Sullivan’s no-betting admonishment can be read as a way of trying to redraw the line around the institution. It’s not a question of better or worse, but it’s about being different. News organizations have to change radically, adopt new mores and styles, and conform in ways large and small to a new news culture. But on the other hand, they shouldn’t dissolve into the new culture altogether.
I make the case for journalism institutions here. But even apart from big-picture arguments, different is good, right? Even if the line may look increasingly arbitrary, in fact it’s not. So inside this line there will be certain rules, even if others have no use for them. The rules have to be smart, of course, but rules emphasize the differentness, the integrity, if you will, of The New York Times from the vastness of the Internet that is not The New York Times.
I think it’s a good exercise, even if the betting issue might not have been the cleanest one. Columnists, which is what Silver is, get a lot more latitude than news reporters in expressing themselves; and newspapers haven’t always been the prim, mineral-water-drinking institutions they are today. Still, a rough consensus formed: Most agree that whether or not the bet was appropriate, it’s probably not a good idea for columnists to make a habit of it. The process wasn’t pretty, but that’s engagement for you.
The real lesson of the episode is that despite all the heat the clash of institutional/digital cultures wasn’t much of a clash at all. Views were exchanged. Life goes on.
What was surprising about the episode wasn’t that it showed the incompatibility of digital and institutional cultures, but the opposite.
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Nice article but Silver is not a "statistician by training." He studied economics in college. He got into statistics because of his love for baseball, and morphed into one of those sabremetric geeks. In fact, he made his living doing sabremetric analyses for fantasy baseball players and other baseball lovers for a few years.
But his dad was a Political Science professor and Silver always had an interest in politics. So he combined his understanding of statistics and applied it to politics.
#1 Posted by brian, CJR on Tue 6 Nov 2012 at 09:46 AM
Nate Silver is not an employee of the New York Times, he is an independent contractor. Sullivan has taken it upon herself to police the outside behavior of freelancers like Silver, and the ramifications vis a vis the IRS (which strictly defines employees vs contractors) could be serious.
#2 Posted by james, CJR on Tue 6 Nov 2012 at 01:14 PM
Silver does not represent nearly the novelty you think. Newspapers have been conduits for what might be called outside-the-newsroom news for about a hundred years. Ever hear of Eleanor Roosevelt? How about Winston Churchill?
As for unbundling, my copies of the Times always come in packets labeled Business, Sports etc.
You should have just stopped with it was a minor foot-fault (if that).
#3 Posted by Harry Eagar, CJR on Tue 6 Nov 2012 at 01:38 PM