starseerdrgn | [Writing Study] How *not* to write a "news" article

So... A couple days ago on TheNextWeb, writer Matthew Hughes released an article titled "The word 'hack' is meaningless and should be retired". I'm reading through it after seeing the link pop up on Slashdot, and I'm actually having to question why TNW would allow such an opinionated article to be posted outside of the op-ed sphere.When the entire story starts off with

The word ‘hack’ used to mean something, and hackers were known for their technical brilliance and creativity. Now, literally anything is a hack — anything — to the point where the term is meaningless, and should be retired.

you know it's not going to be very pleasant to read.

It's obvious that Mr. Hughes is being hyperbolic to some degree, because the term hack has been used in many situations to mean something other than computer hacking. He goes on to berate its use with terms like lifehack, saying that they dilute the meaning of the term, but it's actually just obvious that he's clueless of how English works. The language is a fiat language, where meanings are dictated by societal usage, not by one person's opinion on the matter.

Then comes this little section:

That said, the worst dilution of the term “hack” comes from growth hackers. Christ, these people are the actual fucking worst.
Growth hacking, for those not in the know, is basically marketing garnished with snake oil. Insufferable gobshites like to use the aforementioned term because it makes it seem as though there’s some substance to the shit they’re hawking. There usually isn’t.
You can spot these pricks a mile away. They’re usually hawking overpriced e-books of their “secrets”, often have hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers (but only because they follow an ungodly amount of people themselves).
If you see a growth hacker in the street, you should cross the road in case their twattery is contageous.

This is unprofessional behavior at its most obvious. This is op-ep material, or even tech blogging material, not tech column from a professional journalist material. It involves outright cursing outside of quotation, personal attacks against a group of people, and it's all opinionated material.

I normally wouldn't bring up something like this on my own blog, but this is a great example of how not to act as a journalist, and is quite the interesting study for fiction writers who want to create journalist characters that get a little out of control.

Sometimes, journalists lose their professionalism due to being so adamantly angry about something that they produce an article like the one cited, and it's okay to actually have that happen in fiction, provided the proper consequences follow such actions. Maybe they get reprimanded, or maybe it's the readers who fire back while the staff support the author. That's left up to you and the story, but it's still a concept that can be quite useful, and examples of this sort of action aren't often easy to come by, given how many publishers would retract such stories.