[insertion]

This is possibly the most source-friendly piece of tech journalism I've read in a while. I don't think there is a single point in that piece that would make Yahoo PR the least bit uncomfortable. Credit where it's due, the article is incredibly well written and beautifully presented. It's just a shame to see such unquestioning faith in a source. One by one, Levy hammers away at every recent criticism of Yahoo. Anything that could not justified was deemed to be overblown.

"Some of the various flaps involving her leadership were crazily overblown, like her personal child care accommodations, or an edict against working at home that affected a tiny percentage of Yahoo’s workforce."

Every original fact in this article is information Yahoo would obviously want to share, like the success of its revamped ad platform. Based on the way he has failed to question anything else that Mayer has done during her tenure, it is hard to believe that these facts were questioned and examined in any detail.

Don't get me wrong: I think that Mayer may be doing a good job. I'm not too sure either way. I just think, as a piece of tech reporting, this is embarrassing.

[fineIllregister]

Calling it "reporting" is a stretch. It's a blog post.

[smacktoward]

You know who Steven Levy is, right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levy

And in his own words (https://medium.com/@stevenlevy/im-moving-to-medium-6869c0e32...), he was hired by Medium to "establish a tech hub that strives to bring well-reported, lively, and meaningful reporting and writing to what is already shaping up as a terrific platform for the written word."

[declan]

I agree the article is favorable to Yahoo, but it strikes me as likely that the author conducted interviews, reviewed the facts, and wrote what he thought was the truth. Some folks on this thread may disagree with his conclusions, but that by itself does not make it bad journalism.

Disclaimer: Steven is a friend, occasionally a competitor (before I left to found Recent.io), and someone who once approached me to work with him.

[fineIllregister]

Whoops, no I didn't.

But that just makes this PR piece even more embarrassing.

[fit2rule]

PR piece: embarrassing. Hit piece: equally embarrassing.

Why are the critical articles more appealing in this case? Is there some inherent desire to see the criticism turn out to be true which is greater than the desire to see the criticism turn out to be unfounded?

[insertion]

Being reflexively cynical can be just as harmful.

The problem for Yahoo is that, at the moment, the critical articles are very dense in facts. Take a look at things like this for an example:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2015/03/01/yahoos-in...

As much as you can disagree with the content of this article, it's hard to argue that it's as light and fluffy as the PR piece served up by Levy.

Regarding Carlson's stuff on Yahoo, you might disagree with some of his opinions. You might even think his book is a hit piece. But, at the very least, it's a well-researched hit piece.

Levy only seemed to speak with Yahoo PR and republish their opinions directly. I don't think any reasonable reader could assume that Carlson only spoke to a hedge fund manager short on Yahoo.