Boxing Match: The New York Times vs the Financial Times

Clive Crook has decided to get in the boxing ring with Paul Krugman, the famous one-handed economist. It's dangerous though, because the Financial Times is vulnerable to falling into the same trap that the New York Times fell in years ago.

A one-handed economist, is by definition an incompetent economist, and in Krugman's case , an incompetent journalist. Being one-handed means you are no longer committed to being as unbiased and fair as possible, the truth is no longer a high priority, entertaining becomes the the only priority ( in Krugman's case, he was hired to be a pitbull, with the mission to blame everything on George Bush , an approach which makes east coast Americans feel good).

Krugman, Ashlee Vance and countless other NYT journalists over the years have shown themselves to be talented and entertaining writers - and at the same time , incompetent journalists. ( You can be a very good writer regardless of whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction ).

Years ago, the NYT realized that entertaining writing went quickly to the bottom line, but accuracy and fact-checking did not. The rest is history.

The reason the Financial Times and the Economist are in danger of this trap is because of their business model. What helps their profit margins is that they have a reputation for very entertaining writing - especially during turbulent economic times. For years, they have been writing paragraphs about the US current account deficit that can send a chill down your spine.

Now, the FT is better at accuracy than the NYT ( which frankly , is not saying that much ). But accuracy doesn't pay the bills. Enjoyable reading does. There lies a trap. Beware.

Gentleman and Ihaka's behaviour towards the mainstream press is despicable.

While they are to be commended for helping to develop a quality re-engineering of S-Plus, the evidence is accumulating that Gentleman and Ihaka are behaving in a way towards the mainstream media that is leaving a dark stain on their reputation.

They have not made a high profile attempt to correct some of Vance's misleading statements on where the R programming language actually came from. AT&T researchers developed the R programming language. Gentleman and Ihaka, with many followers and contributors helping them, developed a software that implements that programming language.

Their failure to publicly address the allegations of lies and distortions in Vance's article strongly suggest that they lied to Vance, in a sad and pathetic attempt to claim full credit for designing the user interface of the R software product.

Is R a quality statistical software product. Yes. But Gentleman and Ihaka's integrity is negated by their behaviour towards the mainstream press.

( That does not excuse Vance or his NYT colleagues from not doing their homework of course.)

Why has the New York Times been so sloppy for so many years?

Because a newspaper has two functions : to inform and to entertain.

Newspapers entertain by telling interesting stories with a writing style that is pleasing to the reader. The better the writing, the more enjoyable the article is to the reader. This has a huge effect on their revenues.

Newspapers inform, by doing backup research so that the journalist can be confident that his work is as truthful, fair , and balanced as he can make it. Articles are more informative if the journalist has done enough backup research so that he can be confident that he knows what he is talking about.

The problem is that such research costs time, and time is money. Being informative and accurate does not boost revenues to the same degree as being entertaining.

This is even more of a problem for the New York Times than other papers, because the NYT has a very prestigious reputation, and they have tended to coast on their reputation over the years.

But still , if Vance just did maybe five more hours of research, JUST A FEW HOURS, he could have written an article on R that was not so untruthful and misleading.

very sloppy, Vance.

Ashlee Vance doesn't know what he's talking about

It is quite obvious that Ashlee Vance doesn't know what he is talking about , when he writes about R. He clearly didn't do even the minimum of research.

This is typical of the New York Times. For years we've seen articles by journalists who didn't bother to do their homework. The NYT has a history of coasting on their reputation.

First, Vance's statements that R is especially easy to use compared to other statistical tools is a falsehood.
Second, Vance leaves the reader to believe that R is a new type of statistical software, a new invention whose innovations users benefit from. Not true. He gives no credit to the AT&T researchers who designed the S programming language. The R team did not design the user interface for R. R uses the same user interface as the older S and S-Plus proprietary products , which is primarily the S programming language. R is a copycat of S-Plus.