12:50 PM Manny: Michael Nielsen hits our points:
"Another example of the immune response is all the recent news pieces lamenting the death of newspapers. Here’s one such piece, from the Editor of the New York Times’ editorial page, Andrew Rosenthal:
'There’s a great deal of good commentary out there on the Web, as you say. Frankly, I think it is the task of bloggers to catch up to us, not the other way around… Our board is staffed with people with a wide and deep range of knowledge on many subjects. Phil Boffey, for example, has decades of science and medical writing under his belt and often writes on those issues for us… Here’s one way to look at it: If the Times editorial board were a single person, he or she would have six Pulitzer prizes…'
This is a classic immune response. It demonstrates a deep commitment to high-quality journalism, and the other values that have made the New York Times great. In ordinary times this kind of commitment to values would be a sign of strength. The problem is that as good as Phil Boffey might be, I prefer the combined talents of Fields medallist Terry Tao, Nobel prize winner Carl Wieman, MacArthur Fellow Luis von Ahn, acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer, and thousands of others. The blogosophere has at least four Fields medallists (the Nobel of math), three Nobelists, and many more luminaries. The New York Times can keep its Pulitzer Prizes."
'There’s a great deal of good commentary out there on the Web, as you say. Frankly, I think it is the task of bloggers to catch up to us, not the other way around… Our board is staffed with people with a wide and deep range of knowledge on many subjects. Phil Boffey, for example, has decades of science and medical writing under his belt and often writes on those issues for us… Here’s one way to look at it: If the Times editorial board were a single person, he or she would have six Pulitzer prizes…'
This is a classic immune response. It demonstrates a deep commitment to high-quality journalism, and the other values that have made the New York Times great. In ordinary times this kind of commitment to values would be a sign of strength. The problem is that as good as Phil Boffey might be, I prefer the combined talents of Fields medallist Terry Tao, Nobel prize winner Carl Wieman, MacArthur Fellow Luis von Ahn, acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer, and thousands of others. The blogosophere has at least four Fields medallists (the Nobel of math), three Nobelists, and many more luminaries. The New York Times can keep its Pulitzer Prizes."
12:52 PM me: now that is on point
12:53 PM Manny: Why would I pay an idiot like Andrew Ross ("there are no successful unionized companies") Sorkin to interpret the economic news for me, when I could get the real skinny from, like, an actual economist
12:55 PM "I wonder if Andrew Rosenthal and his colleagues understand that someone equipped with an RSS reader can assemble a set of news feeds that renders the New York Times virtually irrelevant? If a person inside an industry needs to frequently explain why it’s not dead, they’re almost certainly wrong."
12:57 PM me: Ha. The problem, here, as we've noted, is in part nostalgia.
Going back to the previous point, t's totally amusing that the accolades valued are those given by journalists for journalism (basically, art prizes) and not by smart people for being smart and right about things
1:01 PM Wow, that Neilsen piece is a serious piece of writing. no joke at all
1:02 PM that is some on point analysis. let's just hire him to gchat with us
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