Apparently, the New York Times and ESPN got involved in a
bidding war for the services of boy genius Nate Silver.
As everyone knows, Silver’s blog, accessed through the Times
site, drove massive amounts of traffic to the Old Gray Lady. Most especially
since Silver’s statistical analysis of polling data was far more accurate than
anyone else’s during the last election.
The polls were all over the lot; Silver was on the money.
Such success reaps rewards. And when it came to rewarding
Silver, the Times was playing out of its league.
The market capitalization of the New York Times Co. is
around $1.8 billion. It makes a profit of around $117 million. ESPN is owned by
the Disney Company which earns over $5 billion against its market cap of $116
billion.
Sentiment aside, the Times was outgunned. Its honchos
offered Silver as much as they could, but they could never match whatever
ESPN was offering. Besides, ESPN is giving Silver an opportunity to practice his
rough magic on the world of sports, something that the boy wizard loves. And
since Disney also owns ABC, the new deal offers Silver far more media exposure.
Recently, the Times also lost a senior political
correspondent, Jeff Zeleny to ABC News.
We are watching a competition between the old and new media.
It seems inevitable that the old media will not be able to compete.
When the Times failed to hold on to Nate Silver it did not
react with dignity and grace, wishing him good luck and godspeed.
Not at all, Times men and women reacted like sore losers.
Apparently, they do not teach sportsmanship on West 41st St.
Yesterday, the Times’ Public Editor, Margaret Sullivan commented on the paper’s great loss.
She reported office gossip, to the effect that Silver and
the Times were a poor fit. A newspaper that has done more than almost any other
media outlet to make a fetish of diversity found that Nate Silver did not really
belong in its wizened culture.
Sullivan outlines the situation:
Why did
Nate Silver decide to leave
The New York Times and accept an offer from ESPN?
That’s
the cause of great
speculation in media circles at the moment. As has been noted
elsewhere, there’s no question that The Times made a big pitch to keep him and
that the effort to do so involved those at the highest levels, including Jill
Abramson, the executive editor, along with people on the business side. And
there’s no doubt that decision-makers are disappointed.
After
all, his star power was significant. And his ability to drive traffic –
especially among young, non-newspaper readers with his FiveThirtyEight blog –
was unmatched, and probably will remain so.
In his personal interactions with her Silver made a good
impression:
In
short, I found him a thoroughly decent person, generous with his time and more
likely than not to take the high road in personal interactions.
After extolling Silver’s good character, Sullivan reports
the insider trash talk that has followed Silver’s decision. She leaves the impression
that a decent and generous person does not belong at the New York Times.
Evidently, Times men and women lack class:
I don’t
think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was
aware of that. He was, in a word, disruptive. Much like the Brad Pitt character in
the movie “Moneyball” disrupted the old model of how to scout baseball
players, Nate disrupted the traditional model of how to cover politics.
His
entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of
political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race,
campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion
writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously
describing it as “fundamentally useless.” Of course, The Times is
equally known for its in-depth and investigative reporting on politics.
His
approach was to work against the narrative of politics – the “story” – and that
made him always interesting to read. For me, both of these approaches have
value and can live together just fine.
Silver does statistical probability. You may have noticed
but statistics has become extremely important in the high tech world. If your
children want to work at Google they should major in statistics.
So, Silver did not see politics in terms of the kind of
narrative that Times reporters are peddling. He wanted to deal with facts and
data, not the latest story line. He did not belong to the Tea Party, but he
disrupted the Times culture because he dealt in facts and data.
Obviously, it isn’t the kind of journalism that the Times
wants to present to the world. It would rather impose a narrative than analyze data.
One can only wonder how the Times newsroom explains the loss
of Jeff Zeleny.
2 comments:
Clearly he was a bad fit...with those who believed in narrative and making it up as we go and only one valid point of view.
This is an excellent moment to switch jobs too. Silver is on top of the world at the moment, but, like a hot fund manager, it's difficult to maintain this position (what if his statistical model doesn't work so well in 2014?). He's smart enough to move on.
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