[HN Gopher] Wirecutter Union Is Striking
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       Wirecutter Union Is Striking
        
       Author : awiesenhofer
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2021-11-24 22:02 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (daringfireball.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (daringfireball.net)
        
       | PragmaticPulp wrote:
       | > But Wirecutter was always treated as a second-class citizen,
       | isolated in its own Slack, its own offices, and its own reporting
       | structure
       | 
       | I understand where they're coming from and don't doubt their
       | complaints, but it's interesting to see this framed as a
       | negative:
       | 
       | When I've gone through acquisitions before, being pulled into the
       | parent company's Slack, offices, and reporting structures was
       | always the exact tipping point where the job went from great to
       | terrible.
       | 
       | It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Wirecutter is
       | such a strange situation to watch from the outside because
       | they've steadily declined in quality over the past few years. At
       | this point I skip the article and scroll the comments section
       | because that's where I find the commenters complaining that the
       | recommended product was actually not that great or asking why an
       | obviously superior product was dismissed without review.
       | 
       | I'm also slightly to stunned to see that they have almost 70
       | people on staff for Wirecutter alone, even without all of the
       | hosting upkeep requirements now that they're hosted in the main
       | NYT website. I had assumed that the review quality had plummeted
       | because they didn't have anyone working on it, but now I'm just
       | plain confused.
       | 
       | Meanwhile, competing sites like rtings.com have picked up the
       | slack and are doing extremely high-quality reviews, albeit for a
       | narrower set of products. Their reviews are more transparent,
       | come with more data, and are constantly updated as new products
       | are released. They're basically everything I wanted Wirecutter to
       | be.
        
         | whakim wrote:
         | I haven't particularly noticed a dropoff in quality (I'm not a
         | frequent user though, so that doesn't say much), but I can
         | easily imagine that many of their best journalists left, and
         | given the situation described here (second-class citizens with
         | second-class payscale at the NYT), they weren't replaced.
         | 
         | As for the staff of 70, perhaps the NYT has pushed them to
         | expand into an ever-greater set of product categories (on top
         | of keeping existing products up-to-date)? Perhaps the lack of
         | integration with the NYT means they're still managing a lot of
         | their own infrastructure/HR/etc.?
        
         | dragontamer wrote:
         | Its hard to beat Amazon at its own game. But people are wising
         | up to the fact that reviews are largely illegimate and largely
         | gamed these days. So how are we to get trustworthy reviews?
         | 
         | Wirecutter is under the model that a larger newspaper would be
         | a good source of reviews. Consumer Reports is also basically a
         | newspaper / 3rd party review site. While noble in concept, I'm
         | not 100% sure how economical this model is (Consumer Reports is
         | a non-profit for example).
         | 
         | Wirecutter's ultimate revenue comes from affiliate links,
         | meaning they're ultimately subservient to Amazon.
         | 
         | -----
         | 
         | But I shop at jetpens.com for my stationary. Why? Because their
         | blog has happened to win their trust with me.
         | 
         | I can accept the economic situation: jetpens.com needs to
         | distinguish itself from other online stores (Amazon, Walmart,
         | etc. etc.). Blogging about their products and offering in-depth
         | reviews of paper and pen products is pretty much the
         | "Wirecutter" model.
         | 
         | That's probably the path forward in the future. Create a shop
         | (online or in-person). Capture an audience using modern
         | information (blogging, social networks, etc. etc.). And
         | finally, its the __shop's reputation__ that is put at stake
         | whenever reviews are put out. None of this "Amazon 3rd party
         | review, we're not responsible for the words on our site"
         | bull**, you know, a shop that stands behind the words and
         | reviews that are next to the products on their website.
        
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       (page generated 2021-11-24 23:02 UTC)