
What the NYT Got Wrong About Nail Salons - mr_golyadkin
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jul/25/nail-salons-new-york-times-got-wrong/
======
ageek123
The NY Times seems to have a serious ongoing credibility problem. Just a
couple of days ago they seriously mis-reported the investigation into the
Clinton emails[1], and a couple of weeks ago they all but admitted that their
Ellen Pao coverage was ideologically biased[2]. And that's just in the past
couple of weeks!

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-new-york-times-
email...](http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-new-york-times-
emails-357246)

[2] [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sunday-review/did-
reddi...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sunday-review/did-reddit-boss-
coverage-cross-a-line-ellen-pao.html)

~~~
austenallred
Every news site has (and has always had) an ongoing credibility problem. We're
just noticing now that there's the Internet

~~~
ics
At least, we're noticing much more quickly than might have been reasonable
before.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

------
aaronkrolik
The _exact_ ad in question:
[https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626](https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626)

also should add the author of this nybooks article never interviewed the NYT
author.

more related work:

[http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/q-and-a-
luo-y...](http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/q-and-a-luo-yufeng-a-
k-a-sister-feng-on-life-as-a-manicurist-in-new-york/?_r=0)

[http://fusion.net/story/132309/nail-salon-expose-my-
manicuri...](http://fusion.net/story/132309/nail-salon-expose-my-manicurist-
hadnt-heard-about-it-and-yours-probably-wont-either/#.lwnxkt:EOto)

~~~
bpodgursky
It's a very strange dichotomy that $10 for a training or learning position is
considered oppressive, but if it was unpaid (internship) or the trainee had to
pay tuition for classes, it would be totally a non-issue.

~~~
sp332
Most kinds of unpaid internships are illegal, and it's become a louder issue
in the last year or so. [http://www.businessinsider.com/is-my-unpaid-
internship-illeg...](http://www.businessinsider.com/is-my-unpaid-internship-
illegal-2013-6)

------
jeromegv
The original NYTimes author disagrees and offers proofs on her Twitter
[https://twitter.com/SarahMaslinNir](https://twitter.com/SarahMaslinNir)

~~~
ombudswoman
As does her editor:
[https://twitter.com/michaelluo](https://twitter.com/michaelluo)

------
klenwell
The word "damning" seems a bit strong. "Qualifying" might be better.

The author, Richard Bernstein, concludes:

 _in extrapolating from the experience of Ms. Ren to make assertions about
that “vast majority,” the paper has put its tremendous prestige and power
behind a demonstrably misleading depiction of the nail salon business as a
whole._

But what's his demonstrable evidence of institutional bias? As the upstanding
"part owner of two day-spas in Manhattan", he's never seen anything like the
practices described in the article? An equally broad extrapolation.

Even his investigation into the phantom $10 / day ad seems a bit disingenuous.
He can't find an ad quoting that rate and it does seem odd that a salon would
advertise such a low rate when it could just list no rate at all, which
Brownstein concedes the majority of ads do. But he seems to misconstrue the
article's quote that "the rate was confirmed by several workers" to suggest
that the Times' reporter was using the workers to confirm that such ads were
all over the place when the reporter intended instead to confirm that this was
a common rate in the industry (regardless of the ad). If it turned out the ad
couldn't be substantiated, but the practices described in the article were
accurate, it'd be worthy of a correction. But not a retraction.

What we get with Richard Bernstein's article, one might hazard, is a
"demonstrably misleading depiction" of the New York Times article from a
motivated industry apologist that plugs its own anecdotes and loose figures
into a narrative that seems to have its own populist agenda: the New York
Times is not much better than HuffPo or Fox News when it comes to real
journalism. Does that mean we should also give up on the New York Review of
Books? I hope not.

~~~
jessriedel
> "the rate was confirmed by several workers" to suggest that the Times'
> reporter was using the workers to confirm that such ads were all over the
> place when the reporter intended instead to confirm that this was a common
> rate in the industry (regardless of the ad).

