5 ms·

I don't get it. Scott's response very clearly lays out the ways in which the NYT article was misleading--so clearly that it seems obvious that it was intention

by mawise 6y ago

I don't get it. Scott's response very clearly lays out the ways in which the NYT article was misleading--so clearly that it seems obvious that it was intentionally misleading. But to what end? What are the motivations driving NYT to try and create these poor associations with Scott and his writing? It seems a poor and short-sighted motivation for them to do this out of "revenge" for the bad press they got from the situation, it feels like there has to be something else going on here.

sjg007 6y ago
The only way to resolve the dissonance is to read Scott's work and the NYTimes article and see if they are talking about the same thing. Looks for things taken out of context, look for discussion at different levels etc...
fortran77 6y ago
It was misleading and unfair. But to understand it, you have to imagine yourself as a young, woke, sheltered person who went to a top private high school, a top college, and then got an internship and a job writing at the NY Times. To these people, there's only one correct world-view and anyone who even questions it, or thinks some truths are nuanced, is evil.
Cladode 6y ago
Rage clicks pay, shallow dismissals are easy to produce -- no time-consuming investigative journalism necessary. Most important perhaps is that new media like Substack are in direct competition with traditional newpapers like the NYT. Coase's great insight (in: The Nature of the Firm, 1937) was that firms exist in order to reap economies of scale. Traditional newspapers reaped economies of scale from printing, paper distribution, subscriber and advertiser management. Essentially all of this is gone. What modern newspaper scale on is branding, and and selling influence, but this is in direct contradiction with strong journalists' interest (who do not like to be told by their editors what to write and how). Until recently, top journalists could not go alone, since they lacked the expertise to handle monetisation of their writing. This changed with the likes of Substack, which centralises (automates) subscriber management, and technical infrastructure, but without editorship. Hence, top writers are increasingly moving away from traditional newspapers to something like Substack, with Greenwald and Scott Siskind being two high-profile examples. They won't be the last. Newspapers see the writing on the wall and fight back.
- snewman 6y ago
  I take your point with regard to the economic incentives at play. But at the end of the day, it seems likely that the net effect of this article will be to drive more readers to the new Subspace blog? (A sort of Streisand effect.)
  - Cladode 6y ago
    That is likely to be the case. However the performance metrics that the authors are being evaluated on (like clicks, retweets, word-count) are unlikely to include hard-to-measure long-term effects like Streisand. I think we are seeing a wounded animal's fight for survival ....
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  >What modern newspaper scale on is branding Things like integrity and trust matter more than ever, so the idea that newspapers would jeopardize that to get back at a somewhat meaningless scoop is pathetic. The time will soon come when we cannot trust anything we don't see with our own eyes, and we will then need to have a web of trust with reliable sources. Newspapers can still capitalize on being a source of trust and truth, if they don't fuck it up. Of course, the NYT is still pretty reliable on citations of fact, even if their slant is worse than it should be.
- mawise 6y ago
  I don't know, the more I think about it the less sense it makes. I wonder if we can apply Hanlon's Razor[1] and say it was just a poorly researched article. If the author did some brief googling for things people have said about Scott and his blog, they'll find other people who have quoted him out of context. For the example of "feminists are voldemort", Scott did mention that he's been quoted out of context lots of times on that line so it should show up lots of time on the internet. It might have been a sloppy re-quote instead of original research. Maybe it wasn't so much a hit-piece as a reflection of the easy-to-find popular trends of discussion about Scott's writing. In that case the NYT piece was very irresponsible, but not really malicious. Part of the reason I'm leading this way is because and the end of the day, Scott just doesn't seem important enough to the NYT to focus on for a hit piece. And even then it reads more like a condemnation of SV tech culture than it does as a condemnation of Scott (however unfair it was to him). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
manfredo 6y ago
I have concluded that there's a fundamental conflict of interest between "mainstream" media like the New York Times and tech companies and people related to them. The former and the latter are competitors in the attention economy, and this manifests in substantial negative bias. I have observed this since the mid 2010s at least.
closeparen 6y ago
“Look at the evil ideas that people in the tech community are flirting with” is one more argument towards NYT’s overarching thesis that Tech is too powerful, doesn’t deserve its power, and must be smacked down.
Lammy 6y ago
Any potential community nexus that encourages sub-group-solidarity and class-unity is a threat to TPTB who maintain their power by encouraging us to view each other as potential threats to our various cultural/ethnic/gender/sexual/etc identities. It's Playstation-vs-Xbox playground mindset on a global scale. Ordo ab Chao.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by mawise 6y ago

sjg007 6y ago

The only way to resolve the dissonance is to read Scott's work and the NYTimes article and see if they are talking about the same thing. Looks for things taken out of context, look for discussion at different levels etc...

