Hacker News Reader

Comment by jp57 | Hacker News Reader

Current title of this post: "Paper investigating police chief prior to the raids on his office and home."

But it was the newspaper owner, not the police chief, who was raided.

Actual article title and subtitle: "A conversation with the newspaper owner raided by cops / Eric Meyer says his paper had been investigating the police chief prior to the raids on his office and home."

View on HN

Fixed. Thank you and sorry for confusion.

The actual title is much better than this gore.

A conversation with the newspaper owner raided by cops

The title as it is this moment on HN was better for me at least, it made it clear that it was in context of ongoing investigative research done by the newspaper against the police.

But it’s missing a key piece of information: the paper was investigating allegations against the newly-hired police chief who was in charge of the raid.

I agree, "his" is ambiguous at best and seems to refer to the police chief (a person) rather than the paper (an organization).

A simple change would make it clear:

Paper investigating police chief prior to the raids on owner's office and home

> But it was the newspaper owner, not the police chief, who was raided.

That's what the title means.

It’s ambiguous and I also read “him” as the police chief being raided.

Because 'police chief' is the only potential gendered identifier in the entire title.

The title on HN at the current time [0] says the police chief was raided.

There is only one person mentioned and therefor "his" can only refer to that person. "His" can not refer to the newspaper.

[0] "Paper investigating police chief prior to the raids on his office and home."

I just clicked on the thread now and it still is listed as mentioned by GP.

It says that the paper investigating the police chief was raided. I don't know many news papers that engage in raids on police, so it's pretty clear.

not a single person here agrees with you. The title didnt say who performed the raiding. A police chief could be raided by the FBI.

It doesn’t say the paper was the entity engaged in the raid. If I didn’t know the broader context, I would assume that sentence meant “A newspaper was investigating a police chief at the time the police chief’s home was raided by another law enforcement agency”. That seems way more likely than a newspaper being referred to as “him”.

No, it's not. The current title omits the raised person altogether.

How is it that despite not having yet read the article I knew EXACTLY what it meant? The pedantic and intentionally obtuse nitpickery in this thread is silly and absurd.

Because the title is changed now, but was something else half an hour ago.

This is a community of people whose career revolves around precise language.

You knew because you're intelligent and were able to piece things together. Many in society are not so fortunate for one reason of another and so it's important to be precise.

Then it should say "paper owner" not "paper".

Absolutely.

If the surname of the newspaper's owner happened to also be Paper, then this might make sense. Otherwise it is very wrong.

It’s definitely a confusing title though, as the pronoun “his” seems way more likely to refer to the police chief than the “paper”.

How many newspapers engage in raids upon police chiefs? Clearly it's the police who is doing the raiding.

The title doesn’t say the newspaper engaged in the raid. There are other agencies that could raid a police chief’s home. It would be reasonable to assume some agency like the FBI conducted the raid based on the same information that prompted the investigation. That’s not actually the case here, but I think that is a way more plausible reading of the sentence.

Agreed. Last I checked, papers don't have a gender, therefore a gender specific pronoun is incorrect.

Regardless, the title has since been edited. Controversy resolved, maybe now we can discuss the topic x.x

Reply on news.ycombinator.com