MUScoop
MUScoop => The Superbar => Topic started by: jesmu84 on August 20, 2018, 07:15:36 AM
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https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/8/16/17693198/ceo-pay-gap-income-inequality?__twitter_impression=true
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Not going to end well. But, hey, I posted before the lock. Yay.
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It turns out when you reform CEO pay to force it to be pegged to the stock market and the government builds all of it's fiscal policy around inflating the stock market....suboptimal things happen.
(https://i.gifer.com/IIz.gif)
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It turns out when you reform CEO pay to force it to be pegged to the stock market and the government builds all of it's fiscal policy around inflating the stock market....suboptimal things happen.
Exactly. I recall back in the day when people were complaining about CEO salaries and how they were out of whack with company performance. Now that they are tied to company performance, compensation has gotten out of hand.
I have thoughts on how this disparity can be dampened, but it treads too much into politics.
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My solution:
Quadruple the pay of every corporate employee making at least $1 million.
I mean, if you're gonna go for it, go for it. Stop messin' around with triflin' little figures like $10 million and $50 million and $80 million. They've "earned" it.
Did I say quadruple? Give 'em 100x what they make now. Wheeeee!
(Might as well have some real fun before the lock.)
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CEO compensation no matta
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It turns out when you reform CEO pay to force it to be pegged to the stock market and the government builds all of it's fiscal policy around inflating the stock market....suboptimal things happen.
Plus capital gains are taxed at much lower rates than labor, so $ gets consolidated at the top even faster.
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Every time I see an article on CEO compensation, I think to myself, “Self, the answer is simple... we need fewer outliers.”
While CEO compensation in many cases is hardly defensible, comparing it to the lowest paid employee as a method of bringing light to an issue is a fools distraction.
What people should be doing is boycotting companies where the CEO is unjustly compensated and/or where the low line employees are.
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CEO’s earn only the easy cash.
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When I get there I want that kind of money too.
Most of the top people I know earn it. They work almost 24/7, give up all form of personal life and have amazing skills across multiple disciplines.
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#FakeNews: "CEO Mr. Smith made $30 million last year!"
Reality: Mr. Smith made $1.5 million. He also got RSUs totaling $28.5 million. If the company meets lofty performance goals over the next 3 years, he will get the RSUs. If they company does not perform, he'll get 0.
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When I get there I want that kind of money too.
Most of the top people I know earn it. They work almost 24/7, give up all form of personal life and have amazing skills across multiple disciplines.
Sounds like most newspaper journalists I know. And they don't get paid millions. And the best ones -- those who cover the White House, for example -- do more important work than any CEO (IMHO).
Of course, they made the choice to be journalists, so that's a whole 'nother argument.
Hey, the whole deal is always what the market will bear, supply and demand, etc. It's why LeBron will make $40 million while a teacher makes $40K. There's only one LeBron; teachers are a dime a dozen. (Then again, while LeBron could be a fine CEO, there ain't a single CEO on the planet who could do what LeBron does.)
With CEO compensation as it relates to the average worker, it does seem like there will have to be a breaking point some day. Especially the cases with the golden parachutes for the crappy CEOs. It's one thing when a CEO makes the big bucks because his/her company performs bigly. But it's another when a CEO runs a company down and STILL makes the big bucks. But I digress ...
Always an interesting conversation ... until the lock.
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When I get there I want that kind of money too.
Most of the top people I know earn it. They work almost 24/7, give up all form of personal life and have amazing skills across multiple disciplines.
CEOs are just like every other human being working and are subject to the bell curve of performance and the can be subject to the peter principle like everyone else.
That means there are great CEOs that are underpaid, good CEOs that are properly paid, decent CEOs that are somewhat overpaid, and bad CEOs who are vastly overpaid.
The fact that CEOs work almost 24/7 and give up family life for the job is a societal "pressure" and not one that is actually required in the modern era to be effective. I know lots of people at lower levels that give up similar things for a pretty good salary that isn't a CEO's salary so they aren't correlated. Further a lot of time that CEOs spend on the job is in sitting on other companies boards, in part (conscious or not it's true), ensuring CEO compensation stays high.
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With CEO compensation as it relates to the average worker, it does seem like there will have to be a breaking point some day. Especially the cases with the golden parachutes for the crappy CEOs. It's one thing when a CEO makes the big bucks because his/her company performs bigly. But it's another when a CEO runs a company down and STILL makes the big bucks. But I digress ...
One interesting thing about the golden parachute, is it's not always intended as a golden parachute, it's actually intended as a poison pill for a CEO to stay in place. Take the CEO of Blockbuster during the mid-2000s, John Antioco, he had a $57 million buy out(which one could consider a parachute) but it was actually put into his contract so that it would be harder to force a CEO change when Carl Icahn came sniffing around to raid them.
As always the law of unintended consequences is as immutable as gravity.
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Sounds like most newspaper journalists I know. And they don't get paid millions. And the best ones -- those who cover the White House, for example -- do more important work than any CEO (IMHO).
Of course, they made the choice to be journalists, so that's a whole 'nother argument.
The dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney does more important work than Jeff Bezos (who employs thousands of people)? I strongly disagree.
And the fact that "they made the CHOICE to be journalists isn't "a whole 'nother argument" - in a free society it's the whole argument.
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Hey, the whole deal is always what the market will bear, supply and demand, etc. It's why LeBron will make $40 million while a teacher makes $40K. There's only one LeBron; teachers are a dime a dozen. (Then again, while LeBron could be a fine CEO, there ain't a single CEO on the planet who could do what LeBron does.)
How many guys in the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, etc., chose a career in athletics over a position in corporate America that was a pathway to being a CEO? Of course, Lebron might succeed under the right conditions as a CEO today due to the brand he's built over the last 15 years (and the fact that he's a smart guy) but I don't think he was on that track when he came out of high school and entered the work force.
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With CEO compensation as it relates to the average worker, it does seem like there will have to be a breaking point some day. Especially the cases with the golden parachutes for the crappy CEOs. It's one thing when a CEO makes the big bucks because his/her company performs bigly. But it's another when a CEO runs a company down and STILL makes the big bucks. But I digress ...
Always an interesting conversation ... until the lock.
100% agree!
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#FakeNews: "CEO Mr. Smith made $30 million last year!"
Reality: Mr. Smith made $1.5 million. He also got RSUs totaling $28.5 million. If the company meets lofty performance goals over the next 3 years, he will get the RSUs. If they company does not perform, he'll get 0.
Incorrect.
Not the part about RSUs, PSUs, or old fashioned-standard stock options being a majority of compensation--that part is correct. The "lofty performance goals" is where you are incorrect.
Gates and hurdles to obtaining the incentive pay are designed to be highly achievable; it does not take extraordinary performance in order to meet the requirements for payouts. The ratio of pay opportunity to actual payouts is quite high, not low, across the F500.
I have yet to see one compensation committee or C-suite whose goal wasn't for the EC consultant to justify why their package should be at the 75% or 90% percentile.
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Incorrect.
Not the part about RSUs, PSUs, or old fashioned-standard stock options being a majority of compensation--that part is correct. The "lofty performance goals" is where you are incorrect.
Gates and hurdles to obtaining the incentive pay are designed to be highly achievable; it does not take extraordinary performance in order to meet the requirements for payouts. The ratio of pay opportunity to actual payouts is quite high, not low, across the F500.
I have yet to see one compensation committee or C-suite whose goal wasn't for the EC consultant to justify why their package should be at the 75% or 90% percentile.
One intriguing concept would be to put "common" workers on the compensation committees....those voices and the perceptions at the worker level is seemingly lost.
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The dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney does more important work than Jeff Bezos (who employs thousands of people)? I strongly disagree.
Is this the whole "We should all be grateful for our corporate overlords for deigning us with employment opportunities (that, in Amazon's case, typically depresses wages) to further their wealth" argument?
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The dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney does more important work than Jeff Bezos (who employs thousands of people)? I strongly disagree.
And the fact that "they made the CHOICE to be journalists isn't "a whole 'nother argument" - in a free society it's the whole argument.
There is no democracy without journalists. There is still a democracy if Bezos dies tomorrow.
The journalist's work is a thousand times more important. Of course, the people who believe the media is the enemy of the people will believe as you do.
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The dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney does more important work than Jeff Bezos (who employs thousands of people)? I strongly disagree.
