10 ms·

5G Got me Fired

410 points by adamrezich 8y ago

newnewpdro 8y ago
This was my first encounter with the term "native advertising", and it's a perfect term for describing the bulk of YouTube content. A welcome addition to my vocabulary.
SamWhited 8y ago
Updated link in the post is broken, here's an internet archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag....
ghaff 8y ago
There's some sort of weird redirect loop going on if you do a Google search and try to go to that link: https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/commentary/363244/the-problem-with-5g https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/com... CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the sorry state of so many long-established tech pubs.
- exikyut 8y ago
  /!\ Working link Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating, two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows the old article. Nice one. Since this'll probably be "fixed", I fed the URL to archive.is: http://archive.is/KbsW8 http://archive.is/KbsW8 [Also, for posterity, the view of the 403: http://archive.is/ggMat http://archive.is/ggMat - thanks to whoever added this]
gukov 8y ago
It appears the Indian edition has also removed the article now.
technologia 8y ago
He raises many good points about the potential downsides of 5G. US telecom corporations are rushing to beat China Telecom companies & South Korean companies to the punch. The US is definitely not going to have the same dominance in 5G that they had with 4G, especially if they take hazardous paths to a nationwide rollout
- brokensegue 8y ago
  Does he raise good points? Reads like FUD to me. You could write basically the same article about wifi
  - yholio 8y ago
    I don't know what was the cause of him getting fired, but he certainly SHOULD be fired for such a sleazy sensationalist piece: > When you do a search for "5G is Safe" on Google and Bing, you get a number of negative stories and a laundry list of why some people believe it's unsafe. Companies may as well begin to market a 5G mobile phone with a skull and crossbones on it. Really, the entirety of his journalistic research is a Google search that somehow justifies him to reproduce conspiracy theories as facts? Technology similar to 5G "has been already weaponized"? Good riddance.
    - xevb3k 8y ago
      I guess we read the article differently. Because he didn’t seem to be saying 5G was dangerous, more that this was the public perception, and that vendors are doing little to manage the PR around this.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        If that's the intent, it's poorly written. It's fine to observe that search results pop up a lot of pieces and discussions about 5G health concerns. And those may lead to adoption problems whether they're true or not. But if you're writing a good column, even though it is an opinion piece, you should probably then point out things like: XYZ studies dispute these health effects and that these sort of concerns have been brought up with pretty much every new radio technology. If you just say there's a bunch of scary information out there (without even pointing to anything specific), you leave the impression that there's likely some truth in all of it. Dvorak at least was a pretty high profile tech columnist. But he's tended toward a clickbait style even before there were links to click on.
Barrin92 8y ago
>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadcasting networks and most of the major newspapers including the New York Times. Are the writers saying nice things or are they paid to say nice things? I think we quickly need changes in the way we handle native advertising. It is hugely problematic and basically predatory. I believe that there are ways to genuinely advertise if the advertisement is openly disclosed and the ad is informative, but native advertising is essentially just a sophisticated and insidious form of manipulation. It turns readers into non-consenting consumers and the purpose of journalism from informing truthfully to a sales pitch. I have trouble imagining that many people think this is tolerable if we'd be debating it openly and brought it to the forefront of the news (which ironically is not going to happen).
- dev_dull 8y ago
  I don’t think there’s any change needed. Why prop up the status quo with bureaucracy? Mainstream media was shedding eyes and under scrutiny well before “fake news”. Let MSM die its slow death while new and better services make their debut.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Mainstream media had what was called the “Chinese wall” between the ad business and the newsroom. For a sales guy to even speak with an editor would be highly inappropriate. It wasn’t perfect, but exceptions would have at least violated social and professional norms with rank and file journalism school graduates. Alternative media (like what the corpses of the old mainstream press have become) don’t even pretend to have that sort of discipline. Their funding model is to promote an individual, business, or political agenda, straight up. On this one, I mourn the loss of the traditional press.
  - WalterGR 8y ago
    Please define mainstream media. Are you using it in the right-wing sense of “media that isn’t our personal hagiographers”? > Mainstream media was shedding eyes News has been “shedding” paid subscribers. Shedding eyes? Citation needed. > and under scrutiny By who?
desireco42 8y ago
This is John C Dvorak style. I guess if they don't like it, they had to fire him. But, if this gets you fired, how can you write about anything. I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer. Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being branded as new 5G and being always connected.
- dboreham 8y ago
  There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans widely. Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject. Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.
  - pyre 8y ago
    > I'm fine with anything non-ionizing Marie Curie was also fine with working with Radium... until we found out that it wasn't good for you. The thing about stuff like cancers is that it's really difficult to say "this person's cancer was caused by X." The best we can do are wide spectrum studies about cancer rates, and try to use statistics to limit the variables.
ghaff 8y ago
With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireless-rekindles-fight-over-cellular-health-risks https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles... (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot theory land. That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  5g affecting health isn't crackpot theory?
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Unknown. There is an impressive-looking group of credentials behind a petition[1] to halt 5G rollouts in the EU until more research can be done. The science just isn't settled yet, partly because doing a rigorous controlled trial in real world conditions is just about impossible. Keep in mind it's not just about cancer, it's any health effect of any kind. The nature of the shorter wavelengths of 5G means that more transmit power and/or more transmitters to cover the same area will be required, so we can't necessarily take what we know about the current bands and assume these are equally safe. Too many confounding factors. There's an excellent writeup from Vox on the state of the science. It's a mess, to put it lightly. [2] [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17067214/cellphone-cancer-5g-evidence-studies https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17067214/cellphone-cancer-5g-e...
