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How much did they pay for that crafted spin of a headline? DigitalOcean gives you more RAM and SSD for the same price (compared to itself before the change, bu

How much did they pay for that crafted spin of a headline? DigitalOcean gives you more RAM and SSD for the same price (compared to itself before the change, but still less than competitors) The word "you" in that headline highlights the problem with "journalism" today. It's just advertising for products or subjective viewpoints. A proper AP style guide headline would be: Digital Ocean Improves Performance of Cloud Server 'Droplets'. Edit: I wonder if someone earned their free flight and accommodations for the next Digital Ocean conference.

nindalf 9y ago
Usually these articles at least make a half baked attempt at journalism, but I like how this journalist brazened it out and straight up pasted whatever the PR person sent them. Perhaps a deadline was approaching?
jsmthrowaway 9y ago
Don't broaden and insult journalism by comparing TechCrunch to it. TechCrunch is now a quite obvious press release translation factory, and has been ever since Michael left. This is their bread and butter, and there's nothing wrong with that: PR needs an easy mouthpiece. That doesn't mean this is a journalism-wide problem, or even a problem, if you consume TechCrunch knowing that. Nothing about this article is a broader indictment of your scare quoted "journalism," otherwise you're essentially saying TechCrunch put out PR fluff, boy, the field that includes NYT and The Guardian and ProPublica is just problematic, isn't it?
- staplers 9y ago
  That doesn't mean this is a journalism-wide problem I've seen headlines like this on every major publication for the the last 5 years (since I started paying attention to topics I am knowledgeable about). Once you become a dedicated expert on a subject, you are enlightened to the journalistic spin of that subject. The topics you are unfamiliar with is where journalism exploits because you cannot dispute it. EDIT: Reply below is constantly changing and being edited and I am shadow-banned from replying to it.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    I know. I've been asked to write press release translations when I wrote for television news, and I've had those write-ups pushed back when I introduced a critical angle (:40 for a VO is not a lot of time to work with). Journalism does not "exploit" anyone, individual publications do, and this article is harmless in the grand scheme of things. Inventing sources, willful misquoting, those sorts of things are journalistic problems. Pushing out an article like this is a willful trade, in that TechCrunch is knowingly blending marketing and blogging at the expense of its integrity and brand, but that does not mean anything about the work that other journalists are doing. My point is that a single publication does not an indictment of an entire field make. You can criticize TechCrunch all you want, and I'd probably agree with you; the quality has decreased significantly, and yellow presser write-thrus are very common now, and it's not even a publication I read. That's the key: it's not a publication that I read, nor that you need to read. They exist independently of the journalism profession as a whole, don't reflect on it, and can disappear without impacting the rest of the landscape. They have a very specific audience. You are not in it. Part of that audience is startup PR, who they actively court because they need the material. With "fake news" and all that, journalism as a profession is under fire. I absolutely hate to see discussions like this that personify journalism as a boogeyman, out to exploit and "get you," based on one yellow presser that is suddenly "the problem with journalism." Stop broadening to attack an entire field of mostly good people based on one publication and/or article you don't like. Imagine if that was tried with literally anything else: imagine if we indicted biosciences based on Theranos ("the problem with genetic testing today") or hedge funds based on Martin Shkreli ("the problem with finance today") or engineering based on Peter Madsen ("the problem with rocketry today") or computer science research based on Uber ("the problem with self-driving today"). There are bad actors in the world, but journalism seems to attract commentary like this, where a bad actor suddenly means the whole field is indictable. That makes absolutely zero sense, and the more I argue against it, the more I'm convinced it's a willful siege by people who know what they're doing.
- gboudrias 9y ago
  So is this a "No true Scotsman" situation? "Journalist" is not currently a legally protected term. Anyone can be a journalist if they so choose.
tnolet 9y ago
you said it yourself: "journalism"
reaperducer 9y ago
It's not journalism, it's TechCrunch. There is a difference between journalism and blogging. Unfortunately, it's a gap that gets wider each day.
- rs999gti 9y ago
  > There is a difference between journalism and blogging. Unfortunately, it's a gap that gets wider each day. Really? Because the users on HN, Reddit, and the internet as a whole bemoaned the shut down of Gawker by Thiel, when he went after them for outing him and Hulk Hogan. The whole user base said Thiel was attacking journalism, when all he did was shutdown a gossip blog.
  - hbosch 9y ago
    >the internet as a whole bemoaned the shut down of Gawker by Thiel Really? It's my recollection that most of the communities I'm involved in applauded and relished in the shutdown of Gawker. I do believe there were some tangential worries that meandered around the forest of "freedom of speech"/"-of the press" but as the dust settled I think all parties realized those worries were, as a consensus, ill-informed.
cma 9y ago
They mention RAM and SSD, but forgot to mention the CPU downgrade you get for free from Spectre et. al.
mc32 9y ago
They dabble in the same sorts of "journalism" when it comes to social issues, it's just less detected because often they are emotionally sympathetic, yet, they lack rigor in many of their assertions or simply omit what they don't like.