Actually, the NY Times isn't quite claiming that. They were just asking around
to confirm that _this particular ad_ was correct, and not a typo.

> @SarahMaslinNir confirmed w/ workers themselves was to make sure it was not
> a typo and a real wage.

[https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625083693363785728](https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625083693363785728)

Indeed, from the original article:

> Ads in Chinese in both Sing Tao Daily and World Journal for NYC Nail Spa, a
> second-story salon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, advertised a
> starting wage of $10 a day. The rate was confirmed by several workers.

I'm pretty sure the Times has no evidence that this is anything like a typical
wage.

------
mc32
This is the problem with reporting in general --it's full of half truths and
poorly researched pieces. Many of these pieces are political one way or
another.

They need better editors and fact checkers and other news organs, such as NPR
or HuufPo or Fox, etc., which pick up the flame, should not pick up these
stories and take them as self evident truths. They should at least do some
rudimentary fact-checking if only as rudimentary as ECC. But no, then
narratives would die.

Either they want to portray the struggle of the meek in the face of the
oppressor. Or they want to forward an agenda. It's as if they want to be the
hero or heroin. But at the same time they want to be known as having
journalistic integrity and it seems this is just a mirage. It's all
propaganda.

Sometimes I think they just want to provide catharsis for the upper middle
class. Oh, we're better than those other middling people, we care. We truly
feel sorry and truly want to bring better things to the disadvantaged --but
it's all to lessen their own guilt.

There is nothing wrong with saying, a few nail salons are found to exploit a
few new immigrants... But no, it has to be a widesweeping generalization,
demonizing all nail operators --who can't retaliate against the machine that
is the nyt.

I think someone has brought up the idea of a "genius" for these kinds of
hitpieces where people with subject matter knowledge or expertise could
comment.

~~~
bradleyjg
There's a famous, and depressing, quote about newspapers by Micheal Crichton
that fits here:

 _Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray 's case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a
story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read
as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know._

The full essay appears here: [http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-
speculate/](http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/)

~~~
mc32
I think there is validity to that argument. Journalists are essentially
writers --but writers with short deadlines, so they don't have time to
research as normal writers might, in order to have a cursory understanding of
what they are writing about and present it with understanding of the subject
--be it astrophysics or social sciences.

In addition, most publications have political tendencies and aren't typically
totally disinterested.

------
forrestthewoods
Damning if true. I hope the NYTimes responds this time around.

I bet if the NYTimes issues a retraction the mayor issued license requirement
won't be lifted.

~~~
aaronkrolik
It's not true.

[https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626](https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626)

[http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/q-and-a-
luo-y...](http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/q-and-a-luo-yufeng-a-
k-a-sister-feng-on-life-as-a-manicurist-in-new-york/?_r=0)

[http://fusion.net/story/132309/nail-salon-expose-my-
manicuri...](http://fusion.net/story/132309/nail-salon-expose-my-manicurist-
hadnt-heard-about-it-and-yours-probably-wont-either/#.lwnxkt:EOto)

------
brownbat
Wow, damning takedown (from a former NYT journalist who happens to really know
the industry).

There is one odd line, "Needless to say, it is not like The New York Times to
get things so demonstrably wrong,"

It's just odd because Bernstein effectively makes Erika Allen seem like this
decade's Jayson Blair. Makes the reader wonder if the NYT is a pressure cooker
for this sort of fabulist.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)

~~~
aaronkrolik
heres the ad in question:
[https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626](https://twitter.com/michaelluo/status/625082960547610626)

the author of this post never interviewed the NYT reporter. or her editor

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
What am I looking at? It clearly says $75 right there not $10.

~~~
thaumasiotes
On the reporter's twitter, it is claimed that the ad says $75/day for a worker
with experience, and $10 for one without. However, you'd have to take their
word for it, because despite saying very aggrieved things about how the ad
Bernstein doubted DOES REALLY EXIST, and HERE'S A PICTURE OF IT... nobody has
posted a picture with legible text.

I find it personally disturbing that so many people want to view that image as
evidence of anything at all. :/

The character 學 ("study") is visible before an occurrence of $10 in the text,
so it's reasonably likely that they're telling the truth about what it says.
It's left as an exercise to say why paying your untrained interns $10 / day is
so much worse for them than the conventional US practice of paying them
nothing.

