9 ms·

Also: > Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’

Also: > Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo. This level of journalism, both from the writer and from the editors, is disappointing.

vernie 9y ago
How would you summarize the memo in one line?
- abtinf 9y ago
  How about: Google's current programs are ineffective and discriminatory, so alternative programs and work culture should be considered to achieve higher diversity.
  - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
    That may summarize the goal of the memo, but it does not adequately summarize the content, which has a large focus on biological differences between the sexes being this Big Factor that is not yet "priced in" to diversity programs. In reality he was probably way, way off on the impact of biology, but he confirmation biased his way forward regardless, then peppered the memo with hedges to offset the backlash.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - mjevans 9y ago
      I agree with abtinf about the best interpretation of ideas within the memo. It is a result that the author of that memo should have reached after counseling and seeing evidence supportting of /equality/ programs actually being about equal treatment (or at least fair, as in having multiple possible measurements and a consistent policy of utilizing the best scores to reach a determination.). I feel like a lot of animosity was allowed to fester among all parties due to a lack of intelligent, open, and respectful discourse about problems and perceived problems.
      - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "equality" programs. "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place. He clearly has beef with the unfair nature of those programs but they are still the best way I know of concretely responding to realities of a complicated world filled with prejudice and bias beyond any one organization's control. There's always room for improvement based on new data though.
        IanCal 9y ago
        > "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place. Often, but not necessarily. Since this is a forum for people who like to be technically correct, I'll throw my two cents in here. To give an example, let's assume that there's a split between group A and group B between high cost and low cost universities. Group A are 90% of the high cost students and group B are 90% of the low cost students. Google send representatives to mostly the high cost universities at the moment, because they're assumed to have the best students. This is resulting in a remarkably large proportion of As at Google. To counteract this, you could go and explicitly target Bs, which would fit with your description. Or, you could lower your threshold and start sending reps to lower cost unis as well. This increases diversity yet at no point is specifically preferring Bs. I picked this example of high cost/low cost unis purely because it's easy, not to make any statement about whether this kind of thing happens or is important for future performance. this is also not a hugely important point, but it was floating about in my head.
        oddlyaromatic 9y ago
        I think that's fair. I guess I could have specified "the kind of diversity programs with which James Damore has a problem". But I take your point. In principle, this is actually close to what actually ends up happening, except with limited resources it becomes a really tricky dynamic. Let's say Google has 10 reps, and in the old days 8 went to A, 2 to B. If they now send 5 to A and 5 to B... The A group will feel that they lost something, and the B group will feel like they never even HAD 8 reps, so not necessarily feel that things have become fair... It might be fairest to have a period of 2 going to A and 8 going to B for the same length of time that 8 went to A, and THEN balance it to 5 and 5... But if A suddenly goes from 8 to 2... well, those people are going to be writing memos like nobody's business about it. Even at 5 and 5, there will be memos. Even at 7 and 3, possibly. The slightest change to the status quo could provoke a memo. (and for the record I do appreciate this comment, in case that didn't come across.. I'm responding in a similar spirit... not important but worth thinking through all the same)
    - belorn 9y ago
      Memo size is: 178 lines, 3339 words, 22264 bytes. How big part of the memo is focused on differences between the sexes? The section called Personality differences that everyone talks about is: 11 lines, 245 words, 1662 bytes. Even if we include the only other place in the memo which reference this section (Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap), we are only adding a total of 7 lines, 222 words and an additional 1402 bytes. The large focus of the memo was political diversity. About 97 lines, 1671 words and 11071 byes was written on that topic.
      - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
        When I can, I'll respond in detail. Maybe I'm crazy.
- khazhoux 9y ago
  I believe his thesis was: gender diversity policies are not rooted in realities of gender differences. (but he makes factual errors, so his argument is false)
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I wouldn't care to. The author already summarized himself in his "tl;dr". And he thought he need more than a couple bullet points for that. None of those points said a woman is less suited for technology work than a man. In fact, he went to great lengths to dispute that fallacy. Some of his suggestions implied that Google work practices could be more welcoming to people who enjoy more teamwork in their day-to-day (the bit about pair programming). And he mentioned that more flexible work arrangements would benefit people who wanted a different balance of work and family life. Both points imply that women want those things more (plausibly true, but I think that's an empirical question). So he thinks women generally want to work differently, but that's not saying he thinks they do worse work. If he thought that, he'd recommend putting women in less important roles or giving them easier work.
- mpweiher 9y ago
  How about: Women are perfectly capable of choosing jobs they like. That leaves a lot out, but it's the high order bit.
- Sidnicious 9y ago
  I would summarize the memo in one (long) line as: "Non-discriminatory [against men] ways to increase women's representation in tech include making engineering people-oriented (rather than systems-oriented), disincentivizing competition, endorsing part-time work, and making it socially acceptable for men to leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles, but a meaningful application of these strategies would prevent driven employees (mostly men) from working extra hours or taking extra stress, which would have disastrous consequences for Google's success."
wilde 9y ago
This is literally what the memo said.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkfurther 9y ago
  Quote it.
kristianc 9y ago
> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. > This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo. People encouraging a 'charitable' reading of the memo have argued that the memo says that Google shouldn't aim for 50/50 diversity as a goal (or that increasing gender representation as an end in itself is likely to lead to sub-optimal outcomes), and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. I'm really trying quite hard to think where the misrepresentation comes in, or indeed, if it's not about that, what the memo is actually about.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  It conflates suitability with preference.
  - kristianc 9y ago
    That's something the memo does quite a lot as well. When it talks about "innate dispositional differences" between women and men, and uses quite deterministic language such as "as society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian innate differences have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider” it becomes increasingly unclear whether he is talking about suitability or preference or if women have the power to overcome these "innate differences." It doesn't help that in the English language the word "disposition" can be used to mean both innate tendency and preference. When I say "I have a nervous disposition" I mean "I have an innate nervous tendency" rather than "I prefer to act nervously", but "disposition" can also mean "the power to do with something as one pleases." The fact that he does pair it with "innate" suggests that this preference is something we are born with however, and something that would indeed impinge on our biological suitability for a role. He even goes as far as to suggest that "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be and "we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." It seems clear to me that he is using quite causal language there, and this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. Also, to be charitable to NYT, the fact that we are having to be this forensic with language over something that was written last week (as opposed to Plato's Republic, written 5000 years ago and which has been through many translations), and still can't agree what the memo is about, probably suggests that any misinterpretation is understandable and probably not borne of malice.
mnglkhn2 9y ago
To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.'
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.' This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    You've posted this about 6 times now. If people are still disagreeing with you, maybe there's a reason. If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with. No. That is not a reasonable assumption. Newspapers frequently carry highly opposing pieces in their opinion sections. That's how newspapers have worked for a very long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed The NYT has, for example, hosted Putin in the opinion section: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...
      - CamperBob2 9y ago
        No, all that shows is that they're not concerned with who provides the opinion piece. (And they shouldn't be.) It doesn't make any sense to publish something under your name and then complain when people think you're endorsing it. If I paste a pro-Nazi editorial into my blog, should I resent being held to account for it?
oddlyaromatic 9y ago
What is your understanding of those ideas? >questioned the company’s gender diversity policies It did that. > made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. It did this too. But I'd argue the NYT opinion piece is too vague here. "made statements about" does really mean anything. I suppose the "suitability for" is a bit wrong. More like "biological inclination towards" technical jobs? That changes things slightly but I can't see it as a huge misrepresentation. The underlying idea of the memo is that biology can partly explain women's career choices (true) and that Google should recognize this and factor it into their diversity targets more than they do. That second part is highly debatable. Without controlling for gender bias and many cultural/historical effects, I'm doubtful we can even really begin to detect how much biology influences the choices of any given individual in the real world. How can we blame biology for a woman's choice if the mere fact that she's a woman causes her to be reviewed more harshly by others for the same work? Taken less seriously? Etc etc. These are real effects, and until they are gone, it will be impossible to determine what role biology plays on average participation levels in tech. (edited to clarify NYT opinion piece, as opposed to NYT article)
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I think the NYT author implies that Damore thinks women have less "biological suitability" than men. There's a big difference between "biological suitability" and "biological inclination", at least when it comes to tone. One implies women can't do something and the other implies women generally don't care to do it. The latter is not controversial in the right context. Men aren't as inclined to watch period romance movies. That doesn't mean they can't watch them. People, maybe fairly, have been criticizing Damore for his writing prowess. The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > I think the NYT author implies > The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT. This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
ucaetano 9y ago
This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...unrelated to the newspaper This piece was paid for and printed by the Times. It might have been edited by the Times as well. It's not a letter to the editor. Either way, Taplin considers himself an expert on Silicon Valley culture and seems to have problems objectively describing at least this part of it.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    It is part of the NYT's opinion section, and not the editorial board's opinion. Newspapers include opinion sections from very diverse authors. The NYT has, for example, published a section by Putin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      Opinion pieces are typically paid. I suspect world leaders and billionaires are not paid, though. The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin. They would presumably decline to print a letter from Kim Jong Un about how he shot 38 under par, including five holes-in-one.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin. Yes: https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op-ed.html https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html...
sdenton4 9y ago
Lemme guess, it's all about ethics in (game) journalism, amirite?
philippoi 9y ago
It's not journalism, though, in the sense of an article meant to factually cover what's happened. It's not representing facts. It's representing an interpretation of a situation and that by an author interested in and highly critical of Silicon Valley in general.

