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Comment by tomtimtall | Hacker News Reader

So the takeaway is that he got paid to plug paper-news and created a narrative to support that plug without actually doing any of the “this is how I started feeling better”-dieting. He still was on social, he still followed the news and commented on it. So why lie about avoiding it and feeling better? Because that was an essential part of his paper-news plug that he had to do. Why was he forced to do it? Because he already took the money. If he had actual journalistic integrity he would have written a piece about how hard it can be to actually unplug detailing his own failed attempt.

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> If he had actual journalistic integrity he would have written a piece about how hard it can be to actually unplug detailing his own failed attempt.

This would be a really interesting piece. He could talk about the pressures, both generic and journalism-specific, that make it difficult to let your Twitter feed go dormant. And he could talk about any other challenges/failures that he experienced, and why.

Is there any indication that he was “being paid to plug paper-news” or is this just your conspiracy theory?

Because if it’s the latter, it’s a decidedly lame conspiracy. And considering the financial pressures, I’m not even sure if the New York Times could afford to bribe someone writing for the New York Times.

How is it "lame"? It's common knowledge that media is a significant influencer of those who consume it (pretty much everyone), so it follows that writing an article suggesting that X may be superior to Y (because Y is bad) would influence many into thinking similarly if they hadn't been thinking that already, or further reinforce that feeling if they had.

All it had to take was for anyone at the NY Times to bring up in a meeting "hey, we'd like to try to get our paper subs up a bit, someone write an article about unplugging from the net (something tons of people talk about but never actually do) about how newspapers are actually better".

Worst case scenario it doesn't work out, it was a nice experiment and at least you brought in a lot of clicks and got to bring up fake news and Russian Twitter bots in another story, right?

Media is always biased and always has an agenda one way or another, I'm not sure why in this case it would have to be any different.

The NYT is a stickler for traditions. Chief among them is a clear separation of their business operations and the newsroom. I’m almost sure the best way to get one of their writers to do A is to have a manager walk through the newsroom and ask everybody not to do A.

This situation is a bit different because it’s not a reporter but a columnist. Columnists don’t even work at a newspaper’s office- this one is in San Francisco, a continent away from New York. They also don’t attend meetings. There’s nothing to discuss about their job. They simply send in a text file once a week and get a paycheck back.

> The NYT is a stickler for traditions

You mean like fact checking? They didn’t even glance at the twitter account of the man writing about how he ditched twitter. NYT isn’t what it was anymore.

The profiles of Neonazis, weekly complaining about college kids protesting hate speech, the "Cletus Safaris". Yeah NYT isn't what it was anymore.

Have you heard about The Most Ignorant Man in America. NYT got it covered.

They literally had to show up at the Whitehouse and sit on the couch and they would have won their awards.

I'm not suggesting it's true, but it does fit the narrative of his (and his employer's!) incentives. People usually act in line with their immediately obvious incentives.

Not a smoking gun, but to me it's definitely an indication.

> I’m not even sure if the New York Times could afford to bribe someone writing for the New York Times.

It’s not a bribe when you employer gives you a bonus to write specific content they demand.

You could suspect that he was just under pressure from his management, however in that case I would doubt he would fold to the pressure as being able to write an article titled “I got fired from the New York Times for failing to ditch twitter and plugging their paper” would be a journalistic gold pot. And a great lawsuit.

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