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As someone who has (once) written an opinion piece for the NYT, I wonder how much the published piece resembled the author's original text. My experience: htt
by rossdavidh 8y ago
As someone who has (once) written an opinion piece for the NYT, I wonder how much the published piece resembled the author's original text. My experience: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opinion/ https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...
- lewis500 8y agowow this is brutal. thanks for sharing. I had mused on the idea of pitching them an opinion piece about my field, traffic, but not anymore.
- rossdavidh 8y agoI should say, their check did clear (and I didn't even expect to get paid when I agreed to do it). So there's that.
- iamdave 8y agoI (once) wrote a Sports Illustrated opinion article years ago (similar situation to yours: made a comment on twitter to one of the popular talking heads, talking head took notice and replied, SI took notice, asked me to write something), your experience matched mine from the editing and review standpoint. At first sitting back and reading the suggested edits and changes in place I had a similar first reaction as you did, but after doing the "walk away, do something else and come back to your writing later" thing, I found the opinion was still there though much less verbose. Share that to say, the editorial process itself, even for opinion pieces-is rather....well... opinionated.
- rossdavidh 8y agoVery interesting to hear that. I guess I am not surprised. I felt that my basic opinion was there, but an opinion of theirs had been layered on top, in a very politically-oriented way. I don't know if this was conscious or not.
- iamdave 8y agoI suspect this will be a take that someone is going to have a problem with, or maybe many do-but this is kind of the editor's job. Editorials while probably not the express opinion of the publication you're writing for does need to at least carry enough of an opinion of theme to stay consistent with readers expectations when they pick up $Publication_Weekly$. Would it be nice to see if a publication just decided to run editorials contrary to or perhaps ones that eviscerated a viewpoint or position said publication has been known to hold-and entertain plurality for plurality's sake? Probably. If that's what the readers have come to expect, probably. But as a default condition of running a newspaper? I think senior editors like keeping their jobs too much for that.
- hopler 8y agoThe NYT is called liberal, but more correctly it's pro-establishment/pro-government left-of-American-center. They are personified by the Clinton family, yet are more pro-Bush than say pro-BernieSanders or pro-GaryJohnson. With Trump's alternate-establishment weirdness and the extent polarization of modern US politics, the right wing is rejecting the NYT and thus pushing them farther left to maintain readership by catering to replacement readers.
- scabarott 8y agoThis is astute and quite accurate (imho).
- scabarott 8y agoThis is really fascinating. Had no idea just an HN comment can get you an invitation to write a NYT op-ed. Is this usual? Have you written for a newspaper before or do they randomly source semi-anonymous internet commenters for opinion pieces?
- rossdavidh 8y agoNo, it has never happened to me before (and, I expect, will probably not happen again).
- danieltillett 8y agoI have been through something similar (not with the NYT) with the same result. In fact I can't think of a single news story I have personal knowledge of that came out the media meat grinder showing any resembalance to what went in - pink slime more closely resembles a cow than these stories to the facts.
- rossdavidh 8y agoInteresting, thanks for sharing.
- kirion25 8y agoVery interesting. Did you get feedback from NYT on this page?