vernie 9y ago

How would you summarize the memo in one line?

abtinf 9y ago
How about: Google's current programs are ineffective and discriminatory, so alternative programs and work culture should be considered to achieve higher diversity.
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago
  That may summarize the goal of the memo, but it does not adequately summarize the content, which has a large focus on biological differences between the sexes being this Big Factor that is not yet "priced in" to diversity programs. In reality he was probably way, way off on the impact of biology, but he confirmation biased his way forward regardless, then peppered the memo with hedges to offset the backlash.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mjevans 9y ago
    I agree with abtinf about the best interpretation of ideas within the memo. It is a result that the author of that memo should have reached after counseling and seeing evidence supportting of /equality/ programs actually being about equal treatment (or at least fair, as in having multiple possible measurements and a consistent policy of utilizing the best scores to reach a determination.). I feel like a lot of animosity was allowed to fester among all parties due to a lack of intelligent, open, and respectful discourse about problems and perceived problems.
    - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by "equality" programs. "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place. He clearly has beef with the unfair nature of those programs but they are still the best way I know of concretely responding to realities of a complicated world filled with prejudice and bias beyond any one organization's control. There's always room for improvement based on new data though.
      - IanCal 9y ago
        > "Diversity" programs are by nature unfair- they provide explicit preferential treatments to specific groups in order to counteract presumed other factors that make those groups less likely to be present in the first place. Often, but not necessarily. Since this is a forum for people who like to be technically correct, I'll throw my two cents in here. To give an example, let's assume that there's a split between group A and group B between high cost and low cost universities. Group A are 90% of the high cost students and group B are 90% of the low cost students. Google send representatives to mostly the high cost universities at the moment, because they're assumed to have the best students. This is resulting in a remarkably large proportion of As at Google. To counteract this, you could go and explicitly target Bs, which would fit with your description. Or, you could lower your threshold and start sending reps to lower cost unis as well. This increases diversity yet at no point is specifically preferring Bs. I picked this example of high cost/low cost unis purely because it's easy, not to make any statement about whether this kind of thing happens or is important for future performance. this is also not a hugely important point, but it was floating about in my head.
        oddlyaromatic 9y ago
        I think that's fair. I guess I could have specified "the kind of diversity programs with which James Damore has a problem". But I take your point. In principle, this is actually close to what actually ends up happening, except with limited resources it becomes a really tricky dynamic. Let's say Google has 10 reps, and in the old days 8 went to A, 2 to B. If they now send 5 to A and 5 to B... The A group will feel that they lost something, and the B group will feel like they never even HAD 8 reps, so not necessarily feel that things have become fair... It might be fairest to have a period of 2 going to A and 8 going to B for the same length of time that 8 went to A, and THEN balance it to 5 and 5... But if A suddenly goes from 8 to 2... well, those people are going to be writing memos like nobody's business about it. Even at 5 and 5, there will be memos. Even at 7 and 3, possibly. The slightest change to the status quo could provoke a memo. (and for the record I do appreciate this comment, in case that didn't come across.. I'm responding in a similar spirit... not important but worth thinking through all the same)
  - belorn 9y ago
    Memo size is: 178 lines, 3339 words, 22264 bytes. How big part of the memo is focused on differences between the sexes? The section called Personality differences that everyone talks about is: 11 lines, 245 words, 1662 bytes. Even if we include the only other place in the memo which reference this section (Non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap), we are only adding a total of 7 lines, 222 words and an additional 1402 bytes. The large focus of the memo was political diversity. About 97 lines, 1671 words and 11071 byes was written on that topic.
    - oddlyaromatic 9y ago
      When I can, I'll respond in detail. Maybe I'm crazy.
khazhoux 9y ago
I believe his thesis was: gender diversity policies are not rooted in realities of gender differences. (but he makes factual errors, so his argument is false)
humanrebar 9y ago
I wouldn't care to. The author already summarized himself in his "tl;dr". And he thought he need more than a couple bullet points for that. None of those points said a woman is less suited for technology work than a man. In fact, he went to great lengths to dispute that fallacy. Some of his suggestions implied that Google work practices could be more welcoming to people who enjoy more teamwork in their day-to-day (the bit about pair programming). And he mentioned that more flexible work arrangements would benefit people who wanted a different balance of work and family life. Both points imply that women want those things more (plausibly true, but I think that's an empirical question). So he thinks women generally want to work differently, but that's not saying he thinks they do worse work. If he thought that, he'd recommend putting women in less important roles or giving them easier work.
mpweiher 9y ago
How about: Women are perfectly capable of choosing jobs they like. That leaves a lot out, but it's the high order bit.
Sidnicious 9y ago
I would summarize the memo in one (long) line as: "Non-discriminatory [against men] ways to increase women's representation in tech include making engineering people-oriented (rather than systems-oriented), disincentivizing competition, endorsing part-time work, and making it socially acceptable for men to leave tech and leadership for traditionally feminine roles, but a meaningful application of these strategies would prevent driven employees (mostly men) from working extra hours or taking extra stress, which would have disastrous consequences for Google's success."

