4 ms·

Wirecutter Union Is Striking

25 points by awiesenhofer 5y ago

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> But Wirecutter was always treated as a second-class citizen, isolated in its own Slack, its own offices, and its own reporting structure I understand where they're coming from and don't doubt their complaints, but it's interesting to see this framed as a negative: When I've gone through acquisitions before, being pulled into the parent company's Slack, offices, and reporting structures was always the exact tipping point where the job went from great to terrible. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Wirecutter is such a strange situation to watch from the outside because they've steadily declined in quality over the past few years. At this point I skip the article and scroll the comments section because that's where I find the commenters complaining that the recommended product was actually not that great or asking why an obviously superior product was dismissed without review. I'm also slightly to stunned to see that they have almost 70 people on staff for Wirecutter alone, even without all of the hosting upkeep requirements now that they're hosted in the main NYT website. I had assumed that the review quality had plummeted because they didn't have anyone working on it, but now I'm just plain confused. Meanwhile, competing sites like rtings.com have picked up the slack and are doing extremely high-quality reviews, albeit for a narrower set of products. Their reviews are more transparent, come with more data, and are constantly updated as new products are released. They're basically everything I wanted Wirecutter to be.
- whakim 5y ago
  I haven't particularly noticed a dropoff in quality (I'm not a frequent user though, so that doesn't say much), but I can easily imagine that many of their best journalists left, and given the situation described here (second-class citizens with second-class payscale at the NYT), they weren't replaced. As for the staff of 70, perhaps the NYT has pushed them to expand into an ever-greater set of product categories (on top of keeping existing products up-to-date)? Perhaps the lack of integration with the NYT means they're still managing a lot of their own infrastructure/HR/etc.?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Its hard to beat Amazon at its own game. But people are wising up to the fact that reviews are largely illegimate and largely gamed these days. So how are we to get trustworthy reviews? Wirecutter is under the model that a larger newspaper would be a good source of reviews. Consumer Reports is also basically a newspaper / 3rd party review site. While noble in concept, I'm not 100% sure how economical this model is (Consumer Reports is a non-profit for example). Wirecutter's ultimate revenue comes from affiliate links, meaning they're ultimately subservient to Amazon. ----- But I shop at jetpens.com for my stationary. Why? Because their blog has happened to win their trust with me. I can accept the economic situation: jetpens.com needs to distinguish itself from other online stores (Amazon, Walmart, etc. etc.). Blogging about their products and offering in-depth reviews of paper and pen products is pretty much the "Wirecutter" model. That's probably the path forward in the future. Create a shop (online or in-person). Capture an audience using modern information (blogging, social networks, etc. etc.). And finally, its the __shop's reputation__ that is put at stake whenever reviews are put out. None of this "Amazon 3rd party review, we're not responsible for the words on our site" bull**, you know, a shop that stands behind the words and reviews that are next to the products on their website.
  - MivLives 5y ago
    There's a trend in modern SEO to essentially manufacturer things like jetpen's blogs. Amazon is actually already doing this by giving "Editorial recommendations". Other sites have ideas pages. I'd wonder if Amazon is paying Wirecutter for those to appear on the site. Google gives higher priority to information that could be helpful, so now you'll see things like that or larger explanations of what the category is as text on the page. Wirecutter could literally just be thought of an SEO expense. The aggressive thing Amazon does for SEO is that affiliate program. It's robust and it makes it harder for smaller stores to compete unless they're super specialized. I work for a very large online retailer that doesn't have one, and despite being a more niche retailer we're still being killed by Amazon in the categories we specialize in.
- acheron 5y ago
  Hadn’t heard of rtings, but just checked it out. Looks good for what they cover, but their categories are mostly useless for me. The reason Wirecutter used to be good was because they reviewed everyday items. Also I had sort of forgotten Wirecutter had comments. They haven’t loaded for me for a few years now due to some change they made, but I also haven’t missed them. I mostly remember the same nonsense that one associates with the phrase “comments section”.