    - microtherion 8y ago
      Any name in particular you consider impressive? I don't know anybody on that list, but see several people associated with "electrosensitivity" organizations, which I don't associate with high quality science.
randall 8y ago
Dvorak is a troll. I could go show the reasons, but he's all about saying inflammatory things (mostly at apple fans) and getting them to buy magazines / click things. This is a continuation in that trend, but may or may not be true.
- adamrezich 8y ago
  Dvorak has been known to troll but when you write a typical Dvorak-tier skeptical piece on 5G then new management fires you and suddenly your 5G-skeptical piece has been replaced by a pro-5G piece, I don't see how you can reach any conclusion other than the same one he did in this post. Did you even read the post?
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Especially since they presented demonstrably false pretenses in their notice to him as to why he was being let go.
  - randall 8y ago
    I guess to be eat my comment was intended as a "good riddance" regardless of the truth of his firing. Clearly with you I failed to deliver that message, so sorry about that.
- shard972 8y ago
  Well you will be happy now because he now writes for nobody except the NoAgenda newsletter since this was his last job.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
chx 8y ago
One of my favorite computer articles of all time is also written by Mr Dvorak: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp
- ghaff 8y ago
  It's mostly nonsense though. Itanium ended up being a bad bet for Intel and HP but both companies mostly just moved on with Xeon. Intel's worse bet was on x86 in mobile.
- Volt 8y ago
  Why?
davidmr 8y ago
Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the head? I don't buy it.
- ghaff 8y ago
  It's entirely possible that this not very good column was some sort of final straw and there's some history we don't know leading up to it. The story as told still seems very odd but, of course, we're only hearing one side of it.
- HBlix 8y ago
  On the upside, if Dvorak thought 5G was crap, then it’s practically guaranteed to be a fantastic and successful technology.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Not that I read the article that was removed, but in this he said he wasn't even that critical himself, just pointing towards all the other critical articles and noting they need to fix whatever is causing them to be written.
    - utopcell 8y ago
      So the jury is still out for 5G, not a guaranteed success ?
    - makomk 8y ago
busterarm 8y ago
I did post about this in the other thread and folks piled on calling me a conspiracy theorist, but in the letter JCD received from his editor, they said they were shutting down all outside columns. This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while continuing to have articles published.
- ghaff 8y ago
  In my personal experience though, ending these sorts of outside contracts with a half-truth in the vein of "the organization has decided to make a change" isn't remotely unusual. It's entirely possible that PC Mag decided to prune their outside contributors to a core group and perhaps change their relationship somewhat with the remaining ones. Is it disingenuous, especially with someone who has been working for you in some form for a very long time? Sure. But I've seen a number of online pubs that go through changes with their outside contributors and communication is mostly pretty poor.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    The still retain outside columnists. The PC Mag editor straight up lied.
bArray 8y ago
>Addendum — the original 5G column is still up in India! Click here. Then the dreaded "403 Not allowed". Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.c...
- basicplus2 8y ago
  Thanks for that! Here's the critical bit... <I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves (30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs serious research. Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defense.gov/About/Frequently-Asked-Questions/Active-Denial-System-FAQs/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defe... These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work.>
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    Aren't the frequencies regulated by the FCC? Why should industry bear the burden of proving something safe that the government has already approved? It's not the world I like, but it's the one we're in. Edit: just realized I missed where the quote ended. My question remains, though I suppose patent isn't really who I meant to ask.
  - pmontra 8y ago
    The 5G frequencies are listed at https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/ https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/
- iofiiiiiiiii 8y ago
  Wow okay that article is trash with little substance. I would also not want such articles in my publications.
bunnycorn 8y ago
John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong. He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one. Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple. He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc. etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date). There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech. Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to go.
- brandonmenc 8y ago
  > "There is no evidence that people want to use these things." He was correct - there was no evidence, at the time, that people wanted to use a mouse. Also, obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg
  - bunnycorn 8y ago
    In 1984 people didn't knew if they wanted or didn't want to use a mouse. Most people didn't even used PCs, much less the extremely expensive machines that had a real GUI and some software to try it out. But it's the job of a journalist, specifically a columnist, to be above the average Joe.
    - brandonmenc 8y ago
      Dvorak is a cranky opinion columnist. He always has been. That's his schtick, and he's never tried to hide that.
      - 8y ago
wincseschwab 8y ago
Whatever the case, the independent voice cannot exist in this corrupt milieu and be truly independent. Take notice, by now, the same is also true for HN comment threads. Party lines and happy thoughts only.
cvs268 8y ago
Atleast we now know that the "PC" in "PC Magazine" now stands for "Politically Correct". Everything now needs to be neutered down without offending anyone, especially any groups with deep pockets.
lettergram 8y ago
As far as I can tell, it's almost as if the vast majority of articles on the web are native ads. When the regular article writers have to compete against the native ads to get views on their content... they really don't have a choice. Native ads are presented as stock market news, the NYT publishes it regularly, really what's the point... Figured I'd even start doing it on my blog (mostly a joke): https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/ https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/ Fact is, it's the new world we live in. Just like I may pay for cable and I get ads; I can pay for the NYT and their content is nothing more than an ad.
DLA 8y ago
I _really_ wish posts to Medium would indicate if its a story that hits agains the Preview Member stories.

