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All written by freshman reporter Theo Baker: https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ His parents are NYT chief White Hous

All written by freshman reporter Theo Baker: https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. It’s an interesting story for sure.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Wow! You can't make this up. It's like one side of the "legacy elite" came around and smacked down a whole different side of the "legacy elite."
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Why would you classify Baker’s family as “legacy elite”?
  - drBonkers 3y ago
    Are you serious? > His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.
    - yreg 3y ago
      Your opinion that the people working at those position are 'legacy elite' is clearly not universal. I'm not even sure what's 'legacy elite' supposed to mean, other than that it is I suppose negative?
      - DirkH 3y ago
        You're unaware there are people who more easily get into elite schools because of their parents? Educate yourself. It is a widespread systemic problem often called affirmative action for Whites: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences "Nepobaby" (as in nepotism baby) or simply "Legacy" is more commonly used. This skips what is supposed to be a meritocracy and can quite straightforwardly be argued to be perpetuating an oligarchy and plutocracy So yes, it's negative.
        yreg 3y ago
        Legacy elite is not mentioned on that site, not sure how I was supposed to know what the poster means. Anyway sounds pretty rude to claim that a specific student was admitted thanks to his parents without any evidence. Thank you for your recommendation regarding the topics I need to educate myself on.
      - bentlegen 3y ago
        Basically folks have bought into conservative propaganda that white collar journalists are somehow equally “elite” as the ruling owner class.
    - sgustard 3y ago
      Point is, his dad probably didn't write to the university president (which would be ironic at this point) asking him to admit his deadbeat son as a favor. The student earned his admission the same way anyone does: essays, grades, luck. I'm sure he was helped by the gift from his parents of good writing skills and some doggedness. "Legacy elite" tends to imply there's someone more deserving of his spot.
      - doctorpangloss 3y ago
        It's not about admission. Without his parents, he would be removed from school for harassing a lesser faculty member. Like imagine making the same accusations, as a normal person, against your PI. Like he could have direct, first hand evidence of fraud, and it would be career suicide, if it weren't for his parents. Do you see?
        brightlancer 3y ago
        > Without his parents, he would be removed from school for harassing a lesser faculty member. That's conjecture, not fact. When I was at Georgia Tech (THWG), the administration, via the Diversity Task Force, wanted to quietly change the school fight song (better to ask forgiveness than permission). So, the Technique student paper got the story together and published it before the admin could sink it. I don't know if anyone at the Technique ever suffered for it; my recollection was that the Diversity Task Force, and the Director of Diversity Stephanie Ray, were pretty hostile to anyone and everyone who opposed their re-education ideas, so I presume there was retribution. https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://technique.library.gatech.edu/issues/winter1998/feb6/news1.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://technique....
    - doctorpangloss 3y ago
      I too cannot believe it. Even the most diehard nonparticipating 20-year-old League-of-Legends-addicted coding-bootcamped hustlebro HN reader could fathom how being a senior journalist in the country's maybe #1 and #3 news institutions is like, a big deal. Since it sounds like the other commenters are really confused about why it matters whose kid he is: like if you were just a regular person, you might be ejected from Stanford for pursuing something like this against a far lesser faculty member. It has nothing to do with admissions, which is such a hustlebro 20 year old POV anyway: to think that the privileges of nepotism are limited to getting admitted to fancy universities and money in a bank account. If only! Imagine having first hand evidence of your PI doing fraud, which lots of people do by definition, and that is rightly seen as career suicide. Like even the postdoc in the story, who has the evidence, hasn't come clean! He can't just like, stop living the way this student can. The students who relayed Marc Hauser's fraud to Harvard never went public with their identities. They don't get to win Polk Awards at all. They're not regarded as investigative journalists. This also prevents us from seeing what happened. I can tell you from my experience at least some of those students joined Hauser's prestigious lab for a medical school recommendation, which obviously didn't happen. In fact they may have only exposed him because, he was such an asshole, he refused to write them recs at all, for whatever reason. Do you know what all those people at Genentech get for exposing this fraud publicly? Nothing. I mean, they certainly don't become eligible for journalism awards. They could very well have provided the first hand evidence, and maybe posted to a PR newswire that has more circulation than the Stanford Daily or whatever, and cause the Stanford president to resign, and they still will absolutely, positively, never win a Polk award. They will just have a blown up career at the end, either way. They have a 100% chance of exposing the truth, and yet a pretty, pretty low chance of ending up better off than they were before they started. Nevermind research. Think about all the kids at e.g. private schools, younger kids, directly harmed by teachers molesting them, and you know, the kids are the ones who leave, not the teachers, for many decades and many institutions. So it definitely mattered to be the son of some big deal journalists in New York. Jerry Yang is beholden to journalists in New York. It made this happen. That said, of all the things to deploy your nepobabiness on, this is a pretty good one, isn't it? Investigative journalism of the finest degree. I don't personally think that a Polk award determines the merit of the investigation; nor does even the publication, clearly. Anyone, everywhere, can be not only be an investigative journalist, but indeed a great investigative journalist. It is a legitimately great story of bringing this guy, who has clearly dodged bullets for a decade, to task.
