Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nabla9 1866 days ago
Editorial board is not charge of the business of the newspaper. They are only in charge of editorial policy. The board doesn’t even speak for the newsroom.

NYT has huge institutional wall between editorial decisions and the business to keep them separate.

Here are the people running the company: https://www.nytco.com/company/people/

1 comments

But you don't need to be making decisions to see what is going on in the business of you own newspaper. They just had to do the most trivial research to see problems in their own organization. They just decided not to do it.
I was countering the point made in comment I was responding. I contributed facts to the discussion.

You make a different point. You should not make it by responding to me.

No. One writer wrote an opinion article. No sane daily (or 24/7) editorial board will dictate the minutiae of an article like that.

• Is it factual? Check.

• Is the grammar correct (often enough according to a sleep-deprived junior or production editor)? Check.

• Confirmed the article reads like a relatively sane person writing something relatively thoughtful and hopefully isn't cleverly disguised Nazi nonsense or the like? Check.

• Fits the general tone of the paper? Check.

Approved.

It's not the business of an editor to repeat the entire process of R&D and writing an article just to confirm they've covered every fact. Most of their staff probably doesn't even subscribe to the paper. The writers attentions will not be fixed on how that process works, it's just a job. Instead of lambasting an entire industry, or news organization and editorial processes, why don't you write the writer and ask them why the excluded it? Or write the editorial board? They read letters, and they respond to them. Sometimes they also correct and amend articles based on those letters. So why not get active about a problem rather than slandering them in forums?

So many of the qualms I see are based on misunderstanding both the purpose and function of publisher's like the NYT and the purpose and influence editorial process especially. The parent to your comment was correct, in spite of their comment being downvoted.

The solution isn't to try and sully their reputation by spreading vitriol—it's to engage in the discussion.