[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Mycropht

Sorry NatCh, but there were more than a few reviews of the Reader which were as positive as the one by Manes is negative while being biased to about a same degree. Not so many annoyed readers then.

You're right, it's just as disingenuous regardless of the direction of the bias, and should be equally as annoying to me. I can only plead that it was such a rare thing to see a "reviewer" who wasn't blasting it out of hand that it struck me as refreshing. No excuse, of course, but there it is.

Regarding the fellow who changed his mind about the Reader, it was pretty clear to me from reading his write ups that the first was a listing of his unmet preconceptions, and the second was a result of setting them aside, and figuring out what he'd missed at the first look. I felt like he did a good job of explaining why his take changed. And you're right, there is a certain, unavoidable measure of subjectiveness in any review -- it just should be something that's resisted, not served up as the main course.

I do trust the readers of this forum to make up their minds, that's why I make an effort to be frank about the shortcomings of the Reader, as well as its advantages -- if someone doesn't know about the bad as well as the good going into such a thing, they're going to be disappointed, and that's just not a good thing.

The folks I'm concerned about are the ones who only see things like the Forbes piece, and have no opportunity to see any of the good in the Reader (because it's handled in such a negatively biased way), and therefore dismiss out of hand something that might very well be quite useful to many of them.

It isn't a question of mental capacity, but more of garbage-in, garbage-out. Without good info, the sharpest mind can only make a good decision purely by chance, that's just not a good situation. I feel (as someone who's had some journalism training) like the folks who claim to be journalists should recognize their responsibility to give folks as good information as they can, regardless of whether it happens to support their opinions/agendas or not.

Further, it's exactly the agenda driven hype that makes folks dismiss reviews that are positive -- kind of a catch 22. (sigh) If reviewers were dedicated to presenting as impartial a review as possible on all things, then we'd actually have reviews that we could trust, instead of having to figure out and compensate for whatever agendas a given reviewer might be pushing (that's supposed to be their job as journalists).