And the fact that "they made the CHOICE to be journalists isn't "a whole 'nother argument" - in a free society it's the whole argument.
First, you used Bezos -- the richest and one of the most successful CEOs in the world -- as your CEO example but "the dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney" (I don't even know who that is) as your journalist example. I mean, I could use Jeffrey Skilling (the criminal who ran Enron) as a CEO example and Maggie Haberman as my journalist example, and the journalist would "win." Let's not cherry-pick.
And yes, I'd argue that Maggie Haberman's work today is more important than Jeff Bezos'. He can delegate to 100 people. He could take off 3 months and Amazon wouldn't miss a beat. Not saying he does, but he could.
And of course, you're right (as was I) about journalists choosing to be journalists.
How many guys in the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, etc., chose a career in athletics over a position in corporate America that was a pathway to being a CEO? Of course, Lebron might succeed under the right conditions as a CEO today due to the brand he's built over the last 15 years (and the fact that he's a smart guy) but I don't think he was on that track when he came out of high school and entered the work force.
Any number of intelligent world-class athletes have "what it takes" to be great CEOs. They are smart, they are leaders, they are willing to take chances, etc, etc, etc. That's why many of them become successful small-business owners, successful GMs/team presidents, etc. Yes, many fail financially once they leave the field/court ... but the same is true of many businesspeople.
While LeBron or Tom Brady or Justin Heyward could learn how to become great CEOs, there is 0.0000000% chance that Bezos or Gates or Nooyi could learn how to become a professional athlete! (And you don't claim anything different.)
I don't think we disagree on most of these things, Lenny. I simply tend to give CEOs a little less credit as being somehow presupposed to "having what it takes" to be CEOs, as if they possess some kind of gene that makes it all possible while the rest of us plebes lack it.
To me, it's like the whole "Trading Places" thing. Give Billy Ray Valentine the big office and the training while casting Louis Winthorpe III into the streets, and Billy Ray ends up being the tycoon while Winthorpe ends up in the gutter.
Of course, Winthorpe also ends up with Ophelia, so there's that!
There is no democracy without journalists. There is still a democracy if Bezos dies tomorrow.
This. We're having trouble keeping our democratic republic in one piece now. If great journalists weren't on the case, we'd be screwed.
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This. We're having trouble keeping our democratic republic in one piece now. If great journalists weren't on the case, we'd be screwed.
Hyperbole aside, journalist, CEOs, athletes all have their role in society and I don't think anyone can claim one is more important than another IMO.
Also as long as the roles exist people of quality will seek to do those jobs and do it well. If Maggie Haberman we're at the NYT then someone from the Chicago Tribune or the Saint Petersburg Times or whatever would fill that role and be as good or nearly as good. Regardless of role, there are very few irreplaceable people in this world IMO.
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I've always thought there's a bit of a conspiracy going on. Who makes up the vast majority of corporate boards? Other CEOs! And the boards set the pay for the CEOs. So the guys all sit on each others' boards and jack the pay up for the CEO to create comparable expectations for themselves.
Further, I simply can't understand how CEOs earn bonuses when the company loses money and the share price is down. Yet you regularly read of the CEOs who presided over these "failures" rake in bonuses of $10 million or more.
I help lead a small company. In years we lose money, there is nothing there to pay bonuses to anyone.
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Is this the whole "We should all be grateful for our corporate overlords for deigning us with employment opportunities (that, in Amazon's case, typically depresses wages) to further their wealth" argument?
I guess so, comrade. Up the revolution!
Henry Ford's vision, drive (no pun intended) and hard work made it possible for thousands to feed their families. I think that's more important than Jim Acosta's tete-a-tetes with Stephen Colbert. Sue me.
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Hyperbole aside, journalist, CEOs, athletes all have their role in society and I don't think anyone can claim one is more important than another IMO.
Also as long as the roles exist people of quality will seek to do those jobs and do it well. If Maggie Haberman we're at the NYT then someone from the Chicago Tribune or the Saint Petersburg Times or whatever would fill that role and be as good or nearly as good. Regardless of role, there are very few irreplaceable people in this world IMO.
Fair enough, mu03. I'd expect nothing less from you.
I also do allow that there are "special" CEOs. Howard Schultz built Starbucks. He left for about a decade and the company struggled mightily. He came back and the company got back on the right foot. There are similar examples with other companies, too.
Obviously, there also are "special" journalists and athletes. Those special ones are irreplaceable. But yes, there are very few of them.
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Henry Ford's vision, drive (no pun intended) and hard work made it possible for thousands to feed their families. I think that's more important than Jim Acosta's tete-a-tetes with Stephen Colbert. Sue me.
Lenny, again, you're cherry-picking your heroes and less-than-heroes.
That's OK, we all do it.
Walter Cronkite's honesty and respectability made it possible for tens of millions of Americans to be informed. I think that's more important than Bernie Ebbers defrauding millions of Worldcom shareholders.
See?
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I've always thought there's a bit of a conspiracy going on. Who makes up the vast majority of corporate boards? Other CEOs! And the boards set the pay for the CEOs. So the guys all sit on each others' boards and jack the pay up for the CEO to create comparable expectations for themselves.
Further, I simply can't understand how CEOs earn bonuses when the company loses money and the share price is down. Yet you regularly read of the CEOs who presided over these "failures" rake in bonuses of $10 million or more.
I help lead a small company. In years we lose money, there is nothing there to pay bonuses to anyone.
Absolutely true, it's only a conspiracy in so much that no one openly talks about it.
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Fair enough, mu03. I'd expect nothing less from you.
I also do allow that there are "special" CEOs. Howard Schultz built Starbucks. He left for about a decade and the company struggled mightily. He came back and the company got back on the right foot. There are similar examples with other companies, too.
Obviously, there also are "special" journalists and athletes. Those special ones are irreplaceable. But yes, there are very few of them.
Yeah I think overall the point I was trying to make is that regardless of the profession the cream generally rises to the top with some exceptions(some obvious some not so much) but at the same time while there are exceptional people they are the exception not the rule so we undersell the ability of anyone to do a job.
So overall, we have to focus our efforts on letting the cream rise to the top while giving as many people as possible the chance to be that cream....if I may really torture the metaphor
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I guess so, comrade. Up the revolution!
Henry Ford's vision, drive (no pun intended) and hard work made it possible for thousands to feed their families. I think that's more important than Jim Acosta's tete-a-tetes with Stephen Colbert. Sue me.
Lame hyperbole aside, the point that seems to be evading you is that we ought not glorify Jeff Bezos' work as something noble or honorable.
His work is intended to enrich himself. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make him a bad or immoral person. But he's not a hero, either. He's just a guy trying to get rich (and doing it really, really well).
He employs people not because he wants to help them or feed their families. He employs people because their labor makes his company more profitable, and therefore him more wealthy. If Bezos could use robots to do the same tasks as people and save some money in the process, he'd do it in a heartbeat. He's already done it in some ways.
Again, none of this makes him a villain. But he's not praiseworthy because his company needs employees to help it turn a profit.
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Lenny, again, you're cherry-picking your heroes and less-than-heroes.
That's OK, we all do it.
Walter Cronkite's honesty and respectability made it possible for tens of millions of Americans to be informed. I think that's more important than Bernie Ebbers defrauding millions of Worldcom shareholders.
See?
What Lenny is doing is an interesting mechanism I've seen popping up in the last 5-10 years where people will put more value in the tangible than in the intangible and/or devalue the roles that don't have a measurable means of success. We can't measure how much better society is as a result of Walter Cronkite's role in it, but that doesn't mean it is less, same, or more important than say Howard Hughes role.
Take teaching, let's say there is a 2nd grade teacher that taught both Howard Shultz and Warren Buffet as well as hundreds of other people that went on to be engineers, generals, scientists, dancers, etc. Does that teacher not deserve some of the credit and if they were lower quality would that have a ripple effect through society? The idea that we are a meritocracy but somehow the jobs with the most intagibles can be done by just anyone or is a commodity is mind boggling to me.
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Lenny, again, you're cherry-picking your heroes and less-than-heroes.
I'd like to think Lenny doesn't consider Henry Ford a hero.
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First, you used Bezos -- the richest and one of the most successful CEOs in the world -- as your CEO example but "the dude that looks like a poor man's George Clooney" (I don't even know who that is) as your journalist example. I mean, I could use Jeffrey Skilling (the criminal who ran Enron) as a CEO example and Maggie Haberman as my journalist example, and the journalist would "win." Let's not cherry-pick.