410 points by adamrezich 8y ago

This was my first encounter with the term "native advertising", and it's a perfect term for describing the bulk of YouTube content. A welcome addition to my vocabulary.

SamWhited 8y ago

Updated link in the post is broken, here's an internet archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g https://web.archive.org/web/20180911200355/https://in.pcmag....

ghaff 8y ago

There's some sort of weird redirect loop going on if you do a Google search and try to go to that link: https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/commentary/363244/the-problem-with-5g https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5gpcmag.com/com... CMS problems aren't exactly uncommon. But he was apparently fired and, absent a big backstory of which people are unaware, it's bizarre at the least to fire someone with such a long tenure without any explanation. Regardless of the sorry state of so many long-established tech pubs.

exikyut 8y ago
/!\ Working link Thanks for this! The in.pcmag.com link to Indian PC Mag shows a very suspicious 403 error now (not even a 404). But yours works. It's fascinating, two pcmag.com links back to back somehow confuses the CMS's router and shows the old article. Nice one. Since this'll probably be "fixed", I fed the URL to archive.is: http://archive.is/KbsW8 http://archive.is/KbsW8 [Also, for posterity, the view of the 403: http://archive.is/ggMat http://archive.is/ggMat - thanks to whoever added this]

gukov 8y ago

It appears the Indian edition has also removed the article now.

