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If I was writing a blog post about an online persona and they requested that I not use their real life name due to fear of job loss or violence, and their given
by JamesBarney 6y ago
If I was writing a blog post about an online persona and they requested that I not use their real life name due to fear of job loss or violence, and their given name added no journalistic value to the piece, I'd be a real dick to print their name anyway.
I don't think anyone at the NYT intended to cause him any harm, but organizationally they acted like a dick.
- tptacek 6y agoIt's your last predicate there, about "journalistic value", that the whole debate take place within. Further: the NYT will studiously refer to Lana Wachowski as Lana, and not Larry, because deadnaming people is a dick move. But the NYT does not avoid pointing out that Lana used to be named Larry.
- JamesBarney 6y agoI don't see any "journalistic value" in linking Scott Siskind to Scott Alexander. I don't remember anyone at the NYT or elsewhere arguing there was any value. (Plenty of publications posted about the incident without dropping his irl name). Do you think there was journalistic value in linking the two in this instance?
- tptacek 6y agoThe key word in the sentence "I don't see any journalistic value in linking Scott Siskind to Scott Alexander" is "I". But it's also an easy argument to knock down: he wrote other stuff under his real name. It's valuable to know there's a link between those writings and the writings he chooses to surface today.
- JamesBarney 6y agoUnless there are some of his writing I'm not familiar with, he's written under Yvain, Squid, shireoth(sp?) and he's published a journal article under his real name. Having written something online under your real name is a bar that is so low that effectively everyone meets it.