wilde 9y ago

This is literally what the memo said.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thinkfurther 9y ago
Quote it.

kristianc 9y ago

> Last week, Google fired a software engineer for writing a memo that questioned the company’s gender diversity policies and made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. > This is a huge misrepresentation of the ideas of the memo. People encouraging a 'charitable' reading of the memo have argued that the memo says that Google shouldn't aim for 50/50 diversity as a goal (or that increasing gender representation as an end in itself is likely to lead to sub-optimal outcomes), and that women and men are biologically different in their suitability for different roles. I'm really trying quite hard to think where the misrepresentation comes in, or indeed, if it's not about that, what the memo is actually about.

smallnamespace 9y ago
It conflates suitability with preference.
- kristianc 9y ago
  That's something the memo does quite a lot as well. When it talks about "innate dispositional differences" between women and men, and uses quite deterministic language such as "as society becomes more prosperous and more egalitarian innate differences have more space to develop and the gap that exists between men and women in their personality becomes wider” it becomes increasingly unclear whether he is talking about suitability or preference or if women have the power to overcome these "innate differences." It doesn't help that in the English language the word "disposition" can be used to mean both innate tendency and preference. When I say "I have a nervous disposition" I mean "I have an innate nervous tendency" rather than "I prefer to act nervously", but "disposition" can also mean "the power to do with something as one pleases." The fact that he does pair it with "innate" suggests that this preference is something we are born with however, and something that would indeed impinge on our biological suitability for a role. He even goes as far as to suggest that "there may be limits to how people-oriented certain roles" can be and "we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or students into thinking otherwise (some of our programs to get female students into coding might be doing this)." It seems clear to me that he is using quite causal language there, and this isn't just a "preference" for people-oriented roles he's talking about. Also, to be charitable to NYT, the fact that we are having to be this forensic with language over something that was written last week (as opposed to Plato's Republic, written 5000 years ago and which has been through many translations), and still can't agree what the memo is about, probably suggests that any misinterpretation is understandable and probably not borne of malice.

