.
|
| Leaving this way gives credence to those disparaging his
| character.
| Igelau wrote:
| I can almost hear the bitter weeping of the people who missed
| out on being in the pile on, and the solemn oathes being sworn
| not to miss the next one.
| smachiz wrote:
| It looks far from baseless.
|
| I googled - people are attaching their names to this on
| twitter. It's not anonymous. It's not "I heard he did x".
|
| It's he did X to me.
|
| We'll find out if any of it is true - but I'm going to guess
| that a lot of it is. Hence, resigning before he can be fired.
|
| https://twitter.com/imontheradio/status/1343598441226792960?...
| https://twitter.com/brianabreen/status/1341921383354224640
|
| Also, Radiolab doesn't seem to be downplaying this:
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/note-...
| iorrus wrote:
| Yes both those people seem credible and have no reason to
| make up their stories. I'm surprised he lasted so long,
| obviously he's not trustworthy and unprofessional.
|
| I do agree with her that most woman would not have gotten
| away with these kind of comments.
| Cenk wrote:
| I recently listened to Episode 357 of Canadaland, "Califail".
| It's about the problems with the NYT podcast "Caliphate", which
| was pitched and produced by Andy Mills. It has a fair bit of
| background on Mills and is definitely worth a listen.
|
| https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/357-califail/
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I love it when the Cancel Culture Mob eats their own. It gives me
| energy and strength.
| xorx wrote:
| While this comment is not, on its own merits, "appropriate" for
| HN, I have to admit it rings true.
|
| Journalists have been the tip of the spear in matters of
| doxxing and cancellation. Without speaking to the specifics of
| whether this particular journalist is deserving of
| cancellation, there is much to be said of the Schadenfreude,
| here.
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(page generated 2021-02-05 23:01 UTC)