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Comment by wdewind | Hacker News Reader

> Even Mr. O’Connell, the über-Uber devotee, is peeved. “The company is turning into a soulless psycho monster,” he said. He sides with the drivers. “I would much rather they pay them fairly than have to deal with surge pricing at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday,” he said.

I grew up really respecting the NYTimes as an institution, but now when I read what they have to say about things I actually understand I am quite underwhelmed by their investigative prowess. I feel like they have a serious habit of using quotes and other colloquial (mis)understandings that are incorrect to spread FUD about specific tech companies. Check out their record on AMZN, for instance. In this case they use this guy to set up a completely false dichotomy: who wouldn't rather that? I'm sure even Uber would rather that. But that's not how life (read: the economy) works at all.

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If you haven't noticed the recent flurry of Uber articles... Let me try to explain whats going on here.

These days you go to boomberg, nytimes, any blog I know of and say "we'll pay you X amount of dollars to write an article about Uber changing something." The "news" outfit gets to write whatever they want but the underlying message of "uber changing something" has to be there to get paid. The splitting hairs part is how people think they retain credibility as a "news" outfit because they use their own words. I think a lot of people would say otherwise if they saw the whole process from beginning to end.

If that all sounds like unfettered mass manipulation, thats because it is. You can be in the news all year round if you have the money to burn out fishing. Pick an source, they all have their price these days.

You actually think this is an advertorial masquerading as legitimate trend-piece by NYT?

Uber just hired David Plouffe, one Obama's senior advisors and campaign strategists, as their chief lobbyist. This is serious as political clout gets. Anything is possible.

https://blog.uber.com/davidplouffe

Yes, this piece is bought. It reads like a classic advertorial for Uber (with a subtle attack against Lyft).

Read it again and you'll see it.

Native Advertising is the industry term

You don't send checks to major newspapers for stories.

What you do is write the story yourself and send it to media outlets, and they'll rewrite it and publish it because they are lazy. Publishing positive puff about a company is a no-op for the papers, because it doesn't open them up to criticism or liability. Publishing positive puff about a tech company makes you seem young.

[PRESS RELEASE] Uber: single-handedly fixing the most common complaint in LA, if you'll let them.

Yes, this is how it works.

As a reporter who receives these kind of emails from PR flacks all day, I can say that it is as simple and stupid as this in most cases. I can't say with 100% certainty that no one ever just pays a reporter to write PR bullshit but most of the time it's gross laziness.

Right, we've all read PG's submarines piece. Now my question is why is NYTimes writing stuff against Amazon? I couldn't find even a pro-ish Amazon editorial when I searched, and if there is one it's severely outnumbered by misunderstandings and falsities about Amazon written by Krugman and friends. I think there are some really great arguments to be made that there are big problems with AMZN, but NYtimes fails to make all of them in favor of traditional "but where are the profits" type arguments.

I pick on the Amazon story in particular because I had a position in Amazon and so I followed media about it in particular. I'm sure there are other companies that are similar. I'm not particularly shocked or outraged by it, but I would like to know why they are so angrily anti-Amazon, if only to better understand their bias.

Bozos owns Washington Post, a natural competitor to the NY Times.

I agree with your remarks regarding Amazon btw.

> but now when I read what they have to say about things I actually understand I am quite underwhelmed by their investigative prowess.

IME this is true of all reporting, regardless of the source or subject.

The more removed we are, the more we tend to believe what's reported is true.

Different sections of the NYTimes have very different tones and journalistic merit. This article was published in the FASHION section of the paper.

Excellent point. Fashion is probably the most advertorial oriented of the NYT sections...except for Home/real estate.

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