Hacker News Reader

The name at the top of the article is still the journalist's. They might be selling (through ads or a subscription) an article written by a Pulitzer winner, but in fact it is partly written by an editor, and the journalist hasn't even checked it. Isn't it like selling "beef" lasagnas that contain horse meat?

View on HN

I dunno about that analogy, but the fix for this is for editors to be included in the byline, or at least at the bottom where contributors are often found. Some newsrooms have started doing this but it should absolutely be more common. But as things are, we have newsrooms whose editorial boards are completely anonymous so i don't expect anything to change in the industry anytime soon.

Usually, at least in the US, when a journalist does not want to have their name on an article any longer it is removed. Infamously this happened somewhat recently at NYT, where after doing a decent report on something israeli the editors felt that there was a risk it might make readers less genocidal so they made rather sweeping changes and hence the journalists had their names removed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com