25 points by awiesenhofer 5y ago

> But Wirecutter was always treated as a second-class citizen, isolated in its own Slack, its own offices, and its own reporting structure I understand where they're coming from and don't doubt their complaints, but it's interesting to see this framed as a negative: When I've gone through acquisitions before, being pulled into the parent company's Slack, offices, and reporting structures was always the exact tipping point where the job went from great to terrible. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Wirecutter is such a strange situation to watch from the outside because they've steadily declined in quality over the past few years. At this point I skip the article and scroll the comments section because that's where I find the commenters complaining that the recommended product was actually not that great or asking why an obviously superior product was dismissed without review. I'm also slightly to stunned to see that they have almost 70 people on staff for Wirecutter alone, even without all of the hosting upkeep requirements now that they're hosted in the main NYT website. I had assumed that the review quality had plummeted because they didn't have anyone working on it, but now I'm just plain confused. Meanwhile, competing sites like rtings.com have picked up the slack and are doing extremely high-quality reviews, albeit for a narrower set of products. Their reviews are more transparent, come with more data, and are constantly updated as new products are released. They're basically everything I wanted Wirecutter to be.

whakim 5y ago
I haven't particularly noticed a dropoff in quality (I'm not a frequent user though, so that doesn't say much), but I can easily imagine that many of their best journalists left, and given the situation described here (second-class citizens with second-class payscale at the NYT), they weren't replaced. As for the staff of 70, perhaps the NYT has pushed them to expand into an ever-greater set of product categories (on top of keeping existing products up-to-date)? Perhaps the lack of integration with the NYT means they're still managing a lot of their own infrastructure/HR/etc.?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dragontamer 5y ago
Its hard to beat Amazon at its own game. But people are wising up to the fact that reviews are largely illegimate and largely gamed these days. So how are we to get trustworthy reviews? Wirecutter is under the model that a larger newspaper would be a good source of reviews. Consumer Reports is also basically a newspaper / 3rd party review site. While noble in concept, I'm not 100% sure how economical this model is (Consumer Reports is a non-profit for example). Wirecutter's ultimate revenue comes from affiliate links, meaning they're ultimately subservient to Amazon. ----- But I shop at jetpens.com for my stationary. Why? Because their blog has happened to win their trust with me. I can accept the economic situation: jetpens.com needs to distinguish itself from other online stores (Amazon, Walmart, etc. etc.). Blogging about their products and offering in-depth reviews of paper and pen products is pretty much the "Wirecutter" model. That's probably the path forward in the future. Create a shop (online or in-person). Capture an audience using modern information (blogging, social networks, etc. etc.). And finally, its the __shop's reputation__ that is put at stake whenever reviews are put out. None of this "Amazon 3rd party review, we're not responsible for the words on our site" bull**, you know, a shop that stands behind the words and reviews that are next to the products on their website.
- MivLives 5y ago
  There's a trend in modern SEO to essentially manufacturer things like jetpen's blogs. Amazon is actually already doing this by giving "Editorial recommendations". Other sites have ideas pages. I'd wonder if Amazon is paying Wirecutter for those to appear on the site. Google gives higher priority to information that could be helpful, so now you'll see things like that or larger explanations of what the category is as text on the page. Wirecutter could literally just be thought of an SEO expense. The aggressive thing Amazon does for SEO is that affiliate program. It's robust and it makes it harder for smaller stores to compete unless they're super specialized. I work for a very large online retailer that doesn't have one, and despite being a more niche retailer we're still being killed by Amazon in the categories we specialize in.
acheron 5y ago
Hadn’t heard of rtings, but just checked it out. Looks good for what they cover, but their categories are mostly useless for me. The reason Wirecutter used to be good was because they reviewed everyday items. Also I had sort of forgotten Wirecutter had comments. They haven’t loaded for me for a few years now due to some change they made, but I also haven’t missed them. I mostly remember the same nonsense that one associates with the phrase “comments section”.