- arcticfox 3y ago
  That's an odd framing of what happened here, I don't really get what it has to do with "legacy elites". I guess maybe in the sense that his parents were exceptional, but when I think of "legacy elites" I think of multi-generational wealth and power that often has little to do with individual merit (and is probably correlated against merit, in my experience). It certainly is fascinating though. Like it will be interesting to see what happens if the kid of Ashton Eaton (gold medalist, decathlon) and Brianne Theisen-Eaton (world champion / bronze medalist, heptathlon) decides to dabble in athletics in 10-15 years. This is pretty much a journalistic version of that scenario; if there was ever someone born to lay waste to a fraudulent Stanford president, surely it was this kid.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Yeah this is exactly what I’m describing His parents are “elite” and he’s following in their footsteps - hence the “legacy.” It’s one of the few generational advantages that I’m generally ok with ethically (passing down a trade), so long as it’s not abused. In this case that advantage seems to be being used for the greater good which is great!
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    It’s always interesting to watch the semi-elites & elites of HN discuss and rationalize the merits of class society.
- LastTrain 3y ago
  Why would you consider two moderately paid journalists part of the "legacy elite", how are what they do comparable - at all - to the president of Stanford University?
  - johntiger1 3y ago
    Exactly, don't know why they are trying to frame the kid as part of some legacy elite. We should judge Theo for his actions (commendable), not who his parents are.
    - xvector 3y ago
      Theo's achievements wouldn't be possible without his parent's legacy to protect him. The average student journalist absolutely could not do the same thing Theo did here.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    There are many yardsticks by which you can measure elite status, other than salary. I respect Dennis Ritchie, but not for his salary. If you measure status by the yardstick "Number of people in the white house you're on a first name basis with" then I am reasonably confident that NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker scores higher than the president of Stanford University. None of this detracts from what Theo Baker has achieved, of course.
    - LastTrain 3y ago
      Interesting. So, by that yardstick, a cook in the Whitehouse basement is legacy elite. So is my 20 year old niece. Sorry, but a more successful than average journalist is not part of the "legacy elite", whatever the fuck that means anyway.
      - michaelt 3y ago
        The term 'legacy elite' is indeed ambiguous, so let me state things in a different way. Imagine you're the President of Stanford, and some kid on the student newspaper is bothering you about some decade-old nonsense. You can barely even remember fudging the numbers and besides, everyone was doing it. Student newspapers have been railing against the university since time immemorial, but this guy seems determined to harass you personally. It bothers you and you want it to stop. You could probably make it stop; almost everyone is guilty of something, and society has seen fit to give you your own police force. And even if you can't find any evidence of pot or drinking or piracy, why shouldn't rules about harassment, bullying and creating a hostile workplace be on your side? Even if that wouldn't hold up in court, probably someone can convince the kid that 'voluntarily' stopping would be in everyone's best interests. Then you find out the kid's parents both write for major national periodicals. And not occasional contract work or writing the sunday style magazine, they're serious journalists. You realise this kid has probably already received advice on the lines between journalism and harassment. Probably very well informed advice. And even if his parents don't personally write about rising censorship on college campuses, they undoubtedly know people who do. You're going to have to do this one by the book.
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
boeingUH60 3y ago
I checked his bio, and Baker appears to be a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby. It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths…if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever profession], it’s as if you’re likely to pick it up no matter how hard you try not to…
- sonicshadow 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    We've banned this account for posting abusive and flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  It’s also likely that having grown up surrounded by journalists and people working for newspapers, his education allows him to properly write articles as a freshman. That doesn’t prevent him for learning computer science if that’s what he likes doing.
  - tnecniv 3y ago
    Yeah if you have insight into why a field is interesting from a younger age, you are more likely to be interested in it yourself as well. That also goes the other way. My dad was a lawyer, and I know a little more about the law and legal profession than the average joe. However that was enough information to tell me I had no interest in being a lawyer.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in.
bmmayer1 3y ago
Theo Baker also became the youngest person to win a Polk Award because of this story, at 18. Very cool!
- tristor 3y ago
  And because of this, The Stanford Daily became the first independent student newspaper to ever win a Polk Award.
  - jxramos 3y ago
    oh wow that's useful context. Congratulations to the Daily.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  Despite the lack of name recognition, the Polk Award is a serious award which is well respected among journalists.
fsckboy 3y ago
> His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser wow, his parents maybe can learn from this! How to doggedly pursue allegations against the occupant of the Whitehouse, without fear or favor, with a healty dose of Grabthar's Hammer (never give up, never surrender)

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

Wow! You can't make this up. It's like one side of the "legacy elite" came around and smacked down a whole different side of the "legacy elite."

