NYTimes's Pogue going to Yahoo | Hacker News Reader

NYTimes's Pogue going to Yahoo

pogueman.tumblr.com

150 pointsnirvanatikku70 comments

Here's a post that brings out the worst in HN. Start from the top and see how far you get before you find anything positive. Here's what I hope to see i) What people think this means for YHOO. ii) What does this mean for traditional media and people attracted to web properties. iii) What might this service that he's launching look like? iv) Who else might copy/follow suit on this play?

Here's what you get I) Good riddance I hate him (real valuable) ii) Some sort of conspiracy theory about ethics and issues. iii) Character attack/insinuation with some cheesy comment about his hiring manager and Yahoo based content and iv) never forget to work congress and government in there because a guy who does quirky videos on the iPad is only one step away from journalism and government coziness.

Better watch out, if your post makes too much sense it will make it to the top and no longer make sense.

Given my post is a negative rant that might actually be appropriate ;)

This may be the best summation of OP Syndrome I've ever encountered. Awesomely stated. I may need to quote this, but I'll give you credit when I do.

Err, sorry. What I meant to say is that, while I agree with part A of your post, part B is total garbage. In conclusion, you are 100% wrong, and in fact, you are everything that's wrong with the internet.

Articles are submitted to HN to be critiqued and discussed. In this instance the story is about a person who (apparently) is widely disliked in the tech community. It's no surprise that the comments are negative.

Note it's not the fact that the article is being critiqued and discussed that is objectionable. It's the small mindedness of the the discussions and critiques that has me disappointed.

No one is asking to you to come and read the comments. The small minded conversations which you are talking about are obviously getting upvoted both other Hacker News participants - which leads me to believe there is some credence to it. Why don't you take a stab at writing something positive and see how the community reacts rather than spreading the negativity..

I think he made a valid contribution. He is pushing that we keep comments civil and useful. The comments he mentioned do neither and drag down the discussion and promote discord in the community.

I'm not sure why his comment warrants such a hostile reaction when it is in the interest of the community that people engage in self-moderation and policing to keep it healthy.

Additionally, even if the attacks on Pogue's personality granted it credence, I personally feel it doesn't belong here and isn't useful for any of us to spend our time as if we're judges in a tech scene popularity contest.

The more interesting discussion is about how this could be relevant to Yahoo and their attempt to change direction. Or if this type of move is a harmful trend for the Times, such as how they lost Nate Silver.

I'm sorry... I didn't post a conspiracy theory, but linked a series of widely-covered reports on Pogue's ethics issues—which are in fact a big deal, since he's a journalist.

He worked at the Times for more than a decade, during an era when journalists with much smaller names than his own (think Jayson Blair) damaged the rep of the paper. The public editor called him out for it, even:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/opinion/06pubed.html?_r=0

Also, he works in a space where his industry colleagues constantly face conflict of interest issues. It's not a "conspiracy theory" if it's common knowledge.

If you think that's "the worst in HN," then this comment is no better.

Conversely couldn't it be said that 'the worst in HN' might be the meta discussion about how everything is negative?

It's one thing to bash someone who posts up a new service, a new idea, or a new project. It's entirely different when (in my case) you question a part of the machine that makes good on proving that there might be a conflict of interest when it comes to journalism and how the subjects they cover are treated.

Pogue had a LOT of ethical issues while at the Times—issues where he'd be more likely be hit simply because of his employer. This move has the effect of simultaneously giving him a bigger platform and getting him out of the eye of the watchdogs. I can see why he went to Yahoo.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/27/will-th...

http://valleywag.gawker.com/nyt-tech-columnist-david-pogue-m...

http://www.nytpick.com/2010/01/david-pogue-breaks-nyts-ethic...

But this paper steadfastly focuses on responsible journalism, irconclad ethics and superb writing. I’ll always be a loyal ally...

This is such an unnatural sentence, it doesn't surprise me at all to see it as complete spin. Its beyond rare to pledge loyalty to a company, when you are leaving it to join a competitor. And Newspapers are so full of conflicts of interest (especially a place as politicised as NYT), that any reference to 'ethics' that is not self-serving is only by coincidence.

_________

Especially bizarre because the Times tried to explain away their tolerance of Pogue's conflicts of interest (not applying their usual ethics rules to his case) by saying that he wasn't really an employee, but some kind of freelancer. However, this article certainly gives the impression of a Times employee leaving their employ to be employed by a new employer.

Another shining example of ethics in journalism.