technologia 8y ago

He raises many good points about the potential downsides of 5G. US telecom corporations are rushing to beat China Telecom companies & South Korean companies to the punch. The US is definitely not going to have the same dominance in 5G that they had with 4G, especially if they take hazardous paths to a nationwide rollout

brokensegue 8y ago
Does he raise good points? Reads like FUD to me. You could write basically the same article about wifi
- yholio 8y ago
  I don't know what was the cause of him getting fired, but he certainly SHOULD be fired for such a sleazy sensationalist piece: > When you do a search for "5G is Safe" on Google and Bing, you get a number of negative stories and a laundry list of why some people believe it's unsafe. Companies may as well begin to market a 5G mobile phone with a skull and crossbones on it. Really, the entirety of his journalistic research is a Google search that somehow justifies him to reproduce conspiracy theories as facts? Technology similar to 5G "has been already weaponized"? Good riddance.
  - xevb3k 8y ago
    I guess we read the article differently. Because he didn’t seem to be saying 5G was dangerous, more that this was the public perception, and that vendors are doing little to manage the PR around this.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      If that's the intent, it's poorly written. It's fine to observe that search results pop up a lot of pieces and discussions about 5G health concerns. And those may lead to adoption problems whether they're true or not. But if you're writing a good column, even though it is an opinion piece, you should probably then point out things like: XYZ studies dispute these health effects and that these sort of concerns have been brought up with pretty much every new radio technology. If you just say there's a bunch of scary information out there (without even pointing to anything specific), you leave the impression that there's likely some truth in all of it. Dvorak at least was a pretty high profile tech columnist. But he's tended toward a clickbait style even before there were links to click on.

Barrin92 8y ago

>This is a cautionary tale. Anyone writing for any publisher in today’s commercial market, where the managed advertorial and native ad seems to be the only way to make money, needs to be cautious. More importantly today’s readers need to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. Native advertising is a most insidious concept and should be rejected by every publisher. Instead it is welcomed by the broadcasting networks and most of the major newspapers including the New York Times. Are the writers saying nice things or are they paid to say nice things? I think we quickly need changes in the way we handle native advertising. It is hugely problematic and basically predatory. I believe that there are ways to genuinely advertise if the advertisement is openly disclosed and the ad is informative, but native advertising is essentially just a sophisticated and insidious form of manipulation. It turns readers into non-consenting consumers and the purpose of journalism from informing truthfully to a sales pitch. I have trouble imagining that many people think this is tolerable if we'd be debating it openly and brought it to the forefront of the news (which ironically is not going to happen).

dev_dull 8y ago
I don’t think there’s any change needed. Why prop up the status quo with bureaucracy? Mainstream media was shedding eyes and under scrutiny well before “fake news”. Let MSM die its slow death while new and better services make their debut.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Mainstream media had what was called the “Chinese wall” between the ad business and the newsroom. For a sales guy to even speak with an editor would be highly inappropriate. It wasn’t perfect, but exceptions would have at least violated social and professional norms with rank and file journalism school graduates. Alternative media (like what the corpses of the old mainstream press have become) don’t even pretend to have that sort of discipline. Their funding model is to promote an individual, business, or political agenda, straight up. On this one, I mourn the loss of the traditional press.
- WalterGR 8y ago
  Please define mainstream media. Are you using it in the right-wing sense of “media that isn’t our personal hagiographers”? > Mainstream media was shedding eyes News has been “shedding” paid subscribers. Shedding eyes? Citation needed. > and under scrutiny By who?

desireco42 8y ago

This is John C Dvorak style. I guess if they don't like it, they had to fire him. But, if this gets you fired, how can you write about anything. I hope he gets hired quickly somewhere much nicer. Really concerned about 5G now that I connected the dots. I don't mind 4G being branded as new 5G and being always connected.

dboreham 8y ago
There's already loads of millimeter wavelength gear deployed : P2P links between buildings; TSA machines at airports. So..although some caution is of course appropriate, it isn't like this stuff isn't already irradiating humans widely. Disclosure : based on my understanding of EM radiation as an EE and person who deploys microwave gear around my own house, I'm fine with anything non-ionizing. I'd like to see the general public more educated on this subject. Obfuscation is not in anyone's interest.
- pyre 8y ago
  > I'm fine with anything non-ionizing Marie Curie was also fine with working with Radium... until we found out that it wasn't good for you. The thing about stuff like cancers is that it's really difficult to say "this person's cancer was caused by X." The best we can do are wide spectrum studies about cancer rates, and try to use statistics to limit the variables.

