If you want to understand the disconnect between tech and journalism, stop everything, right now and read this thread by Jay Rosen.

The way he says tech thinks about product is how I think about it.

I grapple with it all the time. I work on the editorial tools, their rendering, and how the ideas written by other people can be made to interrelate with yours in ways that make sense and have value for readers. This is the frontier I've been working at for almost 40 years. I'm glad someone on the "other side" is making the effort to study the disconnect, with the intent of creating a dictionary that translates the terminology, so we can start communicating, and working together more effectively.

I need news people to use my tools. And I think you need my tools, and those made by my competitors. That's our basis for working together. (BTW, all I want is for you to use my tools, I don't want any ownership of what you write.)

PS: Maybe The New Republic editors were a little hasty? Maybe it was just a language disconnect. I think perhaps you guys just realized there is a world out there that doesn't think the way you do. Is that really so bad?? For all of our lunacy tech really has produced some good stuff, over the years.