Silicon Valley and tech in general seem to hate establishment media institutions. (Edit: I say this as someone who works in tech—though not in SF—and who briefly worked in media.) It's not new,...
Silicon Valley and tech in general seem to hate establishment media institutions. (Edit: I say this as someone who works in tech—though not in SF—and who briefly worked in media.) It's not new, and it's well-documented. The Star-Slate Codex nonsense was just another instantiation of it. Hacker News is regularly full of comments trashing the New York Times in particular.
I would argue that we have access to more high-quality writing than ever before. (The New York Times in particular has done much in the past decade or so to shed its stodgy reputation as "the gray lady," and much of their content—particularly in opinion, analysis, and magazine-style pieces—has taken on a much more conversational tone.) The idea that this judgment should be made by an arbitrary web-app is a perfect example of the technologist's attitude that software can (trivially) address problems in domains they've never worked in.
Maybe even more irksome is that the author finishes off the piece with this line:
Or maybe historically prestigious publications should stop hiring former BuzzFeed writers.
This is the most tired meme in ad-hominem media criticism and I have to believe at this point that it reads as disingenuous. Buzzfeed News has existed for nearly 10 years, during which it has won numerous awards and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It's also a part of the White House Press Corps. And Ben Smith is not a "former Buzzfeed writer," he was editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News for nearly a decade—prior to that, he wrote for Politico.
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration of the article (blog?)'s point. They very briefly brought up Hemmingway and at least I read it more like another confirmation that the author wasn't crazy,...
The idea that this judgment should be made by an arbitrary web-app is a perfect example of the technologist's attitude that software can (trivially) address problems in domains they've never worked in.
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration of the article (blog?)'s point. They very briefly brought up Hemmingway and at least I read it more like another confirmation that the author wasn't crazy, this sentence was pretty hard to parse.
To which, I have to agree.
Honor Levy, 23, with a piece of fiction published on The New Yorker’s website and a short story collection coming out next year, was regretting her decision to pull her piece from The Drunken Canal as we walked last Thursday past the publication’s unmarked white newspaper box in Lower Manhattan.
Is pretty awkward to parse to me. It just subverts mental expectations of sentence flow and it's not some kind of poetry, so that subversion is almost certainly not intentional.
However, as someone who subscribes to the Times, I don't think these sentences are that common. Or at least most sentences run through my brain fine.
A bit for rhetorical purposes, sure, but my point stands that there's a certain strain of condescending techno-optimism that really grates me (and is a large reason I've stopped commenting on...
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration of the article (blog?)'s point.
A bit for rhetorical purposes, sure, but my point stands that there's a certain strain of condescending techno-optimism that really grates me (and is a large reason I've stopped commenting on Hacker News and prefer Tildes) and I think this is an example (perhaps not a "perfect example," as I put it).
Is pretty awkward to parse to me.
Agreed, it's not a great sentence! But the author is well-versed enough in statistics to know that an anecdote is not a trend! A more likely (and well-supported) hypothesis is that major newspapers are publishing more than ever before, and many of us are consuming more of it than we might have. The pieces with clear or unremarkable writing don't register much, but the pieces that are subpar (the quantity of which scales as the articles per day does) leave an impression.
I've been appalled for years at the quality of writing in online publications. I expect a certain standard from a less newsy site like, say, Buzzfeed, but I'm shocked at what gets through on major...
I've been appalled for years at the quality of writing in online publications. I expect a certain standard from a less newsy site like, say, Buzzfeed, but I'm shocked at what gets through on major publications. I want to make it clear that I'm not some strict grammarian (look at my posts here for evidence, I'm sloppy), but when I have to write and draft something, I make sure it's presentable. Heck, I even come back here and touch up comments I've made minutes/hours later to adjust their flow (I'll mention a change if it at all changes the meaning/interpretation).
This was linked on Hacker News, so I assumed it was going to be about robots writing articles, but it's not. It's about how terrible writing (by humans) has become in newspapers. I've hit this...
This was linked on Hacker News, so I assumed it was going to be about robots writing articles, but it's not. It's about how terrible writing (by humans) has become in newspapers. I've hit this problem myself. I'm reading an article, and I just can't figure what's being said because I can't even properly parse the sentences. Or I can parse it, but I can't figure out the intent because it's so vague or nebulous.
I also want to point out that this is what using software, particularly on the web and mobile, has become. I often stare at an app for minutes just thinking, "WTF am I looking at? What am I supposed to do? How do I do 'X'? What inscrutable icon is this function hiding behind?"
