The Millions

Everything was great up until the end. I thought this line was completely unnecessary:

I hope to post again Friday with some conclusions but for
now, based on a day’s reporting, I will say this much: I
reject Mr. Musk’s central contention that Mr. Broder’s
Sunday piece was faked in order to sabotage the Model S or
the electric-car industry.

I also reject that Broder was in the pocket of the oil industry as redditors are claiming, but I have little doubt that Broder didn't embellish parts just make the story juicier and more readable. Since he writes about energy mainly, his role was probably more to review the supercharging network than the car. But reviewing the network makes for a pretty boring story and having an article that is controversial and paints the tesla as a dud, looks like a classic news hook. This reminds me of the death of Jan Berenstein, author of the Berenstein, and the Slate article that declared that she was a bore and exclaimed "good riddance" [0]. After that post came out there was a good follow up analyzing the journalist motivations in that piece and the allure of the "news hook" [1]

It's unfortunate that this journalist was willing to trade their integrity for more pageviews. Karma's a bitch.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/27/jan_berenstain_co_creator_of_the_berenstain_bears_is_dead_good_riddance_to_her_books_.html

[1] http://www.themillions.com/2012/04/the-berenstain-bears-and-the-tyranny-of-timeliness.html

For anybody who is possibly interested, I suggest trying to read "Hapworth 16, 1924" (the last story he published). To me, after trying (I've found the whole story)... it's just... not worth the time.

https://themillions.com/2015/06/hapworth-revisited-on-j-d-salingers-most-inscrutable-short-story.html

"One of the most critically derided passages of the story takes up around a quarter its length and consists entirely of Seymour’s absurd and entirely age inappropriate list of requested reading material: “the complete works again of Count Leo Tolstoy […] any thoughtful books on human whirling or spinning […and] both the French edition and Mr. Cotton’s wonderful translation of Montaigne’s essays.”"

caveat lector.

Those equivalents sort-of exist, but part of the challenge is finding them and finding someone with tastes reasonable similar to your own; I write a book blog called The Story's Story at http://jseliger.com that somewhat fills his niche, and there's a pretty big book blog called The Millions that's worth reading: http://www.themillions.com , plus a bunch of smaller book bloggers. But the big ones from the 2002 – 2006 era have mostly closed up shop or stopped posting as often as they did; there's no money in "offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program," and hobbies without funding tend to flame out over time as interests wane or the hobby starts to feel more like work.

as a follow up:

http://www.themillions.com/2010/01/confessions-of-a-book-pirate.html

"For some, however, the study may inspire more questions than answers. Who are the people downloading these books? How are they doing it and where is it happening? And, perhaps most critical for the publishing industry, why are people deciding to download books and why now? I decided to find out, and after a few hours of searching – stalled by a number dead links and password protected sites – I found, on an online forum focused on sharing books via BitTorrent, someone willing to talk."

pretty neat insight into the book piracy underground.