5 ms·
This is not journalism. Do not treat it as such. Molly McHugh and Wired need to reach out to this woman and ask a few questions. They need to reach out to Goog
by chasing 11y ago
This is not journalism. Do not treat it as such.
Molly McHugh and Wired need to reach out to this woman and ask a few questions. They need to reach out to Google and ask a few questions.
Otherwise, this information is just a shade better than useless. There's a lot of detail missing in these tweets. There's a lot of handwaving where the audience is essentially invited to fill in the blanks with whatever stereotypes -- good or bad -- they feel like.
It irritates me immensely that this story is now out there and getting to be a Big Deal -- and there's no actual journalism to attempt to get to the bottom of it. How time consuming could it possibly be to send a few e-mails, hop on the phone, or go dig up someone you know who works at Google and might shed some light on this?
Maybe Erica Joy is right. Maybe there's a huge problem at Google regarding sharing salaries. Maybe something illegal or, at least, immoral/hypocritical is going on. Or maybe Erica Joy is misunderstanding something about how Google works. About how peer bonuses work, for example. Or maybe some combination of both.
But unless we want to go dig up that information on our own, we just don't know.
Good job, Wired.
- emodendroket 11y agoCertainly it's damning if it's an accurate depiction but I agree with you that just using Storify on a bunch of tweets isn't really anything like "journalism."
- cpncrunch 11y agoI'm not sure how it's damning except against Erica herself. She strongly implies racism is involved, but it sounds like she just doesn't understand the PB system. (The fact that her white friend got multiple PBs for the same thing seems more like his manager also didn't understand how it works).
- emodendroket 11y agoWell what she's insinuating is that she was retaliated against for sharing salary information, which is against the law. I'm not sure how you intuit from the information available that she "doesn't understand the PB system."
- cpncrunch 11y agoThe PB guidelines apparently say you can only get one PB for each task, but she expected to receive multiple. See the other comments here for details.
- billyhoffman 11y agoReposting tweets is not valid journalism. For that matter, including tweets from random people in reaction to a news event is also not valid journalism either. I don't care what muffycat1974 on Twitter has to say about the Iran nuclear deal, unless muffycat1974 is the Secretary of State.
- fixxer 11y agoBy that same token, who cares what "billyhoffman" has to say?
- lsniddy 11y agothose of us reading the top comments on a forum?
- billyhoffman 11y agoYou probably shouldn't, because I'm often wrong and frequently drunk :-) In seriousness though, when a news story is breaking, I'd like the news website to provide meaningful commentary from educated and informed people who can contribute to the understanding of the event. I don't care about the lay persons opinion when I'm reading a New York Times story about a world event. I want to hear for someone knowledgeable. A discussion site like HN is a completely different context with different expectations. I'm coming here for everyone's thoughts.
- fixxer 11y agoWith regard to meaningful commentary, that is a double edged sword. What you call meaning, I might call bias. Someone you call knowledgeable, I might call a shill. And vice versa. I've been thinking about data driven news for years now (I'm so fucking sick of Fox, MSNBC, et al.). Back to twitter, I actually do like the impact of 140 characters on how it compresses information. I would group the OP's article in with a first-person editorial, not journalism. I still read it and I think it merits follow up.
- 11y ago
- fixxer 11y agoHow do you define journalism? Obviously, this isn't an article, but it is information and I found it entertaining. True, only a single point of view... shall we call it Gonzo? If you compiled all those tweets into a paragraph, it wouldn't require substantial edits to generate smooth prose.
- chasing 11y agoJournalism is about getting to the truth. That involves doing a bit of legwork to assess the veracity of what someone is saying.
- pjc50 11y agoPeople keep saying this, but it doesn't correspond to much mainstream journalism I can see. Getting competing quotes is not the same as working out which corresponds best to the truth.
- jessaustin 11y agoWhy does this only go in one direction? "Journalists" regularly publish reformatted company press releases, and quote "insiders" without attribution. That's fine because most news narratives support the status quo and those in power. When the (relatively) little guy has something to say, however, we're going to need some hard evidence! Our biases are telling.