And yes, I'd argue that Maggie Haberman's work today is more important than Jeff Bezos'. He can delegate to 100 people. He could take off 3 months and Amazon wouldn't miss a beat. Not saying he does, but he could.
And of course, you're right (as was I) about journalists choosing to be journalists.
Any number of intelligent world-class athletes have "what it takes" to be great CEOs. They are smart, they are leaders, they are willing to take chances, etc, etc, etc. That's why many of them become successful small-business owners, successful GMs/team presidents, etc. Yes, many fail financially once they leave the field/court ... but the same is true of many businesspeople.
While LeBron or Tom Brady or Justin Heyward could learn how to become great CEOs, there is 0.0000000% chance that Bezos or Gates or Nooyi could learn how to become a professional athlete! (And you don't claim anything different.)
I don't think we disagree on most of these things, Lenny. I simply tend to give CEOs a little less credit as being somehow presupposed to "having what it takes" to be CEOs, as if they possess some kind of gene that makes it all possible while the rest of us plebes lack it.
To me, it's like the whole "Trading Places" thing. Give Billy Ray Valentine the big office and the training while casting Louis Winthorpe III into the streets, and Billy Ray ends up being the tycoon while Winthorpe ends up in the gutter.
Of course, Winthorpe also ends up with Ophelia, so there's that!
This. We're having trouble keeping our democratic republic in one piece now. If great journalists weren't on the case, we'd be screwed.
1. Jim Acosta (CNN White House corespondent) is the George Clooney wannabe)
2. Key Lay was the CEO of Enron, not Jeffrey Skilling
3. Someone would fill the void that Maggie Haberman left more easily than the one created if Bezos stepped aside (IMHO)
4. I respect all people who are good at what they do. But certainly the kind of money that the "best" make doing certain things (playing sports, acting, winning class action suits, running large corporations, etc.,) SEEMS out of whack. But I remind myself that the market deciding such things does a better job than any government has.
5."Trading Places" is one of my all time favorite movies. The scenes in the trading pits are hilarious and, though exaggerated, kind of right on. But it's a comedy, not a documentary.
I agree that some CEOs don't cut it and are overpaid. So are some doctors, lawyers and ballplayers. But I don't envy any of them. I'd rather be happy.
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Some good points raised here.
I'm also guessing execs benefit (and thus put lots of money and effort into) from legislation like keeping capital gains tax low as compared to income tax.
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The ratio of pay opportunity to actual payouts is quite high, not low, across the F500.
Got some data?
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#FakeNews: "CEO Mr. Smith made $30 million last year!"
Reality: Mr. Smith made $1.5 million. He also got RSUs totaling $28.5 million. If the company meets lofty performance goals over the next 3 years, he will get the RSUs. If they company does not perform, he'll get 0.
And then Mr. Smith starts buying back shares instead of investing in R&D, new products, and more employees, because it is the easiest way to inflate the price. Mr. Smith gets paid. Company goes down the crapter and gets bought out by VC. VC guts company and gets rich. Company dies. Thousands now unemployed. Mr. Smith goes to the Caymans.
Rinse, repeat!
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Lame hyperbole aside, the point that seems to be evading you is that we ought not glorify Jeff Bezos' work as something noble or honorable.
His work is intended to enrich himself. There's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't make him a bad or immoral person. But he's not a hero, either. He's just a guy trying to get rich (and doing it really, really well).
He employs people not because he wants to help them or feed their families. He employs people because their labor makes his company more profitable, and therefore him more wealthy. If Bezos could use robots to do the same tasks as people and save some money in the process, he'd do it in a heartbeat. He's already done it in some ways.
Again, none of this makes him a villain. But he's not praiseworthy because his company needs employees to help it turn a profit.
Successful entrepreneurs provide jobs for people that feed, cloth and educate their families. Whether they celebrate that byproduct of their own success (the best do) or not, that's a fact.
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3. Someone would fill the void that Maggie Haberman left more easily than the one created if Bezos stepped aside (IMHO)
4. I respect all people who are good at what they do. But certainly the kind of money that the "best" make doing certain things (playing sports, acting, winning class action suits, running large corporations, etc.,) SEEMS out of whack. But I remind myself that the market deciding such things does a better job than any government has.
Respect your opinion but I think you are wrong on these two points. The first implies that the CEO job is a rarer skill set that the investigative/corespondent which I don't think is true and/or you are placing higher value on the CEO role over the corespondent role which can be your position I just think it's incorrect. The second really depends on which stage of "Jeff Bezos, CEO" you are talking about. 1994 Bezos who has the vision, courage, and savy to see the internet transformation coming and what inefficiencies in the market it would expose that would allow him to be more competitive against larger, established book sellers is a somewhat rare breed. 2018 Bezos who has billions of dollars and thousands of employees is an entirely different CEO and I'd argue a much less rare CEO, I could name at least two dozen current or soon to be CEOs who could take over at Amazon likely without a hitch.
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Got some data?
Sure. See attached. (Note: None of this data is from my firm, but is consistent with what we see).
Summary:
90% of firms over an 8 year period met threshold
70% of firms met target
15% met maximum
In aggregate, company performance met 92% of goal, and variable payout was ~112% of target. ONLY 4% OF FIRMS GRANTED NO PAYOUT.
Bottom line, if an EC consultant isn't designing a plan with easily met thresholds, they will soon find themselves replaced by a consultant more amenable to the board/C-suite
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1. Jim Acosta (CNN White House corespondent) is the George Clooney wannabe)
2. Key Lay was the CEO of Enron, not Jeffrey Skilling
3. Someone would fill the void that Maggie Haberman left more easily than the one created if Bezos stepped aside (IMHO)
4. I respect all people who are good at what they do. But certainly the kind of money that the "best" make doing certain things (playing sports, acting, winning class action suits, running large corporations, etc.,) SEEMS out of whack. But I remind myself that the market deciding such things does a better job than any government has.
5."Trading Places" is one of my all time favorite movies. The scenes in the trading pits are hilarious and, though exaggerated, kind of right on. But it's a comedy, not a documentary.
I agree that some CEOs don't cut it and are overpaid. So are some doctors, lawyers and ballplayers. But I don't envy any of them. I'd rather be happy.
1. Oh. I rarely watch CNN.
2. Actually, both Skilling and Lay were CEOs of Enron, and both had key roles in the scandal.
3. Your opinion (as you state). I disagree.
4. I do not have a list of every occurrence of the market and the government deciding things, therefore I cannot make as firm a conclusion as you did here. I generally am a believer in the free market, though I also agree with what mu03eng says in his comment.
5. No argument.
I'd rather be happy, too. And I am. I've had a lucky life.
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Yeah I think overall the point I was trying to make is that regardless of the profession the cream generally rises to the top with some exceptions(some obvious some not so much) but at the same time while there are exceptional people they are the exception not the rule so we undersell the ability of anyone to do a job.
So overall, we have to focus our efforts on letting the cream rise to the top while giving as many people as possible the chance to be that cream....if I may really torture the metaphor
Your absolutely right.
If I can use BB as an analogy - no one minds Lebron making $40 mil. It's the Chandler Parsons of the world making $22+ mil that bothers people.
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Your absolutely right.
If I can use BB as an analogy - no one minds Lebron making $40 mil. It's the Chandler Parsons of the world making $22+ mil that bothers people.
But it is not Chandler Parsons' fault that he makes $22 million.
I don't know enough about Parsons to know if he dogged it after getting the money - that would be his fault if he did. But others decided to pay him.
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9,8, 7, 6, 5, 4,
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There is no democracy without journalists. There is still a democracy if Bezos dies tomorrow.
Well, Jeff does own the Washington Post.
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Well, Jeff does own the Washington Post.
True. But his will states that if he dies, I get the Post. And I've got some big effen plans for it!
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3. Someone would fill the void that Maggie Haberman left more easily than the one created if Bezos stepped aside (IMHO)
Many studies prove otherwise. Data shows that CEO performance matches that of pure chance. Essentially the important aspect of having a CEO is making an actual decision, most of which relies upon data generated from far far lower paid individuals.
Additionally, there is very little correlation between pay and performance at the CEO level. Usually the best performing are amongst the lowest paid CEOs.
