[HN Gopher] The New York Times made a weird editorial decision w...
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The New York Times made a weird editorial decision with its tech
coverage
Author : tosh
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-11-03 20:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| >Instead of covering the [tech] industry with a business press
| lens or a consumer lens they started covering it with a very
| tough investigative lens -- highly oppositional at all times and
| occasionally unfair.
|
| ...
|
| >Tech executives and investors mostly did not like this change,
| for understandable reasons. And I mostly agree with them on the
| merits.
|
| The author agrees - that the tech industry should not be subject
| to investigative coverage?
|
| That's nonsense. Tech now is the most wealthy and powerful
| industry in the US. Large tech companies have huge impacts on
| politics and news. Suggesting that tech should not be subject to
| investigative coverage is hard to understand. It seems like one
| of the most important subjects of that coverage today.
|
| You can suggest that coverage is inaccurate or unfair, but
| suggesting that tech should not be covered with an investigative
| lens is hard to argue.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| A major problem with the technology media is that they don't
| investigate the companies, because they have to stay on their
| good side in order to be invited to the events, and to get the
| information. When they criticize the company the company
| freezes them out; i.e. Apple.
| torstenvl wrote:
| As noted in the quotes you yourself pulled, what OP "agree[s]
| with" "[t]ech executives and investors" about is tech coverage
| that is "highly oppositional at all times and occasionally
| unfair."
|
| Nobody is "suggesting that tech should not be covered with an
| investigative lens."
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| You said
|
| _that the tech industry should not be subject to investigative
| coverage?_!
|
| Yglesias actually said:
|
| _And the press should try to normalize coverage of the tech
| industry as just another business sector._
|
| Which would include investigative coverage when appropriate.
| couchand wrote:
| Dude's been going on a downward spiral for years. Nothing he
| says these days follows any kind of coherent framework, it's
| just something thrown on the wall to see what sticks.
|
| He's really honestly describing himself with this take.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The tech industry needs _more_ investigative coverage, not
| less. The reason disasters like Theranos or Nikola were able to
| waste as much time and money as they did is because most of the
| tech press is focused on regurgitating press releases and
| hyping up the next big thing.
| ForrestN wrote:
| He's not saying that they shouldn't be subject to coverage
| "with an investigative lens." He's talking about the
| adversarial, negative tone of the coverage, relating to the
| tech industry primarily as full of bad actors rather than a
| power center worthy of investigation that also does some good
| things, say. I don't think Yglesias would say we shouldn't
| investigate these companies, but rather that we should paint a
| more wholistic picture about both the good and bad
| contributions of these companies that better matches reality.
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| He correctly identifies a fundamental difference between
| business/consumer reporting, which is often fawning
| regurgitations of PR materials made with limited due
| diligence and investigative reporting. I stand by my comment,
| it seems to me that he is saying the change from
| business/consumer to investigative was unwelcome and he
| agrees with that reaction.
|
| I think investigative journalism should be fair, but I don't
| think someone investigating Alphabet has to present the good
| that the company does - that's the job of Alphabet's PR
| department. Fair journalism does not leave out relevant
| context but doesn't speak to unrelated "good" contributions.
|
| Should an investigation into political corruption talk about
| what good that politician did? Maybe if its directly related
| to the corruption, but otherwise no.
| m0meni wrote:
| I feel like people are forgetting the real value of verification.
| If you aren't verified, someone will pretend to be you on
| Twitter. Prominent people aren't paying $8 to get a check,
| they're paying $8 to make sure they can't be easily impersonated,
| which I think is really worth it.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Identity theft is a crime. If a platform facilitates this, it
| should be liable.
| lokar wrote:
| Identity theft is a crime when used to commit fraud. Just
| claiming to be someone but not otherwise defrauding anyone is
| fine.
| noAnswer wrote:
| I would be surprised if they do any "verification" at all. If
| you are a paining member, you will get a special icon. That's
| it.
|
| I knew web forums that had that. Members that donated to the
| forum got a special status icon. It could get "trendy" and
| every one wants to show that they are part of the in-group.
|
| Having to pay in order to be save from impersonation sound like
| extortion though.
| fullshark wrote:
| > As a longtime working journalist, longtime check-haver, and
| someone who knows lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of
| media professionals I can promise you that working journalists
| derive zero value, social status, or self-esteem from this.
|
| Blatantly false, as the childish histrionics over the new
| verification system from many journalists this past week have
| shown. A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems wrapped up
| in their twitter audience frankly.
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I haven't observed any journalists reacting the way that you
| describe
| mikkergp wrote:
| Most of the journalists I've seen have expressed just the
| oppossite, an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted,
| what makes you say that " A lot of journalists' entire self
| worth seems wrapped up in their twitter audience frankly."
| fullshark wrote:
| Ehh this is all so vague, both Yglesias's original thread and
| my disagreement with it, and I"m not sure it's benefited from
| getting specific. Who cares if I find some random tweets
| supporting my point, I'm sure you can find counter tweets.
| This ironically is the problem with a lot of modern
| journalism in a nutshell, tweet hunting to support
| narratives.
|
| In any case my opinion is that a lot of journalists (at least
| the active ones, not the ones with auto-tweets of their
| stories) really enjoy twitter and really enjoy being "a blue
| checkmark" and are annoyed that their club is no longer
| exclusive. This annoyance has been verbalized in a myriad of
| criticisms of musk, the new system, etc.
