I found this humorous. h/t to Andrew Revkin.
Over at Scientific American, Bora Zivkovic writes about Why the NYTimes “Green Blog” Is Now Essential
Andrew Revkin of the NYT found the story worth noting, and included it in his story The Changing Newsroom Environment, about the closure of the NYT’s Environmental Desk:
Bora Zivkovic, the blog editor at Scientific American (and much more), posted a must-read analysis of the shift at The Times, noting the importance of sustaining the paper’s Green Blog. One administrative issue, of course, is who would manage that blog without a desk? In my reply to his post, I said that all roads lead to the Science desk. In a comment, Dan Fagin of New York University predicted that the paper, due to “organizational culture and especially economics,” was unlikely to adopt Zivkovic’s prescription. I hope you’ll explore the conversation and join in, there or here.
(There is one odd element there, a posted comment that was removed and replaced with this note:
“This comment removed by blog owner, due to inclusion of a link to ideologically-motivated anti-science site What’s Up With That.”
If I censored every comment on Dot Earth that had an ideological framing, or was in some way anti-scientific — think GMO debates, nuclear power, etc. — there wouldn’t be a lot left. I know that leads to frustration and some noise, but I err on the side of free speech. On a related front, I’ll be writing up a piece this week on research finding that incivility in comments amplifies polarization.) [1:55 p.m. I asked Bora about the comment policy. His reply is in a comment below.]
Here’s a screen cap of that comment:
Even funnier, Bora has now removed the comment at his blog noting the comment has been removed! I saw it earlier, noting 5 comments including that one, and I refreshed to see if other commenters had weighed in only to discover it vanished.
Maybe his “harshness” is why he has only 4 comments. Let’s help him out folks.
And Bora, it is “Watts Up With That“, just so you know when you delete in the future ;-)
