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Comment by kmfrk | Hacker News Reader

There's also an ethical constraint that prevents people like the author from copying Gladwell's model. And it's plainly obvious that things in general are much easier, when you don't have to adhere to a set of ethics.

Gladwell is clearly a talented writer - the guy can make an entertaining presentation about condiments, which is no small feat.

Mike Daisey is a gifted spoken-word artist as well. Yet he is someone whose example I doubt many here would aspire to.

Gladwell might be a compelling - albeit extremely formulaic - writer, but how does he fare as a journalist?

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I'm having trouble seeing how Gladwell could reasonably compared to Daisey, a disgraced fabulist.

I don't think the parent means to compare Gladwell directly to Daisey. Daisey is just an example of how easy it is to spin tales if you don't care about truth.

If I understand him, the parent is responding to this question of yours "Why isn't [the blogger] spectacularly successful too?" The answer is "ethics": some people don't follow easy paths to success because they care about what they write (say, do, etc.). I doubt you really disagree with that, but I find your first post odd. You go out of your way to defend Gladwell, even though you seem to find his thinking pretty weak and his corporate connections too close for comfort.

Yes, Gladwell writes well, but is that all that matters?

Writing enjoyably superficial pop-psych pieces for The New Yorker isn't unethical.

The only difference is that Daisey has fallen in disgrace, Gladwell is just as much of a fabulist (and worse, an industry shill/undercover PR)

What?

> Gladwell might be a compelling - albeit extremely formulaic - writer, but how does he fare as a journalist?

In fairness, we probably shouldn't judge him as a journalist. He's a storyteller and a popularizer instead: someone who reads scholarly works and whips them into a shape that larger audiences can and will read.

Case in point: in 1985, Timothy Wilson published an amazing article called "Strangers to Ourselves". Years later, he turned it into a book (of the same title). But most people haven't heard of Wilson or that book, certainly nowhere near as many people as have heard of or read Malcolm Gladwell's Blink. By Gladwell's own admission, most of the ideas in Blink start from Wilson's work.[1]

[1] http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/tp_reading.html

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