So why pay CEOs so much.
The reality is that CEO pay is not because of their amazing abilities, their uniqueness, or their performance. It is a matter of their access to "secrets". The higher an individual climbs the ladder the more access to trade secrets the individual has. Those "secrets" are of high value, meaning another company would pay a fortune to have access to them, and similarly, a company would pay a fortune to make sure they don't lose said "secrets".
Their performance in actuality means very little.
There are exceptions, see Steve Jobs, but that is an outlier, not the norm. The fact is, if Bezos wasn't around, there would have still been an Amazon, it would have still been successful, it would have just had a different face. It wasn't like Bezos was the first to come up with the idea, or that it was even a novel concept.
Do you really think there wouldn't be an Amazon without Bezos?
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A friend just shared this with me:
“The causes that destroyed the ancient Republics were numerous; but, in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequalities of fortunes, occasioned partly by the strategems of the patricians.”
— Noah Webster, A Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings on Moral, Historical, Political and Literary Subjects, 1790
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The comparison between journalists and CEOs is odd, but aside from that I find the newfound glorification of "journalism" kind of lame. Its more a thinly-veiled litmus test on the current administration than a legitimate evaluation of the industry.
Yes, of course journalism-writ-Woodward and Bernstein is vital. But have we seriously gotten to the point of putting Maggie freaking Haberman on a pedestal? She's a hack and an access merchant. I laughed out loud at:
Well, Jeff does own the Washington Post.
because it highlights why the adoration being heaped upon "journalism" right now is so awkward. The industry's consolidation, reduction in support for investigative journalists and both sides-ism all began long before anyone uttered "fake news." People like Maggie Haberman are a product of these problems, not a part of their solution. That doesn't make her reporting false, but it does require a degree of skepticism about everything she says that plays into the fake news narrative.
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The comparison between journalists and CEOs is odd, but aside from that I find the newfound glorification of "journalism" kind of lame. Its more a thinly-veiled litmus test on the current administration than a legitimate evaluation of the industry.
Yes, of course journalism-writ-Woodward and Bernstein is vital. But have we seriously gotten to the point of putting Maggie freaking Haberman on a pedestal? She's a hack and an access merchant. I laughed out loud at:because it highlights why the adoration being heaped upon "journalism" right now is so awkward. The industry's consolidation, reduction in support for investigative journalists and both sides-ism all began long before anyone uttered "fake news." People like Maggie Haberman are a product of these problems, not a part of their solution. That doesn't make her reporting false, but it does require a degree of skepticism about everything she says that plays into the fake news narrative.
I disagree with all of this. But that's cool. We're all allowed opinions.
And in my opinion, the journalists at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post have been American heroes these past 2 years.
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I don't disagree with the part about Haberman being a hack. She is to investigative journalism what the court stenographer is to the justice system.
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I don't disagree with the part about Haberman being a hack. She is to investigative journalism what the court stenographer is to the justice system.
We'll agree to disagree on that.
I threw out her name earlier in this thread because it was the first to pop into my head. I don't hold her up as the example of great investigative journalism. Indeed, she works more on the day-to-day stuff than the long-term, long-form investigative stuff. But either way, I absolutely do not consider her a hack. I have read -- and edited -- many hacks over the years.
Either way, she is an example of a dedicated journalist who is pretty much on the clock 24/7. That was the original point.
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I disagree with all of this. But that's cool. We're all allowed opinions.
And in my opinion, the journalists at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post have been American heroes these past 2 years.
Where were these "heroes" the previous 8 years? Were they just worn out from the 8 years before that? (Clintons' presidency is a different story)
I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
I'm not defending the current administration, as they have made their own bed. But the wall to wall "bombshells", "devistating news", and other hyperbolic writing/reporting has really jumped the shark.
(I'll take my day off for politics now, mods.)
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Where were these "heroes" the previous 8 years? Were they just worn out from the 8 years before that? (Clintons' presidency is a different story)
I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
Someone wasn't really paying much attention it seems.
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Someone wasn't really paying much attention it seems.
Obama self described his presidency as "scandal free."
What wasn't I paying attention to? Anything bad was just a RW conspiracy.
Did you know Obama released his summer reading list yesterday? Was a "moment" on Twitter for most of the afternoon.
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I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
This is provably false.
Yes, Obama has described his presidency as "scandal-free (I have little doubt Trump would do the same, btw).
And just a few months ago, the Boston Globe called him out for it. And then proceeded to list some of the scandals, all of which were covered in (and in most cases, the stories were broken by) outlets like the Washington Post, NY Times, Boston Globe, etc.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/03/06/obama-repeats-myth-that-his-administration-was-free-scandal/oyXEqY1QktjuXSL9Yj21IM/story.html
Fast and Furious, for example, was first reported in the mainstream by CBS News.
The Clinton email scandal was broken by the New York Times.
The Veterans Health Administration woes were first reported by CNN.
The DOJ's spying on reporters was first reported by the AP.
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Obama self described his presidency as "scandal free."
What wasn't I paying attention to? Anything bad was just a RW conspiracy.
Did you know Obama released his summer reading list yesterday? Was a "moment" on Twitter for most of the afternoon.
MSM journalists wept when Obama was elected in 2008. And they wept again when Trump was elected in 2016. Tears of joy for the former, tears of anger/distress for the latter. Their coverage (generally speaking) was consistent with their feelings.
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MSM journalists wept when Obama was elected in 2008. And they wept again when Trump was elected in 2016. Tears of joy for the former, tears of anger/distress for the latter. Their coverage (generally speaking) was consistent with their feelings.
MSM = Fox News (most watched news channel), Wall Street journal (most circulated newspaper) and Rush Limbaugh (most listened to syndicated radio host)?
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This is provably false.
Yes, Obama has described his presidency as "scandal-free (I have little doubt Trump would do the same, btw).
And just a few months ago, the Boston Globe called him out for it. And then proceeded to list some of the scandals, all of which were covered in (and in most cases, the stories were broken by) outlets like the Washington Post, NY Times, Boston Globe, etc.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/03/06/obama-repeats-myth-that-his-administration-was-free-scandal/oyXEqY1QktjuXSL9Yj21IM/story.html
Fast and Furious, for example, was first reported in the mainstream by CBS News.
The Clinton email scandal was broken by the New York Times.
The Veterans Health Administration woes were first reported by CNN.
The DOJ's spying on reporters was first reported by the AP.
Yep. Anyone who thinks that the "MSM" wasn't doing their job during the Obama years probably spent too much time listening to what people were claiming about the MSM and not enough time, you know, paying attention.
MSM journalists wept when Obama was elected in 2008. And they wept again when Trump was elected in 2016. Tears of joy for the former, tears of anger/distress for the latter. Their coverage (generally speaking) was consistent with their feelings.
I'm shocked that you would fall for this tripe too. ::)
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The "mainstream media" is kind of like Bigfoot... an unproven concept that seems like it might be real, but the fact that no one can agree on what it is or isn't doesn't stop people from claiming it kidnapped their dog.
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The "mainstream media" is kind of like Bigfoot... an unproven concept that seems like it might be real, but the fact that no one can agree on what it is or isn't doesn't stop people from claiming it kidnapped their dog.
Good analogy.
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We'll agree to disagree on that.
I threw out her name earlier in this thread because it was the first to pop into my head. I don't hold her up as the example of great investigative journalism. Indeed, she works more on the day-to-day stuff than the long-term, long-form investigative stuff. But either way, I absolutely do not consider her a hack. I have read -- and edited -- many hacks over the years.
Either way, she is an example of a dedicated journalist who is pretty much on the clock 24/7. That was the original point.
Yes, you are right, hack is probably too strong a term for her. I stand corrected. I do agree with the characterization that she is merely a stenographer trading on her access.
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Where were these "heroes" the previous 8 years? Were they just worn out from the 8 years before that? (Clintons' presidency is a different story)
I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
I'm not defending the current administration, as they have made their own bed. But the wall to wall "bombshells", "devistating news", and other hyperbolic writing/reporting has really jumped the shark.
(I'll take my day off for politics now, mods.)
Sorry ZFB, but I call false equivalency. We've NEVER had an administration like the current one, so IMO there is no way to compare journalists' current actions with how they had to cover government on the past.
