My Nonprofit Reviews
Karl H.
Review for Grist Magazine, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA
My experience with Grist is from joining discussions related to agriculture, particularly genetic engineering. Grist has selected only authors who denounce GE crops, and modern agriculture in general. Grist even goes so far as to put Norman Borlaug on their list of Villains of Food: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-10-14-vote-for-your-favorite-villains-of-food/p9 Borlaug kicked off the Green Revolution which saved the lives of over a billion people be breeding more productive varieties of crops for countries such as India, for example.
The coverage that Grist gives to GE crops in particular is sorely one-sided and very often factually wrong. Some Grist authors take to misrepresenting even people who they agree with to try to support an argument that is wrong to begin with. In some cases, most notably for Tom Philpott and Tom Laskawy, the authors sometimes refuse to respond to comments that demonstrate that they played fast and loose with the facts.
The culture of discussion that Grist cultivates is also caustic and exclusionary. When someone expresses a well-reasoned opinion that differs from the majority view of the site, attacks come swift from commenters, including newly-registered comment accounts created for that purpose. Grist does have a comment policy that includes "Don't be a jerk", but refuses to moderate comments and clamp down on uncivil attacks in these discussions. The lesson I take from this is that Grist is not committed to civil discussion of controversial issues, and that the comment policy, if it is enforced at all, may be reserved only for those who disagree with the majority opinions on Grist. As someone who has years of experience moderating internet discussions, Grist is horribly bad at it.
Civil discussion is fostered by active involvement of the authors and moderators to help people get along, and remove comments that are overly combative. Grist sorely needs to work on improving what kind of community they are looking to cultivate, because so far it is very cliquish and exclusionary.
More Feedback
I've personally experienced the results of this organization in...
Negative: The Grist community tolerates uncivil attacks on people who disagree with the majority viewpoint. Positive: I have received encouraging emails from people who read what I wrote on Grist despite those attacks and thanked me for it.
If I had to make changes to this organization, I would...
First, I would enforce their comment policy to reduce flame attacks on other commenters. Second, I would bring some more diversity into the discussion. Maybe someone who has a slightly divergent opinion.
Will you volunteer or donate to this organization?
Unsure
How much of an impact do you think this organization has?
None
How did you learn about this organization?
Internet searches
When was your last experience with this nonprofit?
2011
