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The Times attitude

Saturday, May 30, 2009 by Dave Winer.

I don't know why I remembered this story last night, but that's when it happened.  

When I was a kid, in sixth grade in PS 32 in Queens, there was a deal where we could get the NY Times for students. It was a special edition, with some of the big words edited out, or perhaps explained. I got it even though I had been reading the full adult version for a few years.  

We also had a weekly quiz that was written by someone at the Times. It was multiple choice and it indicated (I guess) whether or not you had read the Times that week. There was one question on one test that really caused me trouble. What's the largest state in the US? There were four choices, and two of them were Alaska and California. That's a nightmare because they didn't say what the criteria was. Is it largest by area or population? So I chose Alaska, because I felt if you didn't say, it must mean area. Well that's not what they meant and I got the answer wrong. I protested to the teacher, who must have thought: Here's a teaching moment. So she asked me to write a letter to the Times, which I did. She mailed it for me. 

Now here's the part that taught me a lot about the Times, and how adults can be ridiculously rude to children. I decided at the time to remember this so when I was an adult I would treat children with respect, which I really try to do. 

The Times response came to my teacher, not me. They didn't like something about how I wrote my letter. And they didn't respond to the substance of the challenge. You may think it was a small point, but I was small then, and I wanted to know. 

To this day, the Times has remained consistent and so have I. They generally talk over our heads, and respond to the manner in which the challenge is raised, not to its substance. I still keep trying to find new ways to approach this. I guess what I've been trying to say to the Times since sixth grade is this -- We are real people out here. Just like you. And we're smart. So let's talk, without the attitude. 

An afterthought: Everyone is inside some things and outside everything else. I have a funny story to go with this. In 2004, I was at Harvard and Scoble was at Microsoft. I don't know how it came up but my longtime friend threw a bit of tech industry FUD at me, so I threw some Ivy League FUD back at him. I said that Harvard has been around since 1636 and pretty likely would be around long after Microsoft was gone, so don't try to push me around bud. We had a good laugh. (I think I also boasted that we had more cash than Bill Gates, but on reflection I doubt that was actually true.) 

I also became friends with Chris Lydon, who had been a Times reporter in the 1970s. He clued me into some of the culture from an insider's point of view. I also got to know Rebecca MacKinnon who had been a reporter for CNN in Japan, Korea and China.