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This journalism thing is very interesting because it really requires you to ask what is required for and of a free press. To call journalist heroes is certainly overwrought IMO, what exactly have the been doing that makes them heroic? Unless I missed something their families aren't being threatened or jailed nor are they themselves, they aren't having to sneak around in the middle of the night because they might be caught and killed, etc. Now, just because I don't think they are heroes, that doesn't mean they aren't providing a valuable service in general (but I also don't think the current group is anymore valuable than journalists that have come before them).
I think there are a lot of journalists who are doing a great job in gathering information, providing context, and telling the stories so people who consumed it can be informed. However, I also think there is a lot of journalism that is positioning their role as some sort of seawall against some great evil that they alone must stand against and their job is somehow to drive consumers to see their viewpoint (activist journalists if you will). I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of Chief Cheeto, but I think journalism does itself a tremendous disservice when it tries to "flood the zone" with stories and blurs the line between reporting and opining. Both things are extremely valuable but when you have reports advocating as part of a factual piece it is problematic.
Not saving I'm right, just saying how I see it. I'm definitely sympathetic to the situation journalists find themselves in but I also think they've done their fair share of putting themselves in that position.
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This journalism thing is very interesting because it really requires you to ask what is required for and of a free press. To call journalist heroes is certainly overwrought IMO, what exactly have the been doing that makes them heroic? Unless I missed something their families aren't being threatened or jailed nor are they themselves, they aren't having to sneak around in the middle of the night because they might be caught and killed, etc. Now, just because I don't think they are heroes, that doesn't mean they aren't providing a valuable service in general (but I also don't think the current group is anymore valuable than journalists that have come before them).
I think there are a lot of journalists who are doing a great job in gathering information, providing context, and telling the stories so people who consumed it can be informed. However, I also think there is a lot of journalism that is positioning their role as some sort of seawall against some great evil that they alone must stand against and their job is somehow to drive consumers to see their viewpoint (activist journalists if you will). I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of Chief Cheeto, but I think journalism does itself a tremendous disservice when it tries to "flood the zone" with stories and blurs the line between reporting and opining. Both things are extremely valuable but when you have reports advocating as part of a factual piece it is problematic.
Not saving I'm right, just saying how I see it. I'm definitely sympathetic to the situation journalists find themselves in but I also think they've done their fair share of putting themselves in that position.
Well said.
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This journalism thing is very interesting because it really requires you to ask what is required for and of a free press. To call journalist heroes is certainly overwrought IMO, what exactly have the been doing that makes them heroic? Unless I missed something their families aren't being threatened or jailed nor are they themselves, they aren't having to sneak around in the middle of the night because they might be caught and killed, etc. Now, just because I don't think they are heroes, that doesn't mean they aren't providing a valuable service in general (but I also don't think the current group is anymore valuable than journalists that have come before them).
I think there are a lot of journalists who are doing a great job in gathering information, providing context, and telling the stories so people who consumed it can be informed. However, I also think there is a lot of journalism that is positioning their role as some sort of seawall against some great evil that they alone must stand against and their job is somehow to drive consumers to see their viewpoint (activist journalists if you will). I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of Chief Cheeto, but I think journalism does itself a tremendous disservice when it tries to "flood the zone" with stories and blurs the line between reporting and opining. Both things are extremely valuable but when you have reports advocating as part of a factual piece it is problematic.
Not saving I'm right, just saying how I see it. I'm definitely sympathetic to the situation journalists find themselves in but I also think they've done their fair share of putting themselves in that position.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/402740-ny-times-reporter-shares-voicemail-from-man-threatening-him-with-ak-47
That's just from yesterday. I don't know that calling journalists heroes is the right thing to do or not. But I think its pretty unarguable that it is more dangerous to be a journalist today than it was two years ago.
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I usually try pretty hard to avoid hyperbole, so "heroic" probably was over the top. But TAMU's post shows that there is real danger in doing one's job in this profession. Hell, I once got a death threat for a column I wrote on Bobby Knight, so I know some of these people might be in danger given the ferver with which Spanky whips up his sycophants.
Showtime ran an incredible mini-series on the NYT's coverage of Spanky's first year. I believe it was toward the end of the third part where Spanky is on stage in Phoenix, pointing at the reporters on press row and bellowing (paraphrased), "There they are! The fake news media! They are the enemy of the people!" And the reaction of the crowd ... I was legitimately concerned for the well-being of those reporters.
But OK, maybe "heroic" was over the top. John McCain was heroic. My father, who served in WWII, was heroic. Maybe WSJ, NYT and WaPo reporters aren't really "heroic." Thanks for calling me on it, mu03.
Otherwise, I admit I can't be objective on this subject, and I've already said my piece, so I'll hang up and listen from here on out.
I'll only return if I see something that is false being presented as fact (as opposed to opinion), and even then only if somebody else hasn't gotten to it first.
Carry on, friends.
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http://thehill.com/homenews/media/402740-ny-times-reporter-shares-voicemail-from-man-threatening-him-with-ak-47
That's just from yesterday. I don't know that calling journalists heroes is the right thing to do or not. But I think its pretty unarguable that it is more dangerous to be a journalist today than it was two years ago.
I wonder what could possibly have incited this man to call the journalist "the enemy of the people" and threaten violence?
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This journalism thing is very interesting because it really requires you to ask what is required for and of a free press. To call journalist heroes is certainly overwrought IMO, what exactly have the been doing that makes them heroic? Unless I missed something their families aren't being threatened or jailed nor are they themselves, they aren't having to sneak around in the middle of the night because they might be caught and killed, etc. Now, just because I don't think they are heroes, that doesn't mean they aren't providing a valuable service in general (but I also don't think the current group is anymore valuable than journalists that have come before them).
I think there are a lot of journalists who are doing a great job in gathering information, providing context, and telling the stories so people who consumed it can be informed. However, I also think there is a lot of journalism that is positioning their role as some sort of seawall against some great evil that they alone must stand against and their job is somehow to drive consumers to see their viewpoint (activist journalists if you will). I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of Chief Cheeto, but I think journalism does itself a tremendous disservice when it tries to "flood the zone" with stories and blurs the line between reporting and opining. Both things are extremely valuable but when you have reports advocating as part of a factual piece it is problematic.
Not saving I'm right, just saying how I see it. I'm definitely sympathetic to the situation journalists find themselves in but I also think they've done their fair share of putting themselves in that position.
This is largely a good post, and as one who's worked in the profession, I hardly consider myself a hero, though I do consider my work important and essential. (And, for the record, I have been threatened with violence on several occasions for doing my job).
That said, I do wonder about a couple things you write here.
Like, when you say journalists "flood the zone" and blur the line between reporting and opining, what exactly are you referring to? I'm having a difficult time knowing how to respond to that without some actual examples to go on.
And, of course, where do you draw the line between opining and reporting. For example, if a political figure makes a potentially misleading statement, does the reporter merely regurgitate that statement, or does the reporter explain why it's questionable? And is that opining - calling into question the veracity of the statement?
I suspect everyone draws the line on these questions somewhere different, and that line likely shifts from story to story and media outlet to media outlet based on one's political allegiances.
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Interesting thread, lol.
Bummer about that Iowa girl.
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Bummer about that family in Colorado, too. Which has exactly as much to do with this conversation.
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Bummer about that family in Colorado, too. Which has exactly as much to do with this conversation.
Actually, JB's comment unintentionally supplies a perfect bow to this conversation. Because it demonstrates how lots of folks will easily take the bait in being distracted by our fractured mediascape: two of the president's men were found guilty of federal crimes today, including one in a way that directly implicates the president. But I just looked at foxnews.com and the headline story is about...the Iowa girl and the suspect being an illegal immigrant. Ditto Breitbart. JB only represents the millions of people who are willingly misdirected toward distractions.
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Actually, JB's comment unintentionally supplies a perfect bow to this conversation. Because it demonstrates how lots of folks will easily take the bait in being distracted by our fractured mediascape: two of the president's men were found guilty of federal crimes today, including one in a way that directly implicates the president. But I just looked at foxnews.com and the headline story is about...the Iowa girl and the suspect being an illegal immigrant. Ditto Breitbart. JB only represents the millions of people who are willingly misdirected toward distractions.
*standing O*
The flak sent up directly about the Iowa murder involving an illegal immigrant and indirectly about erasing "our" heritage (Silent Sam) was pretty impressive.