nindalf 9y ago

Usually these articles at least make a half baked attempt at journalism, but I like how this journalist brazened it out and straight up pasted whatever the PR person sent them. Perhaps a deadline was approaching?

jsmthrowaway 9y ago

Don't broaden and insult journalism by comparing TechCrunch to it. TechCrunch is now a quite obvious press release translation factory, and has been ever since Michael left. This is their bread and butter, and there's nothing wrong with that: PR needs an easy mouthpiece. That doesn't mean this is a journalism-wide problem, or even a problem, if you consume TechCrunch knowing that. Nothing about this article is a broader indictment of your scare quoted "journalism," otherwise you're essentially saying TechCrunch put out PR fluff, boy, the field that includes NYT and The Guardian and ProPublica is just problematic, isn't it?

staplers 9y ago
That doesn't mean this is a journalism-wide problem I've seen headlines like this on every major publication for the the last 5 years (since I started paying attention to topics I am knowledgeable about). Once you become a dedicated expert on a subject, you are enlightened to the journalistic spin of that subject. The topics you are unfamiliar with is where journalism exploits because you cannot dispute it. EDIT: Reply below is constantly changing and being edited and I am shadow-banned from replying to it.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  I know. I've been asked to write press release translations when I wrote for television news, and I've had those write-ups pushed back when I introduced a critical angle (:40 for a VO is not a lot of time to work with). Journalism does not "exploit" anyone, individual publications do, and this article is harmless in the grand scheme of things. Inventing sources, willful misquoting, those sorts of things are journalistic problems. Pushing out an article like this is a willful trade, in that TechCrunch is knowingly blending marketing and blogging at the expense of its integrity and brand, but that does not mean anything about the work that other journalists are doing. My point is that a single publication does not an indictment of an entire field make. You can criticize TechCrunch all you want, and I'd probably agree with you; the quality has decreased significantly, and yellow presser write-thrus are very common now, and it's not even a publication I read. That's the key: it's not a publication that I read, nor that you need to read. They exist independently of the journalism profession as a whole, don't reflect on it, and can disappear without impacting the rest of the landscape. They have a very specific audience. You are not in it. Part of that audience is startup PR, who they actively court because they need the material. With "fake news" and all that, journalism as a profession is under fire. I absolutely hate to see discussions like this that personify journalism as a boogeyman, out to exploit and "get you," based on one yellow presser that is suddenly "the problem with journalism." Stop broadening to attack an entire field of mostly good people based on one publication and/or article you don't like. Imagine if that was tried with literally anything else: imagine if we indicted biosciences based on Theranos ("the problem with genetic testing today") or hedge funds based on Martin Shkreli ("the problem with finance today") or engineering based on Peter Madsen ("the problem with rocketry today") or computer science research based on Uber ("the problem with self-driving today"). There are bad actors in the world, but journalism seems to attract commentary like this, where a bad actor suddenly means the whole field is indictable. That makes absolutely zero sense, and the more I argue against it, the more I'm convinced it's a willful siege by people who know what they're doing.
gboudrias 9y ago
So is this a "No true Scotsman" situation? "Journalist" is not currently a legally protected term. Anyone can be a journalist if they so choose.

tnolet 9y ago

you said it yourself: "journalism"

reaperducer 9y ago

It's not journalism, it's TechCrunch. There is a difference between journalism and blogging. Unfortunately, it's a gap that gets wider each day.

rs999gti 9y ago
> There is a difference between journalism and blogging. Unfortunately, it's a gap that gets wider each day. Really? Because the users on HN, Reddit, and the internet as a whole bemoaned the shut down of Gawker by Thiel, when he went after them for outing him and Hulk Hogan. The whole user base said Thiel was attacking journalism, when all he did was shutdown a gossip blog.
- hbosch 9y ago
  >the internet as a whole bemoaned the shut down of Gawker by Thiel Really? It's my recollection that most of the communities I'm involved in applauded and relished in the shutdown of Gawker. I do believe there were some tangential worries that meandered around the forest of "freedom of speech"/"-of the press" but as the dust settled I think all parties realized those worries were, as a consensus, ill-informed.

cma 9y ago

They mention RAM and SSD, but forgot to mention the CPU downgrade you get for free from Spectre et. al.

mc32 9y ago

They dabble in the same sorts of "journalism" when it comes to social issues, it's just less detected because often they are emotionally sympathetic, yet, they lack rigor in many of their assertions or simply omit what they don't like.