mnglkhn2 9y ago

To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.'

ucaetano 9y ago
> To paraphrase: 'NYT does not want what's best for us.' This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  You've posted this about 6 times now. If people are still disagreeing with you, maybe there's a reason. If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > If an article appears under the New York Times' logo and URL, then it can reasonably be assumed to reflect an opinion that the New York Times wishes to be associated with. No. That is not a reasonable assumption. Newspapers frequently carry highly opposing pieces in their opinion sections. That's how newspapers have worked for a very long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed The NYT has, for example, hosted Putin in the opinion section: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...
    - CamperBob2 9y ago
      No, all that shows is that they're not concerned with who provides the opinion piece. (And they shouldn't be.) It doesn't make any sense to publish something under your name and then complain when people think you're endorsing it. If I paste a pro-Nazi editorial into my blog, should I resent being held to account for it?

oddlyaromatic 9y ago

What is your understanding of those ideas? >questioned the company’s gender diversity policies It did that. > made statements about women’s biological suitability for technical jobs. It did this too. But I'd argue the NYT opinion piece is too vague here. "made statements about" does really mean anything. I suppose the "suitability for" is a bit wrong. More like "biological inclination towards" technical jobs? That changes things slightly but I can't see it as a huge misrepresentation. The underlying idea of the memo is that biology can partly explain women's career choices (true) and that Google should recognize this and factor it into their diversity targets more than they do. That second part is highly debatable. Without controlling for gender bias and many cultural/historical effects, I'm doubtful we can even really begin to detect how much biology influences the choices of any given individual in the real world. How can we blame biology for a woman's choice if the mere fact that she's a woman causes her to be reviewed more harshly by others for the same work? Taken less seriously? Etc etc. These are real effects, and until they are gone, it will be impossible to determine what role biology plays on average participation levels in tech. (edited to clarify NYT opinion piece, as opposed to NYT article)

humanrebar 9y ago
I think the NYT author implies that Damore thinks women have less "biological suitability" than men. There's a big difference between "biological suitability" and "biological inclination", at least when it comes to tone. One implies women can't do something and the other implies women generally don't care to do it. The latter is not controversial in the right context. Men aren't as inclined to watch period romance movies. That doesn't mean they can't watch them. People, maybe fairly, have been criticizing Damore for his writing prowess. The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > I think the NYT author implies > The same people should have a higher standard for a professional writer published in the NYT. This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

ucaetano 9y ago

This isn't an article by the NYT. It's an opinion piece by someone unrelated to the newspaper: Jonathan Taplin is the director emeritus of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

humanrebar 9y ago
> ...unrelated to the newspaper This piece was paid for and printed by the Times. It might have been edited by the Times as well. It's not a letter to the editor. Either way, Taplin considers himself an expert on Silicon Valley culture and seems to have problems objectively describing at least this part of it.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  It is part of the NYT's opinion section, and not the editorial board's opinion. Newspapers include opinion sections from very diverse authors. The NYT has, for example, published a section by Putin: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-cau...
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    Opinion pieces are typically paid. I suspect world leaders and billionaires are not paid, though. The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin. They would presumably decline to print a letter from Kim Jong Un about how he shot 38 under par, including five holes-in-one.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > The Times does decide what to print, even if they print an unpaid Putin. Yes: https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op-ed.html https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/site/editorial/op-ed/op... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/op-ed-and-you.html...

sdenton4 9y ago

Lemme guess, it's all about ethics in (game) journalism, amirite?

philippoi 9y ago

It's not journalism, though, in the sense of an article meant to factually cover what's happened. It's not representing facts. It's representing an interpretation of a situation and that by an author interested in and highly critical of Silicon Valley in general.