I don't know what causes this problem, but I have experienced it quite frequently. Perhaps it's just an indicator that I'm getting "too old" and "don't get it" anymore? (That would be ironic since some of the software I help write is intended to be used by young people posting videos to the web. But weirder things have happened.)
There's nothing to get. It's my cohort doing the writing, and I feel I can confidently say this. It still happened ten years ago when the people doing the writing now were still in college, but...
There's nothing to get. It's my cohort doing the writing, and I feel I can confidently say this. It still happened ten years ago when the people doing the writing now were still in college, but less frequently, I feel.
Silicon Valley and tech in general seem to hate establishment media institutions. (Edit: I say this as someone who works in tech—though not in SF—and who briefly worked in media.) It's not new, and it's well-documented. The Star-Slate Codex nonsense was just another instantiation of it. Hacker News is regularly full of comments trashing the New York Times in particular.
I would argue that we have access to more high-quality writing than ever before. (The New York Times in particular has done much in the past decade or so to shed its stodgy reputation as "the gray lady," and much of their content—particularly in opinion, analysis, and magazine-style pieces—has taken on a much more conversational tone.) The idea that this judgment should be made by an arbitrary web-app is a perfect example of the technologist's attitude that software can (trivially) address problems in domains they've never worked in.
Maybe even more irksome is that the author finishes off the piece with this line:
This is the most tired meme in ad-hominem media criticism and I have to believe at this point that it reads as disingenuous. Buzzfeed News has existed for nearly 10 years, during which it has won numerous awards and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. It's also a part of the White House Press Corps. And Ben Smith is not a "former Buzzfeed writer," he was editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News for nearly a decade—prior to that, he wrote for Politico.
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration of the article (blog?)'s point. They very briefly brought up Hemmingway and at least I read it more like another confirmation that the author wasn't crazy, this sentence was pretty hard to parse.
To which, I have to agree.
Is pretty awkward to parse to me. It just subverts mental expectations of sentence flow and it's not some kind of poetry, so that subversion is almost certainly not intentional.
However, as someone who subscribes to the Times, I don't think these sentences are that common. Or at least most sentences run through my brain fine.
A bit for rhetorical purposes, sure, but my point stands that there's a certain strain of condescending techno-optimism that really grates me (and is a large reason I've stopped commenting on Hacker News and prefer Tildes) and I think this is an example (perhaps not a "perfect example," as I put it).
Agreed, it's not a great sentence! But the author is well-versed enough in statistics to know that an anecdote is not a trend! A more likely (and well-supported) hypothesis is that major newspapers are publishing more than ever before, and many of us are consuming more of it than we might have. The pieces with clear or unremarkable writing don't register much, but the pieces that are subpar (the quantity of which scales as the articles per day does) leave an impression.
I've been appalled for years at the quality of writing in online publications. I expect a certain standard from a less newsy site like, say, Buzzfeed, but I'm shocked at what gets through on major publications. I want to make it clear that I'm not some strict grammarian (look at my posts here for evidence, I'm sloppy), but when I have to write and draft something, I make sure it's presentable. Heck, I even come back here and touch up comments I've made minutes/hours later to adjust their flow (I'll mention a change if it at all changes the meaning/interpretation).
This was linked on Hacker News, so I assumed it was going to be about robots writing articles, but it's not. It's about how terrible writing (by humans) has become in newspapers. I've hit this problem myself. I'm reading an article, and I just can't figure what's being said because I can't even properly parse the sentences. Or I can parse it, but I can't figure out the intent because it's so vague or nebulous.
I also want to point out that this is what using software, particularly on the web and mobile, has become. I often stare at an app for minutes just thinking, "WTF am I looking at? What am I supposed to do? How do I do 'X'? What inscrutable icon is this function hiding behind?"
I don't know what causes this problem, but I have experienced it quite frequently. Perhaps it's just an indicator that I'm getting "too old" and "don't get it" anymore? (That would be ironic since some of the software I help write is intended to be used by young people posting videos to the web. But weirder things have happened.)
There's nothing to get. It's my cohort doing the writing, and I feel I can confidently say this. It still happened ten years ago when the people doing the writing now were still in college, but less frequently, I feel.
Honestly, how do we know it's not about robots writing articles poorly?
Haha! For that matter, how do we know the article itself wasn't written by a bot?