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Why would you classify Baker’s family as “legacy elite”?
- drBonkers 3y ago
  Are you serious? > His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.
  - yreg 3y ago
    Your opinion that the people working at those position are 'legacy elite' is clearly not universal. I'm not even sure what's 'legacy elite' supposed to mean, other than that it is I suppose negative?
    - DirkH 3y ago
      You're unaware there are people who more easily get into elite schools because of their parents? Educate yourself. It is a widespread systemic problem often called affirmative action for Whites: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences "Nepobaby" (as in nepotism baby) or simply "Legacy" is more commonly used. This skips what is supposed to be a meritocracy and can quite straightforwardly be argued to be perpetuating an oligarchy and plutocracy So yes, it's negative.
      - yreg 3y ago
        Legacy elite is not mentioned on that site, not sure how I was supposed to know what the poster means. Anyway sounds pretty rude to claim that a specific student was admitted thanks to his parents without any evidence. Thank you for your recommendation regarding the topics I need to educate myself on.
    - bentlegen 3y ago
      Basically folks have bought into conservative propaganda that white collar journalists are somehow equally “elite” as the ruling owner class.
  - sgustard 3y ago
    Point is, his dad probably didn't write to the university president (which would be ironic at this point) asking him to admit his deadbeat son as a favor. The student earned his admission the same way anyone does: essays, grades, luck. I'm sure he was helped by the gift from his parents of good writing skills and some doggedness. "Legacy elite" tends to imply there's someone more deserving of his spot.
    - doctorpangloss 3y ago
      It's not about admission. Without his parents, he would be removed from school for harassing a lesser faculty member. Like imagine making the same accusations, as a normal person, against your PI. Like he could have direct, first hand evidence of fraud, and it would be career suicide, if it weren't for his parents. Do you see?
      - brightlancer 3y ago
        > Without his parents, he would be removed from school for harassing a lesser faculty member. That's conjecture, not fact. When I was at Georgia Tech (THWG), the administration, via the Diversity Task Force, wanted to quietly change the school fight song (better to ask forgiveness than permission). So, the Technique student paper got the story together and published it before the admin could sink it. I don't know if anyone at the Technique ever suffered for it; my recollection was that the Diversity Task Force, and the Director of Diversity Stephanie Ray, were pretty hostile to anyone and everyone who opposed their re-education ideas, so I presume there was retribution. https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://technique.library.gatech.edu/issues/winter1998/feb6/news1.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://technique....
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    I too cannot believe it. Even the most diehard nonparticipating 20-year-old League-of-Legends-addicted coding-bootcamped hustlebro HN reader could fathom how being a senior journalist in the country's maybe #1 and #3 news institutions is like, a big deal. Since it sounds like the other commenters are really confused about why it matters whose kid he is: like if you were just a regular person, you might be ejected from Stanford for pursuing something like this against a far lesser faculty member. It has nothing to do with admissions, which is such a hustlebro 20 year old POV anyway: to think that the privileges of nepotism are limited to getting admitted to fancy universities and money in a bank account. If only! Imagine having first hand evidence of your PI doing fraud, which lots of people do by definition, and that is rightly seen as career suicide. Like even the postdoc in the story, who has the evidence, hasn't come clean! He can't just like, stop living the way this student can. The students who relayed Marc Hauser's fraud to Harvard never went public with their identities. They don't get to win Polk Awards at all. They're not regarded as investigative journalists. This also prevents us from seeing what happened. I can tell you from my experience at least some of those students joined Hauser's prestigious lab for a medical school recommendation, which obviously didn't happen. In fact they may have only exposed him because, he was such an asshole, he refused to write them recs at all, for whatever reason. Do you know what all those people at Genentech get for exposing this fraud publicly? Nothing. I mean, they certainly don't become eligible for journalism awards. They could very well have provided the first hand evidence, and maybe posted to a PR newswire that has more circulation than the Stanford Daily or whatever, and cause the Stanford president to resign, and they still will absolutely, positively, never win a Polk award. They will just have a blown up career at the end, either way. They have a 100% chance of exposing the truth, and yet a pretty, pretty low chance of ending up better off than they were before they started. Nevermind research. Think about all the kids at e.g. private schools, younger kids, directly harmed by teachers molesting them, and you know, the kids are the ones who leave, not the teachers, for many decades and many institutions. So it definitely mattered to be the son of some big deal journalists in New York. Jerry Yang is beholden to journalists in New York. It made this happen. That said, of all the things to deploy your nepobabiness on, this is a pretty good one, isn't it? Investigative journalism of the finest degree. I don't personally think that a Polk award determines the merit of the investigation; nor does even the publication, clearly. Anyone, everywhere, can be not only be an investigative journalist, but indeed a great investigative journalist. It is a legitimately great story of bringing this guy, who has clearly dodged bullets for a decade, to task.
arcticfox 3y ago
That's an odd framing of what happened here, I don't really get what it has to do with "legacy elites". I guess maybe in the sense that his parents were exceptional, but when I think of "legacy elites" I think of multi-generational wealth and power that often has little to do with individual merit (and is probably correlated against merit, in my experience). It certainly is fascinating though. Like it will be interesting to see what happens if the kid of Ashton Eaton (gold medalist, decathlon) and Brianne Theisen-Eaton (world champion / bronze medalist, heptathlon) decides to dabble in athletics in 10-15 years. This is pretty much a journalistic version of that scenario; if there was ever someone born to lay waste to a fraudulent Stanford president, surely it was this kid.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Yeah this is exactly what I’m describing His parents are “elite” and he’s following in their footsteps - hence the “legacy.” It’s one of the few generational advantages that I’m generally ok with ethically (passing down a trade), so long as it’s not abused. In this case that advantage seems to be being used for the greater good which is great!
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  It’s always interesting to watch the semi-elites & elites of HN discuss and rationalize the merits of class society.
LastTrain 3y ago
Why would you consider two moderately paid journalists part of the "legacy elite", how are what they do comparable - at all - to the president of Stanford University?
- johntiger1 3y ago
  Exactly, don't know why they are trying to frame the kid as part of some legacy elite. We should judge Theo for his actions (commendable), not who his parents are.
  - xvector 3y ago
    Theo's achievements wouldn't be possible without his parent's legacy to protect him. The average student journalist absolutely could not do the same thing Theo did here.
- michaelt 3y ago
  There are many yardsticks by which you can measure elite status, other than salary. I respect Dennis Ritchie, but not for his salary. If you measure status by the yardstick "Number of people in the white house you're on a first name basis with" then I am reasonably confident that NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker scores higher than the president of Stanford University. None of this detracts from what Theo Baker has achieved, of course.
  - LastTrain 3y ago
    Interesting. So, by that yardstick, a cook in the Whitehouse basement is legacy elite. So is my 20 year old niece. Sorry, but a more successful than average journalist is not part of the "legacy elite", whatever the fuck that means anyway.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      The term 'legacy elite' is indeed ambiguous, so let me state things in a different way. Imagine you're the President of Stanford, and some kid on the student newspaper is bothering you about some decade-old nonsense. You can barely even remember fudging the numbers and besides, everyone was doing it. Student newspapers have been railing against the university since time immemorial, but this guy seems determined to harass you personally. It bothers you and you want it to stop. You could probably make it stop; almost everyone is guilty of something, and society has seen fit to give you your own police force. And even if you can't find any evidence of pot or drinking or piracy, why shouldn't rules about harassment, bullying and creating a hostile workplace be on your side? Even if that wouldn't hold up in court, probably someone can convince the kid that 'voluntarily' stopping would be in everyone's best interests. Then you find out the kid's parents both write for major national periodicals. And not occasional contract work or writing the sunday style magazine, they're serious journalists. You realise this kid has probably already received advice on the lines between journalism and harassment. Probably very well informed advice. And even if his parents don't personally write about rising censorship on college campuses, they undoubtedly know people who do. You're going to have to do this one by the book.
KirillPanov 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

