Ellen Pao Is Stepping Down as Reddit’s Chief
1. Ellen Pao, the interim chief executive of Reddit, resigned from the online message board on Friday after a week of ceaseless criticism from scores of angry users over the handling of an employee departure.
This a pretty matter-of-fact statement of what happened, as you'd expect from a quick reaction piece. 1) Resigned. 2) Week of criticism. (wait, only scores of users?) 3) Employee departure.
It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0: Fighter of Sexism Is Out at Reddit
1. Ellen Pao became a hero to many when she took on the entrenched sexist culture of Silicon Valley. But sentiment is a fickle thing, and late Friday the entrepreneur fell victim to a shrill crowd demanding her ouster as chief executive of the popular social media site Reddit.
Boom. 1) Hero. 2) Anti-sexist. 3) Angry mob. There's some serious spin being applied here. No mention of any reasoning, we only know they're "shrill."
Next couple:
(initial article was matter-of-fact details that should definitely have been buried later)
2. Ms. Pao’s abrupt downfall in the face of a torrent of sexist and racist attacks, many of them on Reddit itself, is likely to renew charges that bullying, harrassment and ugly behavior are out of control on the web — and that Silicon Valley’s well-publicized lack of interest in hiring anyone who is not male and white is contributing to the problem.
3. The debates over diversity in technology and invective on the Internet have been simmering for a long time, but they boiled over in the last year. One reason was Ms. Pao’s lawsuit against her former employer, the venerable venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Most people will have stopped reading at this point. It's 100% about sexism, bullying and shitty internet behavior. No mention of Victoria, /r/fatpeoplehate, or IAmA.
Victoria's not mentioned until paragraph 5, below the second picture, and it's hedged by an unrelated part about Pao's gender fueling it. Victoria's gender is never mentioned as a factor, and isn't revealed except by her name the only other time she's discussed, in paragraph 12.
The moderator protests get one sentence, also in paragraph 12. None of their complaints besides Victoria were mentioned. Note that the IAmA mods' op-ed was published in the Times 2 days prior.
FPH never makes it in there, even though it would lend credence to their argument about bullying and harassment being "out of control on the web." I would argue its omission leans the article towards the SV sexism storyline.
I'm not saying that anything in the article is false. Nor do I think it's an opinion piece – it absolutely falls on the "objective news" side of the spectrum. It could even be perfectly cromulent as a standalone article — just not as the lead story on the reddit drama.
It's about what's said, what's emphasized, and what's buried. That's spin. And this article is spun, whether because the reporter hates freedom or because Silicon Valley sexism makes for a hot story. That's not the type of reportage I expect from the New York Times.