I was just in SSC's Open Thread a few hours ago opening comment permalinks in tabs to respond to them.
That NYT writer should be fired. I hope Scott recovers soon. SSC is my favorite place on the Web.
I don't want it to be the norm for any journalistic organ/employee to function/perform the way this one did. There are many ways to accomplish adoption of that norm, including (but certainly not limited to) firing people who do that.
When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.
I’m very happy to live in a country where you cannot fire people just like that, even if they do something wrong. You have to give people second chances. I don’t get this “fire them” approach to anything wrong something does.
People make mistakes. That just happens. To always fire people because of that makes no sense to me.
If I was a janitor and spilled a bucket of water on the floor it would be wrong and cruel to fire me for that mistake. On the other hand, if I saw a customer come in to our store and said "Yo customer, we hate you, get out and never come back!" And then grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it on the customer... Well then I think firing me would make sense. The former was a mistake. The latter is an intentional and deliberate bad action.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/comm...
If people don’t accept that they made I mistake then yeah, that’s an issue – and one where firing should again become an option, sure (basically that unwillingness to accept that is then the second offense).
I do agree that the situation here is bit more complex since the public is involved.
This seems serious enough that, I think, the challenge is more about the NYT making transparent their process, their decisions and what they did.
I think that’s even more valuable than just firing someone. They should investigate which processes, guidelines, rules, etc. contributed to that behavior and how and wether they plan to change that. They should outline what they communicated to that reporter. They should apologize.
I want an explanation and improvements, not someone to be fired. Also because I think more often than not people who actually did make a mistake are unlikely to do that again.
They could be the problem and actually toxic, sure, that’s always a risk. But I think that’s ok.
I don't think this is a "that one writer" issue; I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue. Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
From a political point of view, anonymous (and more critcally, independent) bloggers are a threat to the (local/global) establishment's propaganda organs. This may in fact be editorial policy, as you suggest. It doesn't matter of the blogger is 'friendly' in terms of political views.
I think the problems with journalism are bigger than this one writer. Simultaneously, I would like to see NYT take a stance against its writers doing what this one did to Scott.
> I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue.
Point taken, but I didn't claim to speak for him.
> Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
Agreed. I wrote another comment in response to 'rachelshu, adjusting my original comment to something more reflecting my actual views.
Scott Alexander has been giving more information in the SSC subreddit, including the comment I've quoted below. Having read what he has to say, I've changed my mind, and don't think the journalist should be fired.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
> I honestly got the impression that the reporter liked my blog and wanted to write a nice story about it.
> When I told him I didn't want my real name in the article, he talked to his editor and said the editor said it was NYT policy all articles must include real names.
> I got the impression he felt bad about it but had spent weeks writing the article and wasn't going to throw out all that work just for my sake.
> When I threatened to take down the blog, I think he did the decision-theoretically correct move of not giving in to threats.
> Overall I think this is a story about the NYT having overly strict real-name policies that unfortunately put a guy in a bad situation.
It's not the writer anyhow. It's the editor and probably a policy, though I'm sure they'd have no trouble bending their policy if they wanted to.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611133
That said: I don't understand how I'm repeating a mistake here. "Cancel culture" has become a problem because people get fired from their day jobs (or suffer other consequences) for opinions not pertaining to their day jobs, which are expressed outside their work hours.
In contrast, the NYT writer engaged in crappy professional conduct.
I agree that the writer is not the root problem. I've changed my mind about whether firing should happen; other solutions addressing journalistic incentives, or this journalist's team, or whatever, would probably go further.