Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Wait, is this an article from the Guardian making fun of their own article on the same study earlier on ? See http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/01/two-thirds-ca... ? If that's the case, that's a novel way of doing journalism: publish crap first, then sell more paper by doing a critique of your crap.

View on HN

Why do you assert that there is malice involved? That just makes no sense. What’s with this reflexive impulse to always, always, always loudly proclaim malice?

I just don’t get where this weird worldview comes from. If there is no malice involved then this is not a big deal. Wow, people working for the same publication nevertheless criticise each other. Oh my god, what a concept!

I don't understand. What malice exactly is being asserted in the parent comment?

Probably the idea of conspiring to intentionally publishing something to later criticize it instead of publishing the correct thing first.

> What’s with this reflexive impulse to always, always, always loudly proclaim malice?

same question to you? ;-)

I’m not assuming malice here you know …

Could just be error?

"If that's the case, that's a novel way of doing journalism: publish crap first, then sell more paper by doing a critique of your crap."

I wouldn't assume it was an intentional strategy. Papers and magazines have never been shy about critiquing themselves. (At least, the better ones haven't.) Back in the day, it wasn't uncommon to see an editor at the New York Times take a staff reporter or columnist to task in a sidebar, or even in a followup story. And the role of ombudsman used to mean something. (Whereas today, it's a very underappreciated and little-understood role.)

Second, we shouldn't necessarily presume that writers at the same paper are coordinating with each other. Say what you will about that as a business practice. But it's a fact of life at many publications, with distributed staffs, section-specific editors, shrinking numbers of full-timers, and ever-increasing numbers of independent contractors. I wouldn't attribute to malice what can better be explained by uncoordinated action.

[EDIT: This comment got a downvote, and I'm guessing it's because someone assumed I'm defending the Guardian here. Just to be clear, I'm not. When I say that people aren't always coordinating, I'm not offering that as a defense of lack of coordination. I'm offering it as a possible explanation. Clearly, a lack of coordination is a bad thing.]

> . I wouldn't attribute to malice what can better be explained by uncoordinated action.

Don't they do peer reviews before publishing articles to the eyes of millions ?

>Don't they do peer reviews before publishing articles to the eyes of millions ?

No.

The closest journalism gets to peer review is fact-checking. I know of no newspaper or website that does formal fact-checking; the only times I recall being formally factchecked were when I've written for monthlies like Playboy, Wired magazine, etc. Here's a famous example of where fact-checking would have been useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Glass#The_New_Republic_...

At other news organizations there is, in theory, informal fact-checking. I've done that as an editor and reporter, and I've had that done to me by my editors and, more frequently, by the good folks working on copy desks. This is not necessarily a rigorous process, but it can flag more obvious problems, hyperlinks to the wrong web pages, information stated as fact that is no longer accurate, etc.

As <jonnathanson> points out nearby, some of these built-in safeguards have been eroded by the journalism crunch. Others have been removed by the perceived need to increase publishing speed. I know of one news organization that had 3-4 humans involved in reviewing a story circa 2002 before it could be published on the web. By 2010-2012, however, reporters were clicking the "publish" button in the CMS themselves for almost all stories -- and then sending a request to the copy desk for an edit after the story was live.

[Disclosure: I worked as a technology journalist, albeit one with a technical background, before leaving CNET/CBS last year to found http://recent.io/]

In theory, this is the function of the editor -- be it a section editor, a managing editor, or someone else who bears the title "editor." In practice, editors have been very hard hit by the journalism crunch. There are still plenty of fantastic editors out there; they're just not getting hired, kept on, or appropriately compensated for their contribution anymore. Editors' heads are often the first on the guillotine when the cost-cutting rounds begin. The editors who survive the purge are often wildly overstretched. Others are extremely green--college kids, hired for a third of what an experienced editor gets paid, under the misguided assumption that anyone with a journalism degree can successfully fulfill the responsibilities of an editor.

(For what it's worth: I don't know anyone on the Guardian's staff, and am making no specific accusations here.)

In journalism there is frequently the case that when a story plays out, the coverage then becomes about the story itself (will try to find a reference if I can). (This one hasn't played out yet so by the play book he really needed to wait a bit longer.)

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I think you just see something like "one site - many people writing - no global review".

The article you link seems to be syndicated from "Press Association" (??) and was probably added by a scientifically illiterate journalist, editor or somesuch.

The OP here was written by actual scientists who have a blog-type of thing on TheGuardian.com.

Your link does not go to a Guardian article, it goes to a Press Association (PA) article published on the Guardian's website, and on thousands of newspaper websites.

Byline: "Press Association". I guess the question is how The Guardian choose articles to aggregate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com