Should newspapers employ a statistical analysis person?

"Moneyball," the movie, had its flaws, but the scene about eliminating bunts and saying a player's job wasn't to steal bases but was to avoid outs and score runs was on the mark.

 

Only if they also hire qualified scouts fluent in the subtleties of curveballs and opposite field hitting.

Makes as much sense.

 

To follow Buck's excellent post:

If a beat writer needs to learn about the rehabilitation process for Tommy John surgery, he can call an orthopedic surgeon. If a beat writer needs to learn about how the waiver process works, he can call an assistant GM, or someone in the league office. If a beat writer needs to learn about how the DUI process works, he can call a criminal defense attorney.

If a beat writer needs to learn about sabermetrics for a story, he can call one of the people suggested by Buck, or others. It's not a beat in itself, at least for a general interest newspaper.

 

Speaking of which, there's at least one baseball writer I know who ... actually went to scout school. Now he's out of newspapers and runs his own website evaluating prospects:

http://www.bbprospectreport.com/about

By the way, the SABR office staff is glad to put writers in touch with experts on just about any baseball-related subject, including sabermetrics. Just sayin'. 8)

http://sabr.org/about/contact-sabr

 

I think Buck hit it on the head. If you're a baseball beat writer, I don't care how many years you've been in the business, you should have a working understanding of BABIP and WAR and other such concepts.

That Tribune article is an embarrassment. And I swear I'm not Joe Cowley.

 

WWL has hired several.

 

Certainly a background understanding of statistics would be valuable for all journalists, whether covering sports or not.

The question I have, though, is if you're thinking about hiring a statistics expert, why not do this for every subject? What value-added to journalists provide in many areas? Many journalists have no real ability or authority to arbitrate disputes in policy matters, hence the focus the process of politics and the dogmatic clinging to "objectivity" (i.e. expert A says X, but expert B says) giving unequal arguments equal weight. It's not surprising the ignorance of many reporters has been exposed now that newspapers no longer control one of the the sole methods of disseminating information and experts can communicate with readers more directly.

 

I think what you bring up is a huge reason that a lot of academics hate journalists. Or, at the least, don't respect them or take