From today’s New York Times:
“Nothing bad happened really until after midnight on Saturday,” said Michael Newman, deputy editorial page editor. At 8:32 p.m. Saturday, a posting on www.Slashdot.org, which bills itself as “news for nerds,” directed readers to the Times wikitorial.
“Slashdot has a tech-savvy audience that, to be kind, is mischievous and to be not so kind, is malicious,” Mr. Newman said.
Malicious? Well, they are now.
Maybe he meant to say that a tiny segment of Slashdot’s audience is malicious. But if not, then for God’s sake: Slashdot’s audience totals about half a million people a day, most of them tech professionals and enthusiasts — and supporters of exactly the kind of initiative the LA Times launched. If the Times misjudges that part of the online universe so completely, it’s a lot easier to understand how they could have been so unprepared for what happened.