If you start small, write glowing reviews of products and company directives so that you get invited to pressers and tours, and maybe someday you too can get invited to go work inside the very companies the public trusted you to cover in an unbiased fashion! Be careful though, anything under 4.5 out of 5 stars and you might get a phone call from the PR department expressing their disappointment while they take you off of their most exclusive lists.

Congresspeople who take jobs as lobbyists after their terms in office are synonymous with journalists who join companies they covered "in the public's interest" during their professional careers.

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this was Pogue's position re: Yahoo. This is a rampant problem in new and old media in general.)

To be fair to Pogue and Yahoo!, the latter's had a sizeable journalistic operation for years now. It's not like he's going off to work in their PR department. (Which is a thing that happens all too often, yeah)

In journalism we call it "the dark side" for a reason. It's definitely a "force" to be reckoned with.

Same problem with government relations. People don't understand that this is a structural problem with the major media that makes it untrustworthy.

Good riddance. Can't stand the guy. I know he attempted to make tech accessible to the average Joe, but he always dumbed things down so much I felt like he didn't really know what he was talking about. He also seemed to let personal biases get in the way of the reporting.

The real reason why I didn't like him was for what he did to Nova. Nova was one of my favorite programs growing up and he absolutely ruined it with his annoying personality, stupid jokes/puns, and over simplifications. In a science show the science should be first, not the twit talking about it.

Yeah, I can't take the jokey theme to the show now. I miss Neil DeGrasse Tyson's hosting.

He was hosting the show as if he was the central focus of the program. I bet a few people actually enjoy his wit but I'd prefer that be left out of a show like nova. If e wants to introduce his comedy stylings, it'd be better on a show dedicated to him.

Upvote * 1000 Feel the exact same way about Nova

Amen! (I'm not even religious) He was on Nova this week. Ugg, unwatchable, oversimplified on what should have been really interesting subject matter.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I had to stop watching one of my favorite shows because of his awfulness.

Ditto! NOVA is moving in the wrong direction with this guy.

"Good riddance. Can't stand the guy. "

I'm not sure I understand why you feel it is good for you if Pogue is leaving NYT and going to Yahoo?

If you don't like him I can understand a comment like this expressing disdain and schadenfreude because something bad happened to him. But from what is being said (by Pogue) this is a actually something good for Pogue and has no impact on you positive or negative. And has no impact on Nova (Pogue says "I’ll still keep up my NOVA specials") so why the delight?

Because if he's a reader of the NYTimes, he doesn't need to see his articles anymore? Hopefully they'll replace him with someone who the commenter has a higher respect for?

His reportage, both as tech journalism and just as journalism, is generally of pretty poor quality[0], although now and then he comes out with a useful and entertaining article.

[0] http://lee-phillips.org/pogueGoogle/

This seems like an unnecessarily mean-spirited comment.

It is a good move on Pogue's part, he gets to do more of the stuff he likes to do.

But the comments here, especially the dismissive ones, seem to miss out on his popularity at the Times. Granted that "popularity" != "good" for a number of things but he brought a lot of readers to the Times and that was something the Times needs if they want to stay in business.

It annoys me when people make that choice (popularity over quality, as I felt Dr. Michio Kaku did with his TV stuff) but I have come to recognize it is there choice to make.

Over the past year, Pogue has reviewed Yahoo's products on many different occasions. Presumably, his hiring-managers read all of them.

It is quite likely that Pogue's reviews (e.g. great review of Flickr changes) were honest reviews and that he wasn't trying to curry favor with prospective future employers.

However, I hope that this job offer leads to more thoughts on conflicts of interest and perhaps requirements (from NYT etc) regarding journalists reviewing companies from whom they might accept job offers

I don't know how there's any real way to get around this, because if you don't let a journalist write about any company where they might receive a job offer, you'll end up with a significant gap in reporting. I think that's better than the current scenario.

What else would he have reviewed from Yahoo other than the Flickr updates? Normally he reviews hardware.

“Yahoo has regained its position as the #1 most visited Web site on earth.”

Is that true? Is it really visited more often than Facebook, Google, Twitter, or YouTube? Alexa doesn’t agree[1].

According to a recent article[2], Yahoo is the most popular website in 2 regions: Japan and Hong Kong.

[1] http://www.alexa.com/topsites

[2] http://www.fastcocreate.com/3019595/creativity-by-the-number...

>Is that true? Is it really visited more often than Facebook, Google, Twitter, or YouTube? Alexa doesn’t agree

First of all, Alexa is crap. It might be accurate in this instance, but it's crap nonetheless, especially for sites under the top 1000.