|
| Edit: because I can't completely punt I did remember seeing
| this tweet which amazingly has 85k likes
| https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1587508595553353729
|
| Which blew my mind, oh course not completely representative
| of all journalists
| mcphage wrote:
| So you read that tweet, but you think it is _support_ of
| blue checks? Like, you think that tweet indicates the
| author thinks blue tweets are important and valuable?
| ars wrote:
| > an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted
|
| I'll believe that when journalists stop writing articles with
| unnamed sources, that are based on random twitter posts.
| mcphage wrote:
| They could always fall back to "people are saying..."
| livueta wrote:
| > an ease with leaving twitter if these get enacted
|
| I'll believe that one when I see it; feels very much like
| celebs announcing they're moving to Canada.
|
| More broadly, I think the original tweet thread picks up on
| something interesting: that blue-check group is bifurcated
| into actual-clout-havers, e.g. Steven King, who really
| could/would walk away, and epsilon-from-irrelevant journos
| who have it as a facet of their employment, who really
| couldn't. There's a small overlap of journos-with-actual-
| clout, but they're the exception.
|
| Low-clout journos are riding on the cachet generated by the
| other group, and benefit more from Twitter than they
| contribute. This is obviously anecdotal so I can't cite or
| anything, but in conversations with non-tech people IRL I
| tend to notice a stack of assumptions: Steven King == blue
| check == important =?= rando journalist =?= also important?
| If you're a reporter in Columbus, OH or whatever, the
| effectiveness of that platform, handed to you by the Twitter
| gods, vastly outstrips your "actual" impact.
|
| Steven King doesn't care. Journalist who wants to believe
| they're a member of the same club as Steven King definitely
| cares.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| The most prominent complaint came from Stephen King.
|
| Not a journalist. And he definitely doesn't have his self worth
| tied up into his Twitter audience.
|
| But anyways, by your logic, the entire HN audience's self worth
| is tied up in whether an iPhone has an audio jack or not,
| because this audience spent way more time and energy on that
| issue than journalists have on the blue checkmark.
| booboofixer wrote:
| > A lot of journalists' entire self worth seems wrapped up in
| their twitter audience frankly.
|
| A good barometer for journos integrity, i suppose. As far as i
| can tell, the better ones just want a voice and a platform,
| others like click-baiting and self-validating checkmarks.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Tech has received almost universally fawning coverage for the at
| least 2 decades that I've been following it. The only tiny hints
| of holding it to account came from the RMS Free Software folks.
|
| The idea that the press should be focusing on fawning coverage
| instead of highly investigative reporting when there's a whole
| ecosystem of tech news, Youtube videos, and conferences and WWDCs
| and Google IOs to do that seems completely nonsensical.
|
| The correct criticism of the NYTimes here should be why their
| investigative coverage does not extent to other areas where it
| might be missing.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| "[The NYT] decided tech was a major power center that needed
| scrutiny and needed to be taken down a peg, and this style of
| coverage became very widespread and prominent in the industry ...
| the press should try to normalize coverage of the tech industry
| as just another business sector."
|
| The irony here is that a prominent member of the 'tech industry'
| (with enthusiastic support from other prominent tech industry
| luminaries) just bought one of the most important social media
| networks _with the specific intention_ of making substantial
| changes to the way information is disseminated in the United
| States. That may turn out for the best, or it may not -- it doesn
| 't matter.
|
| What does matter: the NYT's decision to focus skeptical reporting
| on tech as an "important power center" sure seems to have been
| vindicated.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Tesla and SpaceX are not traditional members of the "tech"
| industry imo.
| finexplained wrote:
| Elon Musk is a prominent member of the tech industry and of
| Silicon Valley history, dating back to the days of Zip2 and
| Paypal. It's just a fact.
| acdha wrote:
| It's also weird coming after decades of tech reshaping media:
| local news is a fraction of what it once was, leaving important
| stories uncovered; things like Facebook's infamous pivot to
| video, instant news pages, Google AMP, etc. all pulled control
| to tech companies and lost money for media companies; and the
| very way people write headlines and stories changed based on
| social media and search company decisions. Musk isn't just some
| weird outlier, and it's bizarre to me that someone who works in
| journalism is basically saying "we focus too much on the times
| where Lucy pulled the football away."
| dralley wrote:
| Meanwhile Bezos owns the Washington Post, and while he doesn't
| seem to have messed with it too much, Amazon has absolutely
| been messing with the neutrality of IMDB where it comes into
| conflict with Amazon's media IPs.
| doomlaser wrote:
| https://letterboxd.com is the best source for scoping out a
| movie now. The ratings histogram for each film is incredibly
| informative about quality. It also happens to be my favorite
| social network right now since it's so focused.
| tinalumfoil wrote:
| To save you a click,
|
| > What's happened is that they have mistaken their own resentment
| at journalists' unearned checkmark privilege for something that
| journalists themselves care deeply about and are either willing
| to pay for or are mad that other people will be able to buy.
|
| Basically he's arguing Musk's $8-check decision comes from a
| misunderstanding of the journalism industry. His point is only
| marginally related to NYT's coverage of tech.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Musk's acquisition of twitter was, among many other things, an
| attempt to use his wealth to steer the marketplace of ideas. The
| man lives in a world where he can freely attempt to destroy
| anyone who tells him "no" without consequence. The New York
| Times, then, would seem to have been fully warranted in their
| apprehension regarding social giants like twitter.
| _fs wrote:
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > What's happened is that they have mistaken their own resentment
| at journalists' unearned checkmark privilege for something that
| journalists themselves care deeply about and are either willing
| to pay for or are mad that other people will be able to buy.
|
| This is telepsychology.
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