An Uncanny Blind Alley
February 24, 2020
I subscribe to the dead tree edition of the New York Times. I spend less time with the expensive reminder of a bygone era than I did when I was an eager beaver working at a nuclear consulting company. One never knew when a hot event (no pun intended) would break like Three Mile Island.
Now to the New York Times Magazine, a pinnacle of content. Am I right? Clarity in titling, hard facts, and helpful analysis based on those facts. Am I right?
I read either “RE: Working the System. In an economy with few protections for employees, how do you gain power on the job? (Very Carefully)” or “the Young and the Restless. Generational consultants believe that Millennial and Gen Z professionals have different values—and that to recruit and keep them, companies need a whole new approach” or “Yaaass! We’re HIRING!”
Note: I think the the “them” in the second odd ball title refers to “employees”, not “values.” Well, maybe not? The notion of a title that makes sense is just sooo! OLD FASHIONED!
If you want to read the story which ran in the NYT Magazine, yep, Sunday”s graphically and bibliographically challenged NYT Magazine, hunt up the February 23, 2020 edition. The story appeared on February 19, 2020, at this paywalled link of which the NYT is quite proud. Note: To keep subscribers, why not put the story online after the dead tree customers receive the newspaper? Oh, right. It’s a generational thing.
Now to the write up.
As soon as I saw the graphics, which continue to baffle me because my mobile phone does not present information in the manner depicted, I thought of Amy Wiener’s best selling book Uncanny Valley, published either by Macmillan Publishers or Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Yep, another outfit which worries not about useless trivia like bibliographic references. You can buy a copy, which I recommend, at a Barnes & Noble if there’s one left in your neighborhood, Google Play, Kobo (what? who?) and the Bezos bulldozer’s book store and policeware company.
The NYT Magazine’s approach lacks three characteristics of Ms. Wiener’s book.
First, the humor in the NYT Magazine missed its mark with me. I was not sure if “phigital” was a joke or a real-live word used in the Big Apple. For me, the jury’s out or hung.
Second, the examples used to characterize the different “generations” identified in the article struck me as outliers. Ms. Wiener offered context. Consider the NYT example of a person who wanted a day off and lied about the death of a relative. When the boss found out, it was like you really sort of okay. (I would not advise trying this approach at Bain, BCG, Booz Allen, or McKinsey when a deadline is fast approaching.) Not funny, by the way, that death lie.
Third, the author who lets me know that he/she is a member of one of these generations learned how to do term papers, not write in a manner as compelling as Ms. Wiener’s. There are references to hot consulting firms like GenGuru and academic-sounding books like “The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace,” and presumably validated statistics. For instance, I did not know nor do I necessarily believe that Gen Zers live below the poverty line. I thought this members of this group live with their parents or used the old fogies as a meatware infused automatic teller machines. Source of the number? Nope. Sample size? Nope. Context of the survey? Nope. Oh, well, it is the New York Times. “Yaaass!”
Now don’t get me wrong. DarkCyber reads, filters, and pays attention to a wide range of content. This particular article struck the team as an attempt to ride the interest in Ms. Wiener’s book, who writes for the often highly regarded New Yorker Magazine. That outfit usually uses one title on an article and restrains absolutely too-hip graphics professionals from creating an article with three possible titles for librarians and the wizards at Google to index. And the colors? Don’t rev DarkCyber’s engines, please.
Several observations:
- Originality is a useful characteristic of some writing. Would this ingredient be useful at the NYT? Maybe less “Yaaass”?
- Quasi clever is okay on a blog or a TikTok video. Maybe not so much in the Gray Lady’s venerable magazine? Techno-viral fluency? Less “Yaaass”?
- The graphics consume more space than the article itself. Maybe three pages of content, data, and analysis. Maybe less “Yaaass”?
DarkCyber noted this statement in the article:
“Until, that is, these generations start to see the forest and not just the trees.”
Trees become wood pulp and some facilitate the dead tree NYT’s goals.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2020
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