Second, those are not sites in the traditional sense. Google is a search engine, YouTube is a video sharing service, etc. That leaves Yahoo.

...most visited by people dumb enough to install Alexa.

Alexa stats are interesting, because people who install searchbars voluntarily are also probably more likely to click on an ad and buy your penis enlargement cream.

Yep. https://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+most+visited

It's Yahoo properties, not Yahoo.com. Big boost: they bought Tumblr.

From the first result:

“Yahoo ranks as the most-visited website in the U.S., according to the latest report from ComScore” (So: ‘US’, not ‘the world’)

and: “Traffic to Tumblr [...] did not contribute to Yahoo's overall traffic number[...] Tumblr ranked as the 28th most popular U.S. property” (Again, just the US, and not even that popular)

http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/yaho...

According to one of the articles on the topic I found when I decided to look this up[1]: "Granted, the rare monthly win for Yahoo does not include search and mobile results."

Huh? Sure, Yahoo tops Google if you exclude Google's biggest property and the entire mobile market (which Google controls nearly 80% of).

That's like if you saw a headline that said "Apple controls more of the desktop market than Microsoft (granted, the win doesn't include business customers or machines running Windows 7 and older)."

1: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/08/22/yahoo-tops-goo...

i seem to remember from previous discussions of this statistic that yahoo gets to say this because they use the same domain in all (or at least most) regions. yahoo.com is bigger than google.com, but if you add up google.com, google.co.uk, google.ca, etc, google dwarfs yahoo.

This is big news, Pogue was/is one of the most important tech writer in my own opinion. He has a good approach of dumbing down tech products for the average joe despite beeing very knowledgeable.

I guess it is showing a shift from Yahoo to be a quality content producer.

To offset the negative top comments - I actually really like Pogue - his posts in the nytimes tech at least. He seems to understand the products he's using well enough to do a good job without getting so geeky or over concerned about minutia that it would alienate the lay person. I of course have my other sources for that, but I do check in on the nytimes tech section regularly.

I wonder if he'll work remotely. ;)

I never understood the appeal of this guy, nor his qualifications. Both he and Mossberg were woefully non-technical for technical reviewers.

Writing about technology for newspapers is a tough gig. You aren't just writing for us geeks. You have to write for grandpa who refuses to get a cell phone, for the boss who doesn't see a reason to upgrade a fax machine, for the mere mortals who _need_ technology "dumbed down." Not because they are dumb but because don't have a foundation of knowledge to build on -- or interest in gaining that foundation.

Though I did stop reading anything from Kim Komando once she explained how a floppy drive worked, and she got all the facts wrong. (That was long enough ago that someone might explain how a floppy disk worked.)

Personally, I liked his work when he was writing Desktop Critic articles in MacWorld -- very enjoyable, but not really technical. For example, when I received the April fools issue, I would always flip directly to the back to read his article first. However, since then (circa 2000 or so?), I haven't really followed him at all.

His appeal is precisely that he's non-technical. There's a large audience for that.

If Pogue was the only tech reporter, there'd be a problem, but he's not. The web is full of extremely technical blogs and forums.

But Mossberg at least gets the relevance of new tech... Pogue always seems to get on bandwagons when they are extremely mature.

Pogue is an okay journalist, but great at building a personal brand, which now extends to books and the conference circuit as well as writing.

I spent seven years as an editor at top NYC magazines, and saw time and again that great journalists - even great brand-builders - aren't usually great at creating and managing new ventures. There are exceptions, though, and I hope Pogue is one of them.

Since Microsoft is so "popular" today on HN, have you seen Pogue's hands-on review of Windows 8.1 yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u-vDf...

How is that a review? I don't follow the Times or Pogue, but this was not anything I'd expect from a "hands-on review."

This guy clearly has allies and enemies in Silicon Valley and we can only guess what his beef with Microsoft really is.

"... plus they gave me a ton of money."

Here is an argument for why the hated David Pogue writes about technology the way he does, and why it resonates: http://podcasts.infoworld.com/print/69418

I haven't read much from him since I was a kid, when I had a copy of Macworld Mac & Power Mac Secrets and was stuffing the book's 3.25" floppies into my Powermac 6100 to use ResEdit, but I especially remember the prose being engaging even apart from the interesting tricks and hacks the book covered. In his book computers lived in a world with people, rather than in a universe unto themselves, so I learned a little extra.

