Patterico's Pontifications

4/27/2006

Letters in Editor and Publisher Responding to Their Recent Lame Article

Filed under: Dog Trainer,Hiltzik — Patterico @ 6:26 pm



Editor and Publisher has published two responses to their recent (and lame) article on Michael Hiltzik, which I told you about yesterday, in this post. You can read them here. The first, a set of two letters, is from our old friend AMac, and duplicates two comments that AMac left on this blog yesterday evening, here and here. AMac’s initial letter reads as follows:

In [yesterday’s] column covering LA Times writer Michael Hiltzik’s blogging woes, you were kind enough to provide readers with links to the LA Times’ Editors’ Note, as well as to the NY Times story on the matter.

Readers would have benefitted from a link to the web-log that broke the story. They might then notice that blogger Patrick Frey’s charge was _not_ that Hiltzik used a pseudonym, a common practice. Rather, it was that he employed two pseudonyms to shill for himself, pretending to be two separate people in comments to his own and other blogs. That practice is neither common nor ethical.

It is unfortunate that Editor & Publisher has joined the Times in misstating the central problem with the actions that Hiltzik is alleged to have performed.

I hope that, after investigating further, you will consider amending your story to more accurately reflect the circumstances of this case.

Alastair Mackay
Towson, MD

and his follow-up:

It was just pointed out that I misread a sentence in your column. You wrote: “But writing praise about yourself in pseudonym-ed comments is like a sitcom using a laugh-track; pretty lame, but not ultimately harmful.”

Your readers should be aware that this view is accepted by almost nobody in the blogging or newspapering communities. For example, academic John Lott got a world of grief from both erstwhile allies and longtime enemies when his use of pseudonym “Mary Rosh” to shill for his position and needle his adversaries became public knowledge. See this 2003 Washington Post article and its references for details of that case.

I think that the best reporting practice would be to explain the central allegation to readers before dismissing it as frivolous. I hope you agree.

Alastair Mackay
Towson, MD

Another letter-writer, Stuart Larson, wrote this:

I enjoyed [David Hirschman’s] article; you made some excellent points. Regarding the case of Michael Hiltzik, however, I think you perhaps missed the point: it’s not the fact that he used pseudonyms in his posts to the Times and elsewhere, it’s the dishonest way in which he did so — by pretending to be someone else, and by using anonymous postings to try to deceptively bolster his own arguments. It is reminiscent of the authors who anonymously write glowing reviews of their own books and post them on Amazon to sway potential readers to buy their books. Both practices are unethical. In doing so, Hiltzik also comes across as petty and childish, which. while not unethical, is certainly below what one would expect of someone who won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing. The posts in question also severely compromise his credibility, which is perhaps the most important of all the issues here.

Stuart Larson

AMac and Mr. Larson understand the controversy much better than the author of the Editor and Publisher piece did.

5 Responses to “Letters in Editor and Publisher Responding to Their Recent Lame Article”

  1. Have you seen the comments by Fred Z on the last couple of Hiltzik posts? Genius, sheer genius. Fred Z, I mean.

    makebs (83acf5)

  2. My gosh that Fred Z is a genius. Brilliant.

    dittohead (83acf5)

  3. Well done, AMAC!

    Amphipolis (fdbc48)

  4. Indeed… props, AMac.

    Vermont Neighbor (a9ae2c)

  5. Hiltzik’s blog/column dropped; he’s suspended w/o pay.

    Interesting!

    steve matlock (0fb51f)


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