boeingUH60 3y ago

I checked his bio, and Baker appears to be a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby. It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths…if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever profession], it’s as if you’re likely to pick it up no matter how hard you try not to…

sonicshadow 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  We've banned this account for posting abusive and flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
It’s also likely that having grown up surrounded by journalists and people working for newspapers, his education allows him to properly write articles as a freshman. That doesn’t prevent him for learning computer science if that’s what he likes doing.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  Yeah if you have insight into why a field is interesting from a younger age, you are more likely to be interested in it yourself as well. That also goes the other way. My dad was a lawyer, and I know a little more about the law and legal profession than the average joe. However that was enough information to tell me I had no interest in being a lawyer.
no_wizard 3y ago
I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in.

bmmayer1 3y ago

Theo Baker also became the youngest person to win a Polk Award because of this story, at 18. Very cool!

tristor 3y ago
And because of this, The Stanford Daily became the first independent student newspaper to ever win a Polk Award.
- jxramos 3y ago
  oh wow that's useful context. Congratulations to the Daily.
brightlancer 3y ago
Despite the lack of name recognition, the Polk Award is a serious award which is well respected among journalists.

fsckboy 3y ago

> His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser wow, his parents maybe can learn from this! How to doggedly pursue allegations against the occupant of the Whitehouse, without fear or favor, with a healty dose of Grabthar's Hammer (never give up, never surrender)