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Back to the topic at hand....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/stark-divide-incredible-aerial-pictures-slideshow-wp-084354259.html
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As a branch from the original topic, as it pertains to differences between classes and inequality, and a very pertinent topic.... White collar crime needs to be prosecuted much, much more harshly.
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Interesting thread, lol.
Bummer about that Iowa girl.
Did they find her dead? Over the weekend they were optimistic.
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Actually, JB's comment unintentionally supplies a perfect bow to this conversation. Because it demonstrates how lots of folks will easily take the bait in being distracted by our fractured mediascape: two of the president's men were found guilty of federal crimes today, including one in a way that directly implicates the president. But I just looked at foxnews.com and the headline story is about...the Iowa girl and the suspect being an illegal immigrant. Ditto Breitbart. JB only represents the millions of people who are willingly misdirected toward distractions.
On Tuesday, I learned a term I had not heard before:
Unindicted Co-Conspirator
I like learning new things.
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Did they find her dead? Over the weekend they were optimistic.
And Chico's attempts to catch the pathetic hail mary.
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This is largely a good post, and as one who's worked in the profession, I hardly consider myself a hero, though I do consider my work important and essential. (And, for the record, I have been threatened with violence on several occasions for doing my job).
That said, I do wonder about a couple things you write here.
Like, when you say journalists "flood the zone" and blur the line between reporting and opining, what exactly are you referring to? I'm having a difficult time knowing how to respond to that without some actual examples to go on.
And, of course, where do you draw the line between opining and reporting. For example, if a political figure makes a potentially misleading statement, does the reporter merely regurgitate that statement, or does the reporter explain why it's questionable? And is that opining - calling into question the veracity of the statement?
I suspect everyone draws the line on these questions somewhere different, and that line likely shifts from story to story and media outlet to media outlet based on one's political allegiances.
I'm certain a lot of this is that reality depends on where you stand type of thing. There is a lot more nuance to this then time or a message board allows for you so I will grant a couple of things: it is largely an opinion of mine based on anecdotal observation/discussion, flooding the zone and opining/reporting are unrelated "issues", and I think these phenomenon are more prevalent in the A/V media than print given that print by definition almost has to be more deliberate and less reactionary.
I'll give two examples of flooding the zone (one of which actually serves the opining one but we'll get there):
The first example was the recent revocation of John Brennan's security clearance which was covered ad nasuem when it was floated several weeks ago and was covered extensively again last week when it was actually done. This is an important political story as it represents an example of Trump seeking to punish those that speak out, however it was nearly universally framed in the media as an attack on the intelligence community and with a fundamental lack of understanding of how security clearances work. The amount of coverage the situation got without anyone truly articulating the practical impact of one person losing his security clearances (I still have a security clearance for god sake, they are over issued and under managed but whatever). IMO, the story was impactful enough about Trump targeting political enemies without turning it into a referendum on national security and certainly didn't require the wall to wall coverage.
The second example is from early January I think, back when I still had time to read the NYT exhaustively. This was the early days of the Russia collusion stories, back when Mike Flynn was going to bring Trump down, etc. I'm going to try and find the actual date, but in the Times in early January there were 8 unique stories on the Russia story, which isn't terrible given the uncertainty and impact, but within a week critical information or details in 4 of the stories had to be walked back or corrected in follow on stories. 100% anecdotal but it just struck me as remarkable how much media was pushing stories out without truly knowing what was going on.
I think the opining thing is trickier because as I think about it, I think some of my impression of the narrative pushing comes from the mix of stories and social media of the people writing the stories. A fair number of journalists are active on social media pushing back against the administration, which as members of a free society, is perfectly legitimate but then I also think that has an impact on how their reporting is perceived. There were a couple of stories on the Brennan revocation that I read last week that were written in a way that conclusions were presented as facts when it is not factual at all. I'll try to find an example or two but it's escaping me right now (maybe I'm consuming too much content and it's my problem :) )
It's all very tricky and when you combine it with the media being competitive with itself it starts to feel a little hyperbolic but as you said, it's probably all in the eye of the beholder.
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On Tuesday, I learned a term I had not heard before:
Unindicted Co-Conspirator
I like learning new things.
I'm going to assume you're kidding and say well played. The alternative is too depressing.
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Did they find her dead? Over the weekend they were optimistic.
If only there was some way for a person already online to find out.
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The first example was the recent revocation of John Brennan's security clearance which was covered ad nasuem when it was floated several weeks ago and was covered extensively again last week when it was actually done. This is an important political story as it represents an example of Trump seeking to punish those that speak out, however it was nearly universally framed in the media as an attack on the intelligence community and with a fundamental lack of understanding of how security clearances work. The amount of coverage the situation got without anyone truly articulating the practical impact of one person losing his security clearances (I still have a security clearance for god sake, they are over issued and under managed but whatever). IMO, the story was impactful enough about Trump targeting political enemies without turning it into a referendum on national security and certainly didn't require the wall to wall coverage.
I think it largely depends on where you obtain your news/information from. My read on the Brennan reporting was very different. I felt they did a very good job of providing all the background information regarding what it meant, how they work, and what the practical impact was. I actually learned a good bit on the process from the news (and I also still have a useless security clearance). Now I may have had a different take if I was using other sources/media outlets.
Which is why I largely agree with you on "flooding the zone." The problem I see is that the line between journalist and blogger has been blurred, and with unlimited print space online, focused, deliberate and accurate articles are largely a thing of the past and are now often filled with fluff, that can border on pure opinion.
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If only there was some way for a person already online to find out.
You know, this is a good idea. If one were to invent such a tool, say, one might make a lot of money.
Chico's prevarication at it finest.
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The second example is from early January I think, back when I still had time to read the NYT exhaustively. This was the early days of the Russia collusion stories, back when Mike Flynn was going to bring Trump down, etc. I'm going to try and find the actual date, but in the Times in early January there were 8 unique stories on the Russia story, which isn't terrible given the uncertainty and impact, but within a week critical information or details in 4 of the stories had to be walked back or corrected in follow on stories. 100% anecdotal but it just struck me as remarkable how much media was pushing stories out without truly knowing what was going on.
Seems to me this is simply going to happen in today's media landscape, where being first to the story is important and the news cycle runs 24/7. Not that that is a good thing, it just seems inevitable that people are going to report on something before all facts are nailed down with certainty.
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Seems to me this is simply going to happen in today's media landscape, where being first to the story is important and the news cycle runs 24/7. Not that that is a good thing, it just seems inevitable that people are going to report on something before all facts are nailed down with certainty.
don't disagree at all, just think it's an area of focus that if I were "media" I would be concerned/mindful about because it certainly gives a lever for the #fakenews types.
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I'm certain a lot of this is that reality depends on where you stand type of thing. There is a lot more nuance to this then time or a message board allows for you so I will grant a couple of things: it is largely an opinion of mine based on anecdotal observation/discussion, flooding the zone and opining/reporting are unrelated "issues", and I think these phenomenon are more prevalent in the A/V media than print given that print by definition almost has to be more deliberate and less reactionary.
I'll give two examples of flooding the zone (one of which actually serves the opining one but we'll get there):
The first example was the recent revocation of John Brennan's security clearance which was covered ad nasuem when it was floated several weeks ago and was covered extensively again last week when it was actually done. This is an important political story as it represents an example of Trump seeking to punish those that speak out, however it was nearly universally framed in the media as an attack on the intelligence community and with a fundamental lack of understanding of how security clearances work. The amount of coverage the situation got without anyone truly articulating the practical impact of one person losing his security clearances (I still have a security clearance for god sake, they are over issued and under managed but whatever). IMO, the story was impactful enough about Trump targeting political enemies without turning it into a referendum on national security and certainly didn't require the wall to wall coverage.
The second example is from early January I think, back when I still had time to read the NYT exhaustively. This was the early days of the Russia collusion stories, back when Mike Flynn was going to bring Trump down, etc. I'm going to try and find the actual date, but in the Times in early January there were 8 unique stories on the Russia story, which isn't terrible given the uncertainty and impact, but within a week critical information or details in 4 of the stories had to be walked back or corrected in follow on stories. 100% anecdotal but it just struck me as remarkable how much media was pushing stories out without truly knowing what was going on.
