The New York Times has a F*cking Citation Problem | Bob's Blitz

The New York Times has a F*cking Citation Problem

"You used to be fun. Now you have a baby." That quote comes from the blog STFU, Parents, "a submission-based “public service” blog that mocks parent overshare on social networking sites. B. is the author and creator of STFU, Parents. She’s a 30-year-old lady (though her mother questions this title) who lives in Brooklyn, NY with her boyfriend and their two cats Agnes and Duke."

The quote, You used to be fun. Now you have a baby. was used by the New York Times in Austin Considine's piece, Making Facebook Less Infantile. Yet there was no mention of STFU, Parents and no mention of 'B.' Why? Because The Grey Lady has a fucking citation problem. Mary Elizabeth Williams of Slate explains that B. was also confused and decided to write to the NYT asking where her credit was.

What she got instead was a pithy retort from The Times’ senior standards editor Greg Brock, who informed her that, “We did not name the site because The Times does not use such references when they refer to things like Shut the F*ck Up. Just last week we omitted a full reference to WTF (What the F—). Instead, we noted that we were referring to a podcast by Marc Maron.”

He went on to explain his logic: “For one reason, we don’t like to include such references for younger readers — or for any readers who might be offended. Granted, we aren’t the parents of young readers. But we feel some obligation to try to maintain The Times as a respectable publication and respect all of our readers.”
Hey NYT? If you're going to be the beacon of cleanliness -- don't fucking use quotes from sites you won't cite. And just think -- your reader was on said site at some point. Probably on a company computer.

Shit.

Why not click the Google +1 & the retweet buttons?

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