You're right, that was an overly broad generalization about the readership of a public internet forum.
People on here are always willing to read stories with substantiated claims or new information. However, yet another article pointing out how there is a general gender imbalance in the workforce that matches college CS graduation rates is likely to fall flat.
So if HN is downvoting, it's probably because educated people are not liking being played by a tired narrative.
Major tech firm is worse with race/gender discrimination than the community at large? Please, ever worked blue collar and seen their hiring practices?
They are dismissive for a reason.
If the tech community wants to set a good example, great. Being played to feel like they are worse than society... to smart for that narrative.
As long as it is reported as such. Which it is not. Hence my point.
This story is unfounded? Really? We have one solid reason why they didn't run the story:
> Subsequently, several months passed with no word from them. I reached out, and was told by the writer as politely as possible, that the editor killed the story — because I wasn’t the “… archetypal Black entrepreneur to hang the story around”.
So it seems therpe1 is mainly upset that critical commentary takes place here, which is the almost lamest possible thing to complain about. The only thing that would have made it worse is to put something in like "Edit: bring on the downvotes, you know I'm right".
Your race, your country, your culture, your health, your finances, your dependents, your family all have a massive impact on whether you can stop doing whatever you're doing and focus fully on turning an idea into a high growth business. Maybe it's just me, but I personally believe that it is a huge privilege to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship.
I could be a coal miner in war-torn sub-Saharan Africa trying to make ends meet to pay for my sick child's care, instead I'm sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office in the Bay, able to complain that the snack selection is not sufficiently locally sourced.
Which narrative do you think that is?
It is demeaning and patronizing to hear that you're victim and your race should be what defines you.
The author is trying to say "Here look at the cool business I built with a lot of work and talent. Check out the algorithm I am using etc." and journalist wants to instead write about "Poor black person somehow made it out of a poor neighborhood. Let's point out his race over and over...".
The narrative built could be that journalists are mistreating successful entrepreneurs by looking for stereotypes.
Also, someone could look at this article and think it signals that discussions about race and its effect on entrepreneurship are now actually harmful overall.
Another narrative could be that the archetypal black entrepreneur is well represented by this guy.
Alternatively, someone could build this into a narrative that black people aren't inordinately effected by poverty.
I don't personally think there is enough quantitative evidence relayed in the article to substantiate any of those narratives, but I'm pretty sure at least one or two of those narratives have been cognitively hardened in someone because they read this article.
It all depends on how you view the story.
It used to be that people would have to buy a whole issue or subscription to a publication. So you'd choose based on the overall reputation of the publication. So that's what the media maximized.
Now, on the Internet, people consume articles for free from many sites based on links. They don't care (and often don't know) anything about the reputation of the publication they're reading. And sites get paid based on views (through ads served). So now the sites are optimizing for getting people to read this article, without much concern about the overall image of the site, which most people won't know anyway.
It's an obvious, huge, and very impactful change in incentives for media people.
there were literally newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline and making you pay two cents to read the article itself. I don't think subscription papers existed in large amounts during that time.
it's weirdly hilarious to me to think that urban sidewalks used to be analogous to facebook...
Ad-supported online journalism has unbundled news and precisely quantified each part. Management know exactly what each piece of "content" earns. Editors can no longer pretend that the prestige of serious reporting is a worthwhile investment.
Ad-supported online journalism is now almost entirely dependent on traffic from social media. As we have learned from the "fake news" imbroglio, reputation means almost nothing in this arena. You're only as good as your next clickbait headline.
As I see it, the only future for quality journalism is subscription-based, one way or another. Adsense is killing journalism.
In Australia, the equivalent of the NYTimes is probably The Age or the Sydney Morning Herald. On both sites, people read a lot of gossip. I haven't seen stats recently, but when a mate worked there they were usually the top stories on any given day outside say Steve Irwin dying.
Someone can read gossip anywhere - so why go to a reputable site to do it? I think people still go to reputable sites because they can convince themselves they aren't one of the masses that reads gossip. Oh no. They read The Age / NYTimes etc.
The publications that chase pageviews at the expense of reputation threaten to destroy that convenient delusion, and I wonder if, longer term, that will hurt the bottom line. Fake News SHOULD be a huge financial gain for the mainstream media, as reputation is the number one factor people suggest when working out if something is fake news. So more than even reputation is the key - even when the goal is more gossip pageviews.
The fact is that tabloid, clickbait style of journalism has been going on for decades and was popularised by Rupert Murdoch first in the Australia then UK then the US. What we see on many online websites are merely digital versions of The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph etc which were all very popular news publications.
Great book, if you're looking to understand how media in the internet age became such a disaster I recommend it highly.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
Although there is a focus on black urban poverty, the media will sometimes also tell the other side of the story. For example, here [1] is a New York Times from last year: "Poverty is far more prevalent in black households than the general population, but the vast majority of African-Americans do not live in poverty. According to census data released last year, 26 percent of blacks live in poverty, compared with 15 percent of the country as a whole"
That sounds like a pretty balanced statement to me.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-...
I explicitly said that these people follow a very basic desire to be successful in their jobs, make a living, and keep their companies growing. Unfortunately the way they accomplish that is at the cost of objectivity for their readers.
This is a factually baseless statement that you invented and then decided to make an entire point around. The media is not a cohesive entity. It's the equivalent of saying "all people are murderers".
The set of people involved in "the media" are, by definition, in the business of creating and publishing media (news, opinion pieces, entertainment, etc). Success in this business does not require keeping the public informed, but it does require selling content. Thus, the group as a whole is in the business of selling content, and not necessarily in the business of keeping the public informed.
And get internships at top companies based on my race?
And have parents and family who can speak proper english and understands American culture?
Sign me up.
Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there
Short circuit logic, here you conflate things to make it disregard the first statement and push your own agenda.
1. A media business is not necessarily the same as a news business.
2. Either way both a media business and a news business are in the business of creating and selling stories.
3. Both a media business and a news business can have objectives of both selling stories that inform the public and sell junk to the public.
4. Stating like any other business doesn't serve any credibility to your argument, rather you're trying to slant a profit motive as evil. Would non-profits providing news services be the only good people in your head?
They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.
Because they like jobs therefore they must be willing to take the low road to whatever they can to earn the duckets those jobs? So they create sensationalized and dramatized results, to use generalities to gloss over nuanced matters?
Kind of like this post here?
Good job.
Everyone's in the business of selling stories. You tried to sell yours but I'm not buying it.
"Can we cause outrage with this? Nope? Ok, discard this dude, find someone who supports our hypothesis so we get more page views"
Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there. They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.