Re: [OT] Shameless troll ;o)

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
> Look on Groklaw if you want to know more about Mr. Lyons and the stuff he's
> published.

Well, in the defense of Dan Lyons, I think he's been somewhat vilified, 
and has had a perfectly human reaction of striking back. 

He tends to look for problems, but not every piece he has written has been 
negative. In fact, some of them haven't been _nearly_ as negative as they 
have then been purported to be in groklaw. I think groklaw has had a 
somewhat unfortunate "either you're with us, or you're against us" herd 
mentality.

The fact that Lyons then has been negative towards groklaw has just 
cemented that bad situation further.

It's interesting that Ted piped up, because I know that IBM has had the 
exact same problem with Lyons. He wrote some negative article, at which 
point IBM told its engineers not to talk to him any more, which caused 
subsequent articles to be negative too.

Yes, Forbes is pretty bad. It's a "rah rah" magazine for people who wished 
they were rich. It's a small step up from the check-out counter magazines 
that alternately glorify and vilify Jessica Simpson or whoever is the 
celebrity of the week.

There's no question that you're better off with the Wall Street Journal 
(who has some of the best journalists in the business, as far as I can 
tell, and while I don't know crud about business, I _do_ know journalistm) 
or the Economist if you actually care about business and economy. But 
that's not what Forbes is about.

Quite frankly, I've seen Dan Lyons work, and my opinion is that he's a 
better journalist than many. He may be opinionated and swayed by negative 
feelings, but I've seen at least two stories that he actually did research 
himself, and followed up on. The end result can be skewed by his feelings, 
but that's still a hell of a lot more than some people will do.

So give people their due, even when you disagree with them occasionally. 

And understand that journalists are very much people too, and react badly 
to the kind of totally uncalled for name-calling that Dan Lyons has gotten 
on groklaw over the last year or two (yeah, he got things wrong for one of 
his first pieces on the SCO saga. And he doesn't like IBM, and I can 
pretty much guarantee you that he _detests_ groklaw by now. And it will 
show in his reporting.).

			Linus