fortran77 6y ago

It was misleading and unfair. But to understand it, you have to imagine yourself as a young, woke, sheltered person who went to a top private high school, a top college, and then got an internship and a job writing at the NY Times. To these people, there's only one correct world-view and anyone who even questions it, or thinks some truths are nuanced, is evil.

Cladode 6y ago

Rage clicks pay, shallow dismissals are easy to produce -- no time-consuming investigative journalism necessary. Most important perhaps is that new media like Substack are in direct competition with traditional newpapers like the NYT. Coase's great insight (in: The Nature of the Firm, 1937) was that firms exist in order to reap economies of scale. Traditional newspapers reaped economies of scale from printing, paper distribution, subscriber and advertiser management. Essentially all of this is gone. What modern newspaper scale on is branding, and and selling influence, but this is in direct contradiction with strong journalists' interest (who do not like to be told by their editors what to write and how). Until recently, top journalists could not go alone, since they lacked the expertise to handle monetisation of their writing. This changed with the likes of Substack, which centralises (automates) subscriber management, and technical infrastructure, but without editorship. Hence, top writers are increasingly moving away from traditional newspapers to something like Substack, with Greenwald and Scott Siskind being two high-profile examples. They won't be the last. Newspapers see the writing on the wall and fight back.

snewman 6y ago
I take your point with regard to the economic incentives at play. But at the end of the day, it seems likely that the net effect of this article will be to drive more readers to the new Subspace blog? (A sort of Streisand effect.)
- Cladode 6y ago
  That is likely to be the case. However the performance metrics that the authors are being evaluated on (like clicks, retweets, word-count) are unlikely to include hard-to-measure long-term effects like Streisand. I think we are seeing a wounded animal's fight for survival ....
unethical_ban 6y ago
>What modern newspaper scale on is branding Things like integrity and trust matter more than ever, so the idea that newspapers would jeopardize that to get back at a somewhat meaningless scoop is pathetic. The time will soon come when we cannot trust anything we don't see with our own eyes, and we will then need to have a web of trust with reliable sources. Newspapers can still capitalize on being a source of trust and truth, if they don't fuck it up. Of course, the NYT is still pretty reliable on citations of fact, even if their slant is worse than it should be.
mawise 6y ago
I don't know, the more I think about it the less sense it makes. I wonder if we can apply Hanlon's Razor[1] and say it was just a poorly researched article. If the author did some brief googling for things people have said about Scott and his blog, they'll find other people who have quoted him out of context. For the example of "feminists are voldemort", Scott did mention that he's been quoted out of context lots of times on that line so it should show up lots of time on the internet. It might have been a sloppy re-quote instead of original research. Maybe it wasn't so much a hit-piece as a reflection of the easy-to-find popular trends of discussion about Scott's writing. In that case the NYT piece was very irresponsible, but not really malicious. Part of the reason I'm leading this way is because and the end of the day, Scott just doesn't seem important enough to the NYT to focus on for a hit piece. And even then it reads more like a condemnation of SV tech culture than it does as a condemnation of Scott (however unfair it was to him). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

manfredo 6y ago

I have concluded that there's a fundamental conflict of interest between "mainstream" media like the New York Times and tech companies and people related to them. The former and the latter are competitors in the attention economy, and this manifests in substantial negative bias. I have observed this since the mid 2010s at least.

closeparen 6y ago

“Look at the evil ideas that people in the tech community are flirting with” is one more argument towards NYT’s overarching thesis that Tech is too powerful, doesn’t deserve its power, and must be smacked down.

Lammy 6y ago

Any potential community nexus that encourages sub-group-solidarity and class-unity is a threat to TPTB who maintain their power by encouraging us to view each other as potential threats to our various cultural/ethnic/gender/sexual/etc identities. It's Playstation-vs-Xbox playground mindset on a global scale. Ordo ab Chao.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]