Scanning through a few columns again, the writing is no less clear, and even though I generally care about how something works rather than how well, no less correct. And on areas where I have no insider experience or information, like cell phone billing practices, the writing was suprisingly helpful and entertaining: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/t-mobile-hands-con...

This is a serious move from Yahoo. Given the sort of demographic that reads the New York Times and buys tech books, Yahoo must have paid Pogue a lot to have him switch from New York Times columnist David Pogue to Yahoo! columnist David Pogue. I wonder who will be next.

Yahoo calling itself the "world's biggest startup" seems like a superlative example of bad faith. It is hard to take companies (or people, for that matter) seriously, when they openly claim to be something they know they aren't.

Similarly, Pogue's content is full of inaccuracies, gross over-simplification, leading conclusions, and ignorance beyond what can be considered excusable. I suppose he'll be right at home at the "world's biggest startup".

As best I can tell, Mayer believes deeply in reflexivity, which might not actually be a bad strategy. Probably figures if she repeats claims like this over and over again, and make a couple acquisitions that kinda-maybe-sorta insinuate that it's different this time, peoples' opinions on Yahoo will turn around and with it Yahoo's fortunes. I'm sure deep down she knows she's peddling bullshit though.

Once your personal brand gets well known, it's leaving money on the table to just be an employee at a business in a declining industry like newspapers.

At the end of the day one of Yahoo's primary strenghts is being a curator of information and bringing in Pogue in my opinion will improve this core competency or atleast make it seem like it does.

Another marker in the deathbed of traditional print journalism. Add this to Bezos' purchase of the Washington Post, the departure of Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg from the WSJ, and you have indications that tech media is going to diverge and likely eclipse traditional media, the disruption will be complete.

It used to be that internet media was playing in print media's game, but now the situation is reversing, and the weaker (either in content or profitability) outfits will go by the wayside.

This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it will happen.

The key question for me is if it's ethical for a tech company to own a tech site? And that's what I assume he'd be doing. Can you really trust the editorial coverage — and tech users are pretty aware of that sort of thing. Or maybe nobody cares: After all Fox news outlets no doubt give press to Fox entertainment properties like their films — but it's sort of sad to me.

You would think everybody with a shred of conscience at cnet would quit after the DirecTV Hopper debacle but that didn't happen. cnet still exists and people still work there.

> "CNET is not going to give an award or any other validation to a product which CBS is challenging as illegal, other networks believe to be illegal and one court has already found to violate the copyright act in its application. Beyond that, CNET will cover every other product and service on the planet," a CBS spokesperson said.[0]

USA Today questioned CNET's as well as CBS' credibility going forward:

> CBS, once called the Tiffany network, will never be viewed again as pristine. The ethical media rule is that corporate business interests should never interfere in journalism – or at least not so blatantly, publicly and harmfully. It made me wonder if 60 Minutes had ever suffered the same treatment.[1]

Why does CBS still exist? Why does CBS get a free pass simply for being the second largest broadcaster in the world? Why aren't we actively boycotting everything CBS lays its slimy hands on?

I am sad to conclude that your conclusion is correct. Nobody cares. Once you are big enough, you know you can get away with certain things.

[0] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566906-93/cea-gives-dish-...

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/30/cbs-cnet-ce...

Actually you just sort of encouraged me: Nobody actually takes CNET seriously anymore and CBS itself is a shadow of what it was once upon a time.

"So I was intrigued when Yahoo invited me to help build a new consumer-tech site."

should read

"So I was intrigued when Yahoo showed me how zeroes can fit on a check.

>> Yahoo is getting 12,000 résumés a week from would-be employees.

Are there really 12,000 new applicants per week that would even be remotely qualified? Even if only half of those are technical job applicants, I find that hard to believe. Resume spam from everyone who's unemployed.

Yes, definitely. Google gets over a million applications per year as of 3 years ago [1]; it's feasible that Yahoo would get half of that now.

[1]

After I read that I figured that they have enough resumes, so no need to send them mine. Is that the message they want out there?

Mossberg leaving the Journal, Pogue leaving the Times.

Tech coverage on traditional media must be a dwindling business.

Seems like the audience is the 2% of people who read a newspaper, are utterly clueless about technology and still want to read about it.

Sadly, I think that traditional media itself is a dwindling business, not just the tech coverage .:(

Maybe Bezos' WashPo will find a way.

Wonder if he'll be able to work from home?

Some how he will manage to ruin yahoo

Reply on news.ycombinator.com