Who are they to judge how big tech treats their employees when they pay their own so poorly?
Being anti tech has nothing to do with salary, it’s centered on what big tech is doing.
The people actually writing articles tend to be in Unions which may help explain their pro Union stances. Both from below and management being concerned with union relations.
The journalists (and tech workers) don't decide their own salary.
You conflated "they" as both management and the people being managed, to make it "ironic."
https://www.nytco.com/2023-new-york-times-diversity-and-incl...
The my don’t complain about tech being non-diverse, they report that it is non-diverse - which is true.
Absolutely not. This is typical trickery of stats. They have diversity at lower levels. But unlike SV almost no diversity at senior ranks. I think its past time that we consider janitorial and admin jobs as a win. If we have legions of educated minorities, why aren't they making it into executive roles at the NY Times?
Here is the exec staff: https://www.nytco.com/company/people/ "Filter by executive"
There are >64 million Hispanics living in the United States, yet not a single one on the NYT exec team.
They have 1 token asian,
1 token black person.
That is not "Better position than most." That seems like 3x worse than your average tech firm.
Pretending that a sample size of 12 should exactly reflect the diversity of the whole population of the country is just weird to me.
>> The NY Times is pro-union and anti-big-tech [...]
That is the claim. These are the reasons it sues, and my notes on each:
* journalists are unionized and tech platforms disintermediate unions
Thats a broad generalization based on the authors opinion and not necessarily true. The attitude was not reflective of my interactions with journalists either. I would dispute this from personal experience. We can agree/disagree forever, I'm just giving my IRL experience.
* workers that produce articles and create the newsroom culture have a conflict of interest
It could be said that any journalist who covers any subject has a conflict of interest by covering that subject. Thats a bit weak.
* tech threatens the ad revenue of traditional news media.
Yeah. Rising costs of paper also threaten traditional news media. The NYT is profitable and not reliant on ad revenue streams for survival. They have a health revenue stream in number of other areas. In addition, for better or for worse, most journalists don't actually know/care that much about ad revenue given the tradition divides between business and editorial sides (I see that at many media orgs I have worked for - its not just the NYT)
So.. that was what I was talking about ("workers", not a "top-down directive").
In regards to your point: Thats a new and different claim so hard for me to speak to that.
I would note that the claim came from Matthew Yglesias. He since deleted the tweet. I would note that he never worked at the NYT as far as I can tell.
I don't know much of Kelsey Piper, but she "heard it from NYT reporters at the time" so not quite first-hand account either. Her tweet is not a "leak" (thats very different) and I see nothing to prove or substantiate it - just she "heard" it.
I'll keep an open mind but I'm skeptical.
I think that's a really weak claim. Journalism has had significantly reduced revenues in the late 2000s through today due to the rise of tech platforms that let people learn about what's happening in the world for free online. Both print and online newspaper combined revenue has been wiped back to the 1950s [1], for example. Journalists covering, say, election politics have no more conflict of interest than any other American. But they definitely have more of a conflict of interest covering tech than other Americans! For most Americans, tech has largely contributed to economic improvements: you can buy more advanced products for less inflation-adjusted money, pretty much every year. You have a supercomputer in your pocket and you can talk to your lights and tell them to turn off while you're lying in bed. For journalists, though, tech has been devastating.
You might try to claim that because journalists don't set their own salaries, somehow this removes the conflict of interest. But that implies journalists are incredibly stupid. You can't work in a vastly diminishing field and not realize that it's going to depress your salary and job opportunities over time, regardless of whether you set the salary or not: there's just vastly less money to go around. And that's what tech has done to traditional journalism.
And the NYT is not immune. While it's doing better than its peers (many of whom have gone out of business), it's not doing well: it's experienced approximately zero market growth since its peak in 2002 over twenty years ago, when shares traded for about $48. Today, they trade for $52. And working at the only institution in your field that hasn't experienced total collapse, but has achieved no growth in 20+ years, is obviously going to color your views on the sector that did that to your field.
1: https://www.statista.com/chart/612/newspaper-advertising-rev...
Just because you're potentially paid 500k to essentially implement the basis of metadata leakage and privacy compromise on scales that previous century actual dictators couldn't even reasonably dream of does not make the work of implementing it more "legitimate". It just makes it easier to attract people who value naterial comforts right now over safety from systemic abuse later. It's all tradeoffs.
Someone'll pay you well to do ultimately horrible things, and make it sound like you're doing everyone a favor.
Juniors, take note. You set the bar on the hell you'll be trapped in down the road. Always, always, be suspect.
almost all modern places that unionize have a liberal/left-leaning customer base the company is afraid of losing
It is more than a little ironic that the NY Times complains about a "lack of diversity" in silicon valley, when practically the entire NY Times senior staff are generationally rich white people who live in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Here is the exec staff: https://www.nytco.com/company/people/ "Filter by executive"
There are >64 million Hispanics living in the United States, yet not a single one on the NYT exec team. They have 1 token asian, 1 token black person. Half the staff is Jewish. Yet they are complaining about diversity in Silicon valley.
As a person of asian origin, there is probably no way I can get a non-crappy role at the NY Times, yet silicon valley offers enough of a meritocracy that I can get a job there without having a rich uncle.
Remember, when the establishment complains about diversity, they are actually complaining about themselves losing control to the general population. That is why colored people in executive roles in SV is so scary to newspapers.
"Half the staff is Jewish" made me laugh though, perhaps closer to true than false. It's funny how people call The New Yorker the pinnacle of privilege as a writer-type, and their staff writer team is more diverse than just about any other East Coast bigwig outlet.