I think the opining thing is trickier because as I think about it, I think some of my impression of the narrative pushing comes from the mix of stories and social media of the people writing the stories. A fair number of journalists are active on social media pushing back against the administration, which as members of a free society, is perfectly legitimate but then I also think that has an impact on how their reporting is perceived. There were a couple of stories on the Brennan revocation that I read last week that were written in a way that conclusions were presented as facts when it is not factual at all. I'll try to find an example or two but it's escaping me right now (maybe I'm consuming too much content and it's my problem :) )
It's all very tricky and when you combine it with the media being competitive with itself it starts to feel a little hyperbolic but as you said, it's probably all in the eye of the beholder.
I don't know how you get past the whole "flooding the zone" or "piling on" thing. There are just so many content providers now, and the news cycle has gone from 24 hours to 12 hours to 6 hours to 10 minutes to 10 seconds.
As for the mistakes made by journalists ...
Each media outlet has always wanted to be first. In the olden days, they weren't called "media outlets" or "content providers"; they were called newspapers. Even decades after radio and TV became relevant, newspapers still did almost all investigative reporting and still broke most news.
In sports, after ESPN became legit, TV started being real competition in the "scoop" game, but newspapers still drove the news cycle. They still do. Look at how often TV outlets have to quote newspapers, and look at how many newspaper people appear on TV.
As more and more households/individuals gained access to the interwebs, obviously things changed -- I'm the master of the obvious here.
But it's interesting (to me, anyway) how recent much of this trend is. In 2005, I had a long interview with Ozzie Guillen in which he said, among other things, that he'd get so upset that he had to puke all the time, that the fans pissed him off, and that he would seriously considering quitting if the White Sox won the World Series. It was a 1-on-1 interview, so I wasn't worried about getting "beat," I took my time, and the column hit our site at about 10:30 p.m. CT. The next day, everybody else had to play catch-up. I'll always have a soft spot for Ozzie because he could have done what a lot of people did and claimed he was misquoted or taken out of context; instead, he owned up to every word.
Nowadays, that story wouldn't have had nearly the shelf life that it did just 13 years ago. ESPN or AP or somebody else would have jumped all over it.
Nowadays, a "scoop" is measured in minutes, or even seconds. There has always been pressure on the NTY or WaPo to be first on these big political stories (and even the little ones), but the pressure is bigger now. Hell, sometimes the huge news providers get "scooped" by some dude with a cellphone. For that matter, many "scoops" about the current resident of the White House come from the man himself, often while he's taking a dump at 3:30 a.m.
This was a long-winded way of saying that the intense competition to get a story 10 seconds before the other person certainly can and does lead to mistakes. There is no way to spin that as a good thing. Most of the time, the mistakes are small and are corrected in write-throughs, but sometimes they are big and that sucks for everybody.
Interestingly, as huge as the landscape has become, most of the best investigative reporting is STILL provided by the major newspapers, whose owners and publishers continue to provide the resources to do it despite the fact that most don't make money.
Here in Charlotte, our newspaper has shrunk and shrunk, but they still occasionally do some incredibly important investigative work on the state and local level.
Even though I could read the Observer online for a fraction of the price (or even for free if I pirate it), I pay full price to get the paper delivered every day. I consider it one of my charitable contributions! I gift some money to the free local weekly in our area, too.
Obviously, I believe that the free press must stay viable for the good of our country, and I believe we are seeing why these past couple of years.
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I don't know how you get past the whole "flooding the zone" or "piling on" thing. There are just so many content providers now, and the news cycle has gone from 24 hours to 12 hours to 6 hours to 10 minutes to 10 seconds.
As for the mistakes made by journalists ...
Each media outlet has always wanted to be first. In the olden days, they weren't called "media outlets" or "content providers"; they were called newspapers. Even decades after radio and TV became relevant, newspapers still did almost all investigative reporting and still broke most news.
In sports, after ESPN became legit, TV started being real competition in the "scoop" game, but newspapers still drove the news cycle. They still do. Look at how often TV outlets have to quote newspapers, and look at how many newspaper people appear on TV.
As more and more households/individuals gained access to the interwebs, obviously things changed -- I'm the master of the obvious here.
But it's interesting (to me, anyway) how recent much of this trend is. In 2005, I had a long interview with Ozzie Guillen in which he said, among other things, that he'd get so upset that he had to puke all the time, that the fans pissed him off, and that he would seriously considering quitting if the White Sox won the World Series. It was a 1-on-1 interview, so I wasn't worried about getting "beat," I took my time, and the column hit our site at about 10:30 p.m. CT. The next day, everybody else had to play catch-up. I'll always have a soft spot for Ozzie because he could have done what a lot of people did and claimed he was misquoted or taken out of context; instead, he owned up to every word.
Nowadays, that story wouldn't have had nearly the shelf life that it did just 13 years ago. ESPN or AP or somebody else would have jumped all over it.
Nowadays, a "scoop" is measured in minutes, or even seconds. There has always been pressure on the NTY or WaPo to be first on these big political stories (and even the little ones), but the pressure is bigger now. Hell, sometimes the huge news providers get "scooped" by some dude with a cellphone. For that matter, many "scoops" about the current resident of the White House come from the man himself, often while he's taking a dump at 3:30 a.m.
This was a long-winded way of saying that the intense competition to get a story 10 seconds before the other person certainly can and does lead to mistakes. There is no way to spin that as a good thing. Most of the time, the mistakes are small and are corrected in write-throughs, but sometimes they are big and that sucks for everybody.
Interestingly, as huge as the landscape has become, most of the best investigative reporting is STILL provided by the major newspapers, whose owners and publishers continue to provide the resources to do it despite the fact that most don't make money.
Here in Charlotte, our newspaper has shrunk and shrunk, but they still occasionally do some incredibly important investigative work on the state and local level.
Even though I could read the Observer online for a fraction of the price (or even for free if I pirate it), I pay full price to get the paper delivered every day. I consider it one of my charitable contributions! I gift some money to the free local weekly in our area, too.
Obviously, I believe that the free press must stay viable for the good of our country, and I believe we are seeing why these past couple of years.
I like a lot of this. One of the consequences of the rapid news cycle is things getting buried (as well the obvious errors that occur with quick reporting). For instance, the Panama papers or the long investigation and release of the Hollywood/Weinstein report. Both were long-term investigative journalism in print. Both should have led to a LOT of change in society. But we quickly moved on to the next "thing" and forgot to do much besides fire Harvey and say rich people are bad.
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I don't know how you get past the whole "flooding the zone" or "piling on" thing. There are just so many content providers now, and the news cycle has gone from 24 hours to 12 hours to 6 hours to 10 minutes to 10 seconds.
As for the mistakes made by journalists ...
Each media outlet has always wanted to be first. In the olden days, they weren't called "media outlets" or "content providers"; they were called newspapers. Even decades after radio and TV became relevant, newspapers still did almost all investigative reporting and still broke most news.
In sports, after ESPN became legit, TV started being real competition in the "scoop" game, but newspapers still drove the news cycle. They still do. Look at how often TV outlets have to quote newspapers, and look at how many newspaper people appear on TV.
As more and more households/individuals gained access to the interwebs, obviously things changed -- I'm the master of the obvious here.
But it's interesting (to me, anyway) how recent much of this trend is. In 2005, I had a long interview with Ozzie Guillen in which he said, among other things, that he'd get so upset that he had to puke all the time, that the fans pissed him off, and that he would seriously considering quitting if the White Sox won the World Series. It was a 1-on-1 interview, so I wasn't worried about getting "beat," I took my time, and the column hit our site at about 10:30 p.m. CT. The next day, everybody else had to play catch-up. I'll always have a soft spot for Ozzie because he could have done what a lot of people did and claimed he was misquoted or taken out of context; instead, he owned up to every word.
Nowadays, that story wouldn't have had nearly the shelf life that it did just 13 years ago. ESPN or AP or somebody else would have jumped all over it.
Nowadays, a "scoop" is measured in minutes, or even seconds. There has always been pressure on the NTY or WaPo to be first on these big political stories (and even the little ones), but the pressure is bigger now. Hell, sometimes the huge news providers get "scooped" by some dude with a cellphone. For that matter, many "scoops" about the current resident of the White House come from the man himself, often while he's taking a dump at 3:30 a.m.
This was a long-winded way of saying that the intense competition to get a story 10 seconds before the other person certainly can and does lead to mistakes. There is no way to spin that as a good thing. Most of the time, the mistakes are small and are corrected in write-throughs, but sometimes they are big and that sucks for everybody.
