Comment by crdrost

> how tf is NYTimes an authoritive source on purchasing headphones?

Acqui-hire. So what happened was in around 2010 or so a voice-over artist named Lauren Dragan who I think was already dabbling in professional tech journalism, wanted to write about headphones and microphones since she was getting really opinionated about them in her VO work.

So she contributed an article to “The Wirecutter,” which was trying to be like Tom’s and Engadget (I think they then dropped “the” from their name? Which makes one want to abbreviate as WC which is just tragic). I think it was just a freelance article on “audiophile headphones”...?

Well, the audiophile community online was growing etc. and this proved to be remarkably successful because it gave the audiophiles some professional validation, right? “I work in audio booths, I have to listen super closely, I know what I am talking about.” So it made money for The Wirecutter and they pitched her on “if we just bought you dozens of headphones online would you take notes and make a rec” and she's been doing stuff like that for them ever since.

Wirecutter broadened its focus to a lot of other topics, usually not with the same reliability—it really depends on the reviewer’s biases and such, and Lauren’s VO/audiophile bias of “I want my headphones to have a very flat EQ to match what's on the track, it's more important that they don't croak at higher volumes...” was something she could communicate well about in terms of sibilant highs or feeling too much or too little bass. Vs “we looked at air purifiers and, uh, they purify air!” ...

Meanwhile NYT was trying to grow their online presence as newspaper sales die... So they bought up Wirecutter, as a sort of “new journalism,” a “we wanted to get into this anyway, and it's easier if we don't try to build up the network effects ourselves but just take a site’s traffic who is already successful.” So yeah, they aqui-hired Wirecutter and put all their stuff on their domain and it kinda sucks now, but some of that were trends that were already beginning before they were acquired and there's still usually some decent data hiding in the “the competition” section of every “WC” article.