ghaff 8y ago

With respect to the actual post, the issue has come up, e.g. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireless-rekindles-fight-over-cellular-health-risks https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pa8bpk/5g-wireles... (And, yeah, Marin County.) Even if it represents a minority viewpoint, 5G health concerns aren't quite crackpot theory land. That said, column seems more than a bit sensationalistic and one-sided --but not really all that different from many things that Dvorak has written over the years.

dwaltrip 8y ago
5g affecting health isn't crackpot theory?
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Unknown. There is an impressive-looking group of credentials behind a petition[1] to halt 5G rollouts in the EU until more research can be done. The science just isn't settled yet, partly because doing a rigorous controlled trial in real world conditions is just about impossible. Keep in mind it's not just about cancer, it's any health effect of any kind. The nature of the shorter wavelengths of 5G means that more transmit power and/or more transmitters to cover the same area will be required, so we can't necessarily take what we know about the current bands and assume these are equally safe. Too many confounding factors. There's an excellent writeup from Vox on the state of the science. It's a mess, to put it lightly. [2] [1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B14R6QNkmaXuelFrNWRQcThNV0U... [2]: https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17067214/cellphone-cancer-5g-evidence-studies https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17067214/cellphone-cancer-5g-e...
  - microtherion 8y ago
    Any name in particular you consider impressive? I don't know anybody on that list, but see several people associated with "electrosensitivity" organizations, which I don't associate with high quality science.

randall 8y ago

Dvorak is a troll. I could go show the reasons, but he's all about saying inflammatory things (mostly at apple fans) and getting them to buy magazines / click things. This is a continuation in that trend, but may or may not be true.

adamrezich 8y ago
Dvorak has been known to troll but when you write a typical Dvorak-tier skeptical piece on 5G then new management fires you and suddenly your 5G-skeptical piece has been replaced by a pro-5G piece, I don't see how you can reach any conclusion other than the same one he did in this post. Did you even read the post?
- busterarm 8y ago
  Especially since they presented demonstrably false pretenses in their notice to him as to why he was being let go.
- randall 8y ago
  I guess to be eat my comment was intended as a "good riddance" regardless of the truth of his firing. Clearly with you I failed to deliver that message, so sorry about that.
shard972 8y ago
Well you will be happy now because he now writes for nobody except the NoAgenda newsletter since this was his last job.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

chx 8y ago

One of my favorite computer articles of all time is also written by Mr Dvorak: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2339629,00.asp

ghaff 8y ago
It's mostly nonsense though. Itanium ended up being a bad bet for Intel and HP but both companies mostly just moved on with Xeon. Intel's worse bet was on x86 in mobile.
Volt 8y ago
Why?

davidmr 8y ago

Am I missing something? He says PC Magazine fired him because he was critical of his 5G article and that rankled the magazine's sponsors. Who specifically are the sponsors he's thinking of? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is what happened? So they linked his article about 5G to a different one. Why does that mean he was fired for writing the article? I feel like an application of Hanlon's Razor (not quite right, but I don't know of someone else's who fits the situation better) is called for. Is it more likely the editors thought his article sucked and used their editorial discretion to redirect his 5G article to a different one or that there was a conspiracy between his advertisers and the magazine's management to fire a guy who's been wrong on just about everything for the last 30 years because he hit the nail too close to the head? I don't buy it.

ghaff 8y ago
It's entirely possible that this not very good column was some sort of final straw and there's some history we don't know leading up to it. The story as told still seems very odd but, of course, we're only hearing one side of it.
HBlix 8y ago
On the upside, if Dvorak thought 5G was crap, then it’s practically guaranteed to be a fantastic and successful technology.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Not that I read the article that was removed, but in this he said he wasn't even that critical himself, just pointing towards all the other critical articles and noting they need to fix whatever is causing them to be written.
  - utopcell 8y ago
    So the jury is still out for 5G, not a guaranteed success ?
  - makomk 8y ago

busterarm 8y ago

I did post about this in the other thread and folks piled on calling me a conspiracy theorist, but in the letter JCD received from his editor, they said they were shutting down all outside columns. This is in fact not true -- other columns have continued since then and some other columnists have had the title listed in their author bios changed while continuing to have articles published.

