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The Verge's Deputy Editor Chris Ziegler Was Secretly Working For Apple For Two Months (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Late this afternoon, Nilay Patel, the editor-in-chief of The Verge, published a post detailing the circumstances around the departure of Chris Ziegler, a founding member of the site. As it turns out, according to Patel, Ziegler had been pulling double duty as an employee of both The Verge and Apple. "The circumstances of Chris' departure from The Verge raised ethical issues which are worth disclosing in the interests of transparency and respect for our audience," Patel wrote. "We're confident that there wasn't any material impact on our journalism from these issues, but they are still serious enough to merit disclosure." According to Patel, Ziegler, whose most recent post was published in July, began working for Apple in July but didn't disclose his new job; The Verge apparently didn't discover he'd been working there until early September. Patel noted that Ziegler continued to work for The Verge in July, but "was not in contact with us through most of August and into September." What's not clear is how The Verge leadership went six weeks without hearing from their deputy editor or taking serious action (like filing a missing person's report) to try to find him. Patel says they "made every effort to contact him and to offer him help if needed." Patel noted the obvious conflict of interest, and added that Ziegler was fired the same day they verified his employment at Apple. "Chris did not attempt to steer any coverage towards or away from Apple, and any particular decisions he helped make had the same outcomes they would have had absent his involvement," Patel wrote. However, it's still unclear how exactly the team at Vox Media, The Verge's parent company, ascertained there was no editorial consequences from the dual-employment. You can read Patel's full statement here. Vox Media's Fay Sliger followed up with a statement to Gizmodo: "Chris is no longer an employee of The Verge or Vox Media. Chris accepted a position with Apple, stopped communicating with The Verge's leadership, and his employment at The Verge was terminated. Vox Media's editorial director Lockhart Steele conducted an internal review of this conflict of interest, and after a thorough investigation, it was determined that there was no impact on editorial decisions or journalism produced at The Verge or elsewhere in Vox Media. We've shared details about this situation with The Verge's audience and will continue to be transparent should any new information come to light."
Of the "I'm too cool to respond to you" generation, and the "we're too cool to panic about your status" management style.
Normal employment policy is credentials are immediately revoked when any employee does not respond to login/status requests for over 3 business days. But don't let the cool kids tell you that's reasonable to enforce on important people.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It seems to be:
Person P stops doing work for Company A and starts working at Company B. Management at Company A has no clue. When they figure it out they see that the work Person P did for them was not related/influenced by Person P's relationship with Company B
What is the news in that story that requires a 400 word summary?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
He didn't affect our journalistic integrity because, we don't have any!
Seriously, The Verge shill for apple as hard as John Gruber.
It verges on the unimportant, trivial, trifling, negligible, inconsequential, of no account, petty, insubstantial, frivolous, pointless, worthless, meaningless, irrelevant, immaterial, peripheral.
Don't waste my time with this crap.
I've often wondered how long I could keep getting payed with out showing up for work (maybe replying to a few emails here and there, not necessarily ones I don't want to deal with)
My estimate has varied from a few weeks to a few months depending on the state of my management.
This guy managed 6 weeks...
I wonder if is a one off case (like has happened before) or if the relationship between employer and employee has dissolved to the point where this will eventually become the norm... Don't quit your job, just "work from home" do the absolute minimum you can to avoid people noticing that your not actually doing any work, and spend your day working at your new job collecting two salaries.
"We're confident that there wasn't any material impact on our journalism from these issues
Daily Kos (aka Vox) was always a blog, it has nothing to do with journalism.
"Chris did not attempt to steer any coverage towards or away from Apple, and any particular decisions he helped make had the same outcomes they would have had absent his involvement"
==> "Basically, the journalists write as if on Apple's payroll at all times, so there's no obvious difference anyway!"
(I use Apple products and like them. But I am cynical about the way Apple offer and withhold review unit/product launch/early access rights to journalists)
does this all the time so where's the beef?
Apple is good for America, and what is good for America is good for the world!
VOTE TRUMP 2016
MAKE AMERICA BUY MORE APPLE
I stopped clicking those links the day they had an article entitled "I Don't care If You Landed a Spacecraft On A Comet, Your Shirt Is Sexist And Ostracising." It's not even worth printing out to place at the bottom of your bird's cage.
At least until Apple initiates damage control and fires the scumbag.
I wouldn't be surprised if this stunt landed his rear in court.