Interestingly, as huge as the landscape has become, most of the best investigative reporting is STILL provided by the major newspapers, whose owners and publishers continue to provide the resources to do it despite the fact that most don't make money.
Here in Charlotte, our newspaper has shrunk and shrunk, but they still occasionally do some incredibly important investigative work on the state and local level.
Even though I could read the Observer online for a fraction of the price (or even for free if I pirate it), I pay full price to get the paper delivered every day. I consider it one of my charitable contributions! I gift some money to the free local weekly in our area, too.
Obviously, I believe that the free press must stay viable for the good of our country, and I believe we are seeing why these past couple of years.
Totally agree and I'm not criticizing in the pejorative sense (this is a perfect application of Hanlon's Razor) as I don't think there is intent as it is absolutely a function of the technology/times. However, I do think it is something that the industry does need to think about how do they manage as they are open (fair or not) to criticism from all sides
Here is a relevant overview about the increasing need for fact checkers and what pressure that has put on the industry that I found fascinating:
https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/23/17601346/independent-fact-checkers-facebook-google (https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/23/17601346/independent-fact-checkers-facebook-google)
I'm spent some time thinking on it and one of my many billion dollar ideas that I've never gotten around to get someone to code for me is applying analytics to news sources as well as journalist that can give someone a quick idea of how they rate compared to their peers along three main factors: factual accuracy, factuality(letting the facts be the facts), and partisanship. I hate that partisanship is in there but it's a factor the times plus there has always been partisanship in journalism....it's why we have multiple newspapers in the same city,etc. It would be a couple of algorithm results that via app or a browser extension put the analytics on whatever blog/newspaper/article you are browsing at the time.
Side note, I've almost exclusively turned to "print" media for my news, I just have lost all faith in TV news/commentary.
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Where were these "heroes" the previous 8 years? Were they just worn out from the 8 years before that? (Clintons' presidency is a different story)
I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
I'm not defending the current administration, as they have made their own bed. But the wall to wall "bombshells", "devistating news", and other hyperbolic writing/reporting has really jumped the shark.
(I'll take my day off for politics now, mods.)
no matter what they say about you zigg'ster!! you are the man!!
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Totally agree and I'm not criticizing in the pejorative sense (this is a perfect application of Hanlon's Razor) as I don't think there is intent as it is absolutely a function of the technology/times. However, I do think it is something that the industry does need to think about how do they manage as they are open (fair or not) to criticism from all sides
Here is a relevant overview about the increasing need for fact checkers and what pressure that has put on the industry that I found fascinating:
https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/23/17601346/independent-fact-checkers-facebook-google (https://www.theringer.com/2018/7/23/17601346/independent-fact-checkers-facebook-google)
I'm spent some time thinking on it and one of my many billion dollar ideas that I've never gotten around to get someone to code for me is applying analytics to news sources as well as journalist that can give someone a quick idea of how they rate compared to their peers along three main factors: factual accuracy, factuality(letting the facts be the facts), and partisanship. I hate that partisanship is in there but it's a factor the times plus there has always been partisanship in journalism....it's why we have multiple newspapers in the same city,etc. It would be a couple of algorithm results that via app or a browser extension put the analytics on whatever blog/newspaper/article you are browsing at the time.
Side note, I've almost exclusively turned to "print" media for my news, I just have lost all faith in TV news/commentary.
Let me know when you get that app up and running, mu03! I'll be an investor ... as long as you guarantee 200% return in writing.
I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary of cutting the cord. I do not miss checking CNN, Fox and MSNBC very much. The Big 3 national newspapers deliver.
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Let me know when you get that app up and running, mu03! I'll be an investor ... as long as you guarantee 200% return in writing.
I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversary of cutting the cord. I do not miss checking CNN, Fox and MSNBC very much. The Big 3 national newspapers deliver.
Spoken like a true Democrat.... None of the risk, all of the reward.
-or-
Spoken like a true Republican.... Peddle the risk, pocket the reward.
Careful, 82, the world is round... Go too far left, you’ll come out on the right.
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Spoken like a true Democrat.... None of the risk, all of the reward.
-or-
Spoken like a true Republican.... Peddle the risk, pocket the reward.
Careful, 82, the world is round... Go too far left, you’ll come out on the right.
Wait ... f%ck ... the world is round?
Damn ... been watching Alex Jones for too many years. Now where's that pedophile pizza parlor? I've got my AR locked and loaded!!
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Where were these "heroes" the previous 8 years? Were they just worn out from the 8 years before that? (Clintons' presidency is a different story)
I get it, you are a journalist, so you of course are going to defend your profession, but you have to admit that the NYT, WaPost, etc were not putting anywhere close to this kind of pressure on the previous administration. Instead it was fluff pieces and hero worship.
I'm not defending the current administration, as they have made their own bed. But the wall to wall "bombshells", "devistating news", and other hyperbolic writing/reporting has really jumped the shark.
(I'll take my day off for politics now, mods.)
He was* a journalist, @1na
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He was* a journalist, @1na
I still do journalism.
Besides, if a person can be a senator for 10 days and then everybody has to call him or her Senator So-And-So for the rest of his/her life, I think I could still be a journalist even if I no longer was a writer.
But I am.
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I still do journalism.
Besides, if a person can be a senator for 10 days and then everybody has to call him or her Senator So-And-So for the rest of his/her life, I think I could still be a journalist even if I no longer was a writer.
But I am.
Nobody’s calling Trump “Mr. President” in ten years. Hell, they barely call him that today.
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Nobody’s calling Trump “Mr. President” in ten years. Hell, they barely call him that today.
The only thing he deserves to be "called" is before a grand jury.
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The only thing he deserves to be "called" is before a grand jury.
Yeah... I don’t think he’s going to be testifying against anyone anytime soon.
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The only thing he deserves to be "called" is before a grand jury.
^^^ ban dis guy
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Yeah... I don’t think he’s going to be testifying against anyone anytime soon.
(https://media.giphy.com/media/KlQR5d0ayEYsE/200w_d.gif)
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^^^ ban dis guy
Hypocrite.
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Hypocrite.
More snowflake than hypocrite...
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If only there was some way for a person already online to find out.
Yes, if I was following the story intently, which I wasn’t. Read it here first that she died, but over the weekend the dad mentioned he was optimistic on a television report A few days before as the dad had returned from California looking for her.
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Yes, if I was following the story intently, which I wasn’t. Read it here first that she died, but over the weekend the dad mentioned he was optimistic on a television report A few days before as the dad had returned from California looking for her.
I think Pakuni meant that instead of asking the question and waiting for a response, you could have googled it and had your answer in 10 seconds.
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More snowflake than hypocrite...
Snowflake, sure, because BJ's a little whiner. But hypocrite because BJ makes political comments, too. Feel free to stick with snowflake, but I'll go with hypocrite because I have more tolerance for snowflakes.
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Snowflake, sure, because BJ's a little whiner. But hypocrite because BJ makes political comments, too. Feel free to stick with snowflake, but I'll go with hypocrite because I have more tolerance for snowflakes.
Gettin a lil e-motional there, bud?
"that guy is a whiner and a hypocrite!... **proceeds to whine and be a hypocrite**" Impressive!
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Gettin a lil e-motional there, bud?
"that guy is a whiner and a hypocrite!... **proceeds to whine and be a hypocrite**" Impressive!
Hypocrite.
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Snowflake, sure, because BJ's a little whiner. But hypocrite because BJ makes political comments, too. Feel free to stick with snowflake, but I'll go with hypocrite because I have more tolerance for snowflakes.
Yeah my favorite is when he says he's going to "withhold information" because of stuff said here.
OK bud. I'll try to sleep at night.
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I think Pakuni meant that instead of asking the question and waiting for a response, you could have googled it and had your answer in 10 seconds.
If that is going to be the standard for all moving forward it seems overkill. If someone responds to a report here that some celebrity died with a bit of surprise or shock, instead of looking it up they will be called out?
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If that is going to be the standard for all moving forward it seems overkill. If someone responds to a report here that some celebrity died with a bit of surprise or shock, instead of looking it up they will be called out?
We ALL know why you were bringing it up and acting ignorant Chicos. smh
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We ALL know why you were bringing it up and acting ignorant Chicos. smh
May the Lord continue to heal you.