ghaff 8y ago
In my personal experience though, ending these sorts of outside contracts with a half-truth in the vein of "the organization has decided to make a change" isn't remotely unusual. It's entirely possible that PC Mag decided to prune their outside contributors to a core group and perhaps change their relationship somewhat with the remaining ones. Is it disingenuous, especially with someone who has been working for you in some form for a very long time? Sure. But I've seen a number of online pubs that go through changes with their outside contributors and communication is mostly pretty poor.
- busterarm 8y ago
  The still retain outside columnists. The PC Mag editor straight up lied.

bArray 8y ago

>Addendum — the original 5G column is still up in India! Click here. Then the dreaded "403 Not allowed". Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g http://web.archive.org/web/20180913212959/https://in.pcmag.c...

basicplus2 8y ago
Thanks for that! Here's the critical bit... <I'm not saying this because the technology does not work. It's a bad bet because so little is known about the effects of millimeter waves (30GHz-300GHz). While these frequencies only permeate a small fraction of the human epidermis (the skin), the effect on the cornea, in particular, needs serious research. Because the industry is too cheap to study the health effects of the technology itself, it lets this sort of product out the door despite the fact that it has already been weaponized by the military http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defense.gov/About/Frequently-Asked-Questions/Active-Denial-System-FAQs/ http://web.archive.org/web/20180930061356/https://jnlwp.defe... These frequencies are so poor at travelling long distances, they need a transmitter on nearly every telephone pole and light pole to make 5G work.>
- zdragnar 8y ago
  Aren't the frequencies regulated by the FCC? Why should industry bear the burden of proving something safe that the government has already approved? It's not the world I like, but it's the one we're in. Edit: just realized I missed where the quote ended. My question remains, though I suppose patent isn't really who I meant to ask.
- pmontra 8y ago
  The 5G frequencies are listed at https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/ https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/
iofiiiiiiiii 8y ago
Wow okay that article is trash with little substance. I would also not want such articles in my publications.

bunnycorn 8y ago

John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong. He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one. Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple. He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc. etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date). There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech. Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to go.

brandonmenc 8y ago
> "There is no evidence that people want to use these things." He was correct - there was no evidence, at the time, that people wanted to use a mouse. Also, obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg
- bunnycorn 8y ago
  In 1984 people didn't knew if they wanted or didn't want to use a mouse. Most people didn't even used PCs, much less the extremely expensive machines that had a real GUI and some software to try it out. But it's the job of a journalist, specifically a columnist, to be above the average Joe.
  - brandonmenc 8y ago
    Dvorak is a cranky opinion columnist. He always has been. That's his schtick, and he's never tried to hide that.
    - 8y ago

wincseschwab 8y ago

Whatever the case, the independent voice cannot exist in this corrupt milieu and be truly independent. Take notice, by now, the same is also true for HN comment threads. Party lines and happy thoughts only.

cvs268 8y ago

Atleast we now know that the "PC" in "PC Magazine" now stands for "Politically Correct". Everything now needs to be neutered down without offending anyone, especially any groups with deep pockets.

lettergram 8y ago

As far as I can tell, it's almost as if the vast majority of articles on the web are native ads. When the regular article writers have to compete against the native ads to get views on their content... they really don't have a choice. Native ads are presented as stock market news, the NYT publishes it regularly, really what's the point... Figured I'd even start doing it on my blog (mostly a joke): https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/ https://austingwalters.com/mainstream-news-is-awful/ Fact is, it's the new world we live in. Just like I may pay for cable and I get ads; I can pay for the NYT and their content is nothing more than an ad.

DLA 8y ago

I _really_ wish posts to Medium would indicate if its a story that hits agains the Preview Member stories.