Amazon spars with NY Times over article

A senior executive from Amazon and the top editor of The New York Times clashed on Monday over the details in a Times article about the Internet retailer’s work culture, write Nick Wingfield and Ravi Somaiya of the Times.

Wingfield and Somaiya write, “It was the kind of sparring between a newspaper and the subject of an article that once might have taken place in private. Instead, both men, who have access to huge audiences of their own, published their posts on Medium, a site for essays and storytelling that is open to the public.

“The spat took place two months after the publication of the article, which, with more than five million page views, is among The Times’s most-read pieces of the year. The debate, a spokeswoman for The Times said, prompted a fresh flood of readers to the original article.

“Mr. Baquet said in an interview that he had responded on Medium because Mr. Carney had posted his critique there. ‘My view is if someone critiques a story, you owe them a response,’ he said. ‘Jay sent me this critique a while back and we set out to try and examine very closely his criticisms, and it took a while. He was within his rights to put it out.’

“Mr. Carney, he said, is doing his job. ‘But I actually think, with respect to them, they don’t have a leg to stand on,’ he said. ‘It was a very honest investigative piece that stands up to any scrutiny.’ Asked if he plans to continue engaging publicly in other, similar circumstances, Mr. Baquet said, ‘Yes, yes, yes.'”

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