... zzzzzz
I don't even expect the New York Times or the editors/journalists that work for it to be ethical, why in the world would I be expected to be outraged that a website I've never heard of has unethical editors/journalists working for it? Is anyone seriously surprised by this? What is the news story?
Anand was an Intel and Apple fanboi but at least he left his own site before he moved to Apple.
The family story went like this; a company (company A) my Grandfather worked as an engineer wanted a better understanding of what the competitor (company B) as doing.
Company A had my grandfather apply at company B as a watchman (yes, what an ironic title). As a result he wandered around and sketched and took notes of everything. People at company B just thought he was doing a great job; however, for reasons no one at Company B ever understood, their competitor suddenly began to duplicate their processes.
The family story goes on that he later met the owner of Company B at a trade event. The owner recognised my grandfather as his former watchman and the reality of what had happened finally hit him. My grandfathers words to him were, "you really have to pay attention to who you let through your doors."
Obviously a falling out between Nilay Patel, "editor-in-chief of The Verge", and Chris Ziegler, who was a founder. The previous guy he worked for seems to also have been a co-founder, and Patel only became his boss late 2014. So Patel would see Ziegler as a threat to his leadership be edged out.
Likewise Ziegler wouldn't like working for someone who had done nothing of note to get that post.
I Googled Nilay's Engadget stint..... lazy one paragraph articles, nothing of note, I'm not sure why he's a blogger if he has nothing to say.
https://www.engadget.com/2011/02/25/htc-merge-first-hands-on/
Sorry, I disagree. I stopped visiting the site a while back as it seemed most of the headlines that popped up on Daily Rotation were written by Apple fanbois. Please stop telling me that a company that has less than 14% of the smartphone market is poised to take over the market with their next product. If I want to read that crap I'll visit Forbes.
The Verge should remove all of his content.
Go ahead and keep sneering at the "basket of undesireables," but they're right: really is all about ethics in journalism.
That doesn't sound at all similar.
This guy just quit without telling anyone.
No industrial espionage involved, just a guy who was either too much of a pussy turn in a letter of resignation or had a grudge with vox and thought this would be a way to stick it to them. Either way he's really only succeeded in hurting his own reputation, who is going to want to hire him after this? He'll be lucky of Apple doesn't fire him.
The Apple biased reviews, too much focus on form over function is typical of that web site.
"Several little birdies" have told John Gruber of daringfireball.net that Ziegler is not in the current Apple company directory. Ziegler's Twitter account has been silent for six weeks or so.
I'll bet quite a few of the Verge's employees are doing double duty on the Clinton campaign. Does it matter if they are paid or not? I don't think so, it's the conflict of interest that bothers me.
unfortunately now apple does not have to pay, it just blacklists from its events or refuses to send preview devices to punish bad publications
Dude has cool job with friends with low pay. Dude get a good job at apple and all of a sudden is busy. Internet smears.
It didn't affect their decisions because the whole place is a extension of the Apple PR department...
Of themselves.
If I was that Ziegler fellow I'd be consulting a lawyer. Spouting that shit publicly, verges (ha!) on defamation.
I'm not saying what Ziegler was right, although in this day and age, one should show very little loyalty to any corporation because they basically claim "people are our most precious resource" but treat employees like shit.
I've seen staff where I worked, take a few weeks off or take a leave of absence. What they do, is try another job and see if it suits them. They quit the original job, or they quit the new job. I'm not going to judge people too much when they do this, hell, the company is always evaluating if they should terminate you.
At this moment I have two contracts. Place A does not know of place B, but place B knows of me working at place A and they don't care. The type of work is very different and they're not in the same sector. Sure place A could claim some crap, but if they do, I just have to walk and move on to the next gig. They can claim some BS excuse anyways, doesn't matter.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
When Apple have to pay "journalists" real salaries to do their advertisement for them and can't just bribe them with Apple hardware like they usually do.
"Bruhahhaha do you remember back in the 2000s when Intel bought all these websites and the Pentium 4 was topping all charts? All was a lie and Intel was forced to pay. Apple bought these guys, anandtech and who knows how many other publications. Apple does the same, in 10 years you will get your 10 bucks in the mail from the class action lawsuit."
I'm just duplicating your post so it shows up as positive. I very much dislike pro-Apple-mods.
...and find ourselves completely without fault. Straight from our role model the Clintons.
Truth is a defense to a defamation claim...
There is no conflict of interest. In fact, in my entire huge life I have never actually seen a conflict of interest. Trust me. I know.