- macspoofing 11y ago>Why does this only go in one direction? It doesn't. >Our biases are telling. Case in point.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- learnstats2 11y agoThis comment is derailing. The precise definition of journalism is totally irrelevant. Erica Joy has shared an important story that we should listen to.
- uniformlyrandom 11y agoShe shared a part of one side of very important story. Do you want Fox News? Because this is how you get Fox News.
- hockley 11y agoHow'd that work out for Rolling Stone? When you report without fact-checking it's a disservice to readers, and sometimes, the people's voices you are trying to amplify.
- pessimizer 11y agoThat Erica Joy has shared a story is totally irrelevant to the way Wired has chosen to (not) report on it.
- macspoofing 11y agoErica Joy is totally free to write what she wrote. Wired should have gone an extra step however.
- Bartweiss 11y agoI have no problem with Erica Joy's approach here. She told a fairly comprehensive story about a concern she had with Google, and ended it with a fairly unassailable moral (doodles do not an 'ethical' company make). Wired, on the other hand, stooped to about the journalistic level of Gawker with this. If you're going to run social media content as an article, that deserves background and confirmation. If you're going to implicitly accuse an organization of racism, sexism, and violating labor laws, that demands proper followup and investigation. Wired had a real opportunity here to do serious journalism here and squandered it.
- nsfyn55 11y agoI am largely in agreement with you, but I can't help but feel Erica Joy is skirting some gray areas here. In one breath she states its "illegal to retaliate for sharing salary information" yet a spreadsheet she implies clearly evidences discrimination hasn't found itself in the hands of a qualified attorney. If the former is true barring legalities I may not be familiar(disclaimer not an attorney) the participants would seem to be protected. In addition she strongly implies damning evidence can be demonstrated with some "spreadsheet magic" but is very careful not to use specific language. This could be construed as someone avoiding accusations of libel. I'm interested though if this spreadsheet has the level of adoption she claims(thought I don't quite understand the bit about 5% of former co. if she means google that'd be 2,500 people) It will certainly leak then we can run the pivots ourselves.
- Anechoic 11y agoMolly McHugh and Wired need to reach out to this woman and ask a few questions. Erica has explicitly written that she's not interested in speaking to reporters about the story: https://twitter.com/ericajoy/status/622154558140080128 https://twitter.com/ericajoy/status/622154558140080128
- fixermark 11y agoIt's generally considered journalistically correct to mention that in the story. Similar to "We reached out to Google for followup, but they declined to comment." Of course, if this were a news story and not a copy-paste of a Twitter timeline, it would probably follow those expected patterns.
- marrs 11y agoI guess there's no point in even pretending to be trying any more
- jfoster 11y agoSure, but there are still lots of ways to turn this into a good article. I like that they included the original source, but to not write a single word of their own? They could have summarized the tweets, provided history on who Erica is and what her role at Google was, got a statement from Google, talked to Googlers "off the record", reported on any history of allegations against Google in the areas that the tweet brings up, reported on how other companies handle salary information, etc.
- macspoofing 11y agoI would think a proper journalist would figure out a way to get the information they need for an objective story, even when faced with an unwilling witness.
- codemonkeymike 11y agoI agree, it is also hard to start a conversation around a handful of tweets. In the end all we can say is that wired messed up and this story will not get a proper write up and conversation.
- blfr 11y agoThis is not journalism. I kept scrolling, clicked through to the "next page" (not really) and it's... just a collection of tweets? Without so much as a paragraph of context? Is something not loading for me? This is pathetic.
- omouse 11y agoWe do know that the labour of a lot of people is undervalued and that we do know that salaries for tech workers have been artificially kept down; we know there's been collusion between Google and other companies in terms of salaries and poaching. It may not be journalism but it does raise questions that we should try and answer instead of saying "oh well I guess that's just the way things are".
- rrss1122 11y agoIt's too time-consuming to actually do journalism when you can just paste a twitter timeline and then move on to the next headline before your competitors can. It's not about journalism anymore, it's about getting clicks.