Interesting data point when a comment on a forum so clearly surpasses an article written by a professional writer for an online publication.
This, ultimately, is why journalism is losing. The stuff the pros write is no better than the stuff other people write for free in blog posts and comments on forums.
Which is why paywalls don't work. The stuff behind them isn't better enough that readers will pay to get at it.
I have bad news for you: I'm a professional writer.
I just happen to be much better at it than that hack, even though he probably gets paid more. Of course, the reason he (probably) gets paid more is that he writes for Slate, while I write for TechRepublic. Since he's supposed to be a technology writer for Slate, and I'm basically any kind of writer for TR (specifically security, open source issues, and programming, but that's not relevant in this case), you can pretty much bet money that I know more about the subjects our writings have in common than him, despite the fact he probably gets paid more for his ignorance than I do for my knowledge.
So it goes.
In any case, I really appreciate the implicit compliment, despite the fact this comment at HN was very much off the cuff and not among my best recent writings. I agree it's better than the Slate piece, though perhaps primarily because the Slate writer didn't set the bar very high.
By the way, I scraped together a longer, more in-depth version of my HN comment that you liked for my personal devlog:
I think it's better written than my HN comment, too.
edit: Of course, I became a professional writer by making comments in discussions at TechRepublic that people liked, so maybe I don't qualify as the type of "professional writer" you meant to address.
You must be careful when comparing the worst to the best. Farhad has been a crummy technology writer since he was at Salon, and this is basically the only site on which I read comments. I would much rather read a great story by a great journalist than any comment by the average Youtube commenter.
This, ultimately, is why journalism is losing. The stuff the pros write is no better than the stuff other people write for free in blog posts and comments on forums.
Which is why paywalls don't work. The stuff behind them isn't better enough that readers will pay to get at it.