~~~
Retra
Unpaid internships in the US are mostly illegal except under some fairly
contrived circumstances.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
They're also all over the place in SV.

------
aaronchall
So it looks like the NYTimes isn't going to win a Pulitzer on this one?

------
pcthrowaway
> How to account for these evident flaws, the one-sidedness of the Times
> story? Recently the Times’s own Nick Kristof wrote in a column that “one of
> our worst traits in journalism is that when we have a narrative in our
> minds, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it,” and, he might have
> added, consciously or not, ignore anecdotes and other information that
> doesn’t.

Was this intentional satire?

------
Retric
70$ per day is actually listed in the add assuming an 8 hour day that is 8.25
/ hour in NYC. Assuming you could actually make minimum wage in most of the
country you would be far better off. Which actually supports the idea that
wage theft is rampant in the industry.

Further, like many cash businesses it's likely to attract many illegals which
are generally highered at risk. For an industry already stuck at minimum wage
across most of the country the only way that risk is worth it is if there
making less than that.

PS: the other reason to use illegals is if the supply of workers is limited,
but that would tend to push wages well above minimum wage. if the rules where
actually inforced many nail bars would likely close, until reduced supply
drove up either prices or utilization to support higher worker pay.

~~~
omegaworks
The use of the word "illegals" to describe human beings is dehumanizing at
best, outright xenophobic at worst.

Exploitation of the undocumented workforce is rampant and systemic. Blaming
the individual for our country's structural ills is myopic fantasy.

~~~
Prophasi
I disagree with both GP and the immigration laws affecting these people, but
the term "illegals" to describe them strikes me as an innocuous shorthand for
"people of illegal immigration status." It carries no implicit judgment of the
people or the laws; it just states the relationship of the former to the
latter.

This trend of casual libel against others, claiming intent and meaning that
you can't possibly know, is worrying.

~~~
pistle
The shorthand is a politically-charged term that was designed to frame, for
the listener, the target being described and to remove sympathy for them as a
human. It's not libel when the person's words can be proven, nor to describe
the utterance of said words. It's an opinion upon words that were said, thus
not libelous.

Prior to the 1880's, the US used to be a nation that accepted the many who
would become the hands that raised America to its place on the world stage.
Somehow, the spawn of those earlier waves think that they are the reason the
US is great and seek to limit entrance of the minds and labor of others who
come seeking that old dream of meritocracy.

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from
land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman
with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of
Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me
your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The
wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost
to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~~~
prodigal_erik
"Undocumented workforce" is just as slanted. Their problem is not lost
paperwork. It obscures the lack of steady demand for their labor, and their
willful defiance of our efforts to guard our home.

Prior to the late 1800s, we still had an untapped frontier, and immigration
was in our interest. It was never a principle we committed to at all costs,
despite what one poet might have thought. Now our own huddled masses are
splitting a pie that isn't growing, and immigration is not so beneficial that
it makes up for the overpopulation it causes (because few people have been
emigrating).

~~~
pistle
The pie. The pie... about that pie. Recognizing immigrants increases the tax
base. Recognizing immigrants ensures better wages and changes the entire
narrative. Come, work, share in our bounty and our responsibility to each
other.

Increase in population relate to increases in infrastructure, housing,
services, global workforce competitiveness, military capabilities, and a
myriad of other indirect and direct supporting features of societies that fare
well historically. Do more with more instead of thinking you can always do
more with less.

Increases in demand for food, services, schools, etc grows the pie. Sure, at
some point, demand needs to be able to keep pace. But the US is not at that
point.

It's easier to use the steamroller of global goodwill described by the statue
poem than it is to simply sharpen the blades of dominance. Eventually, there's
no metal left to sharpen and nations of billions will route a nation of
millions.

