Is The Wirecutter getting worse?

Nowooski · August 29, 2023

Summary

The Atlantic published a piece last week titled "What Happened to the Wirecutter?" that examines whether or not the one-loved review site is getting worse, and what is behind the decline in quality. The basic thesis of the article is that it is very hard for the Wirecutter (or most any review site), to make general recommendations when the best X depends a ton on who you are and what you value. The author calls this the "best-for-most-people" problem. The author also points out that after it was purchased by The New York Times, the Wirecutter changed how they pay freelancers for reviews. It used to be an hourly rate, but was changed to a fixed rate, which may reduce the amount of time spent actually reviewing devices.

Quotes

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Today, defining most people is an existential question for recommendation sites like Wirecutter, which does not ruthlessly harvest user data or offer targeted personal recommendations the way larger retailers such as Amazon do. It’s unclear what role a site like Wirecutter might play in one possible version of the future internet, where generative-AI assistants sift through information from recommendation sites and tailor them to their user’s detailed interests. For now, the site is doing an internal review to see if there are more effective ways to format reviews—Frumin cited Wirecutter’s “22,000-word” air-purifier review as a triumph of the form and a work of great journalism, but he also noted that it’s not a style that all readers might prefer.

Quote

But growth brought with it other adjustments. Times management also adjusted the freelance pay structure from an hourly rate to a flat fee per article, which two former staffers argue likely contributed to less time spent on researching and writing product recommendations. Frumin strongly rejected the notion that the flat-fee pay structure has contributed to a decline in quality and argued that the site now relies less on freelance labor, opting to hire more paid staffers for this very reason

My thoughts

I share the belief that the Wirecutter is getting worse and wish the author would have been able to nail down a few examples of poor quality reviews. The one that stands out for me personally was when the Wirecutter recommend Cisco WebEx as the best video conferencing tool for people just starting work from home during early covid at a time when Zoom was becoming a verb. I also agree with the author's conclusion that long form essays probably aren't the best way to solve the "most people" problem (though I am admittedly a little biased since I'm working on building PerfectRec).

Sources

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/wirecutter-recommendations-worse-new-york-times/675075/