3 ms·

Not sure how your team is doing code-reviews, but they shouldn't be changing the message of the PR, rather just help clean it up.

tmotwu 6y ago
It's misleading to say the editor was asking to change the message. The opposite: it's clear to me Greenwald did not clearly communicate the intended narrative of his piece, so the editors thought the article lacked focus. It's like telling Greenwald, hey you added functionality that was not originally part of the design doc. That's fine and all but now test coverage is diminished. Heres a few tests to consider so you could strengthen the robustness of the code. To say editors were overstepping their bounds is silly. Greenwald went on a morning show yesterday morning. He admits his journalistic philosophy is unconventional; he started off as a blog and was recruited into media. That's fine. I build a few side projects in my free time and I love it because there's so much freedom on how to structure your code. Greenwald feels the same way about writing his pieces, so he will feel right at home in the blogger universe.
- neilsense 6y ago
  If you read the Matt Taibbi piece about the resignation, there is additional email/slack evidence that shows he both described the piece accurately and he was raising concerns about the process.
- thu2111 6y ago
  The emails are pretty clear, e.g. this part "Overall I think this piece can work best if it is significantly narrowed down to what you first discussed with Betsy" The changes requested are "significant". "I do think you should treat the origin story of the hard drive – that it came from the Delaware repair store – with a bit more skepticism. It’s true that nothing has emerged yet to significantly undermine it, but it remains a very strange story surrounded by many unanswered questions." That is a clear request to change the message, whilst admitting there is not much grounds on which to make the request - not mere wordsmithing.
  - tmotwu 6y ago
    "narrowed down to what you first discussed with Betsy" My post addresses this at the start, which is why I construed the analogy as such to reflect the editor's requests. Greenwald's article is fine. But I don't think the editorial followups are unprecedented or objectionable from the perspective of your typical run of the mill engineering practices. If Greenwald is uncomfortable with collaborating with editors, he may return to his life as an independent journalist, as he has done so.
  - hluska 6y ago
    This is a good comment though I'll disagree with your last sentence. I don't think that the hard drive's genesis story is all that out of bounds for this article - the story is absolutely wacky and served as grounds for some highly qualified people to call this a disinformation campaign. From there, Greenwald could have taken the other editor's suggestion and included coverage on how few media outlets have the hard drive and how they are using that to justify not covering the story. At that point, you've got some interesting conclusions: 1.) The Biden family has never denied much of anything. 2.) Hunter Biden does not look very good and his future business dealings should face much more scrutiny, particularly if his father wins the election. 3.) If this is a Russian disinformation campaign, it's not a very good one (back to point #1). 4.) What does all of this say about the state of the media? 1 - 3 are a story yet all we hear are crickets. Is that because the career of journalism is so fucked up that it's hard to get good writers to cover a subject unless they can find an exclusive angle? Is this because the business model of journalism is such that if you can't guarantee millions and millions of page views, you can't justify allocating resources towards actual investigative journalism?? Or is this pure bias???

tmotwu 6y ago

It's misleading to say the editor was asking to change the message. The opposite: it's clear to me Greenwald did not clearly communicate the intended narrative of his piece, so the editors thought the article lacked focus. It's like telling Greenwald, hey you added functionality that was not originally part of the design doc. That's fine and all but now test coverage is diminished. Heres a few tests to consider so you could strengthen the robustness of the code. To say editors were overstepping their bounds is silly. Greenwald went on a morning show yesterday morning. He admits his journalistic philosophy is unconventional; he started off as a blog and was recruited into media. That's fine. I build a few side projects in my free time and I love it because there's so much freedom on how to structure your code. Greenwald feels the same way about writing his pieces, so he will feel right at home in the blogger universe.

neilsense 6y ago
If you read the Matt Taibbi piece about the resignation, there is additional email/slack evidence that shows he both described the piece accurately and he was raising concerns about the process.
thu2111 6y ago
The emails are pretty clear, e.g. this part "Overall I think this piece can work best if it is significantly narrowed down to what you first discussed with Betsy" The changes requested are "significant". "I do think you should treat the origin story of the hard drive – that it came from the Delaware repair store – with a bit more skepticism. It’s true that nothing has emerged yet to significantly undermine it, but it remains a very strange story surrounded by many unanswered questions." That is a clear request to change the message, whilst admitting there is not much grounds on which to make the request - not mere wordsmithing.
- tmotwu 6y ago
  "narrowed down to what you first discussed with Betsy" My post addresses this at the start, which is why I construed the analogy as such to reflect the editor's requests. Greenwald's article is fine. But I don't think the editorial followups are unprecedented or objectionable from the perspective of your typical run of the mill engineering practices. If Greenwald is uncomfortable with collaborating with editors, he may return to his life as an independent journalist, as he has done so.
- hluska 6y ago
  This is a good comment though I'll disagree with your last sentence. I don't think that the hard drive's genesis story is all that out of bounds for this article - the story is absolutely wacky and served as grounds for some highly qualified people to call this a disinformation campaign. From there, Greenwald could have taken the other editor's suggestion and included coverage on how few media outlets have the hard drive and how they are using that to justify not covering the story. At that point, you've got some interesting conclusions: 1.) The Biden family has never denied much of anything. 2.) Hunter Biden does not look very good and his future business dealings should face much more scrutiny, particularly if his father wins the election. 3.) If this is a Russian disinformation campaign, it's not a very good one (back to point #1). 4.) What does all of this say about the state of the media? 1 - 3 are a story yet all we hear are crickets. Is that because the career of journalism is so fucked up that it's hard to get good writers to cover a subject unless they can find an exclusive angle? Is this because the business model of journalism is such that if you can't guarantee millions and millions of page views, you can't justify allocating resources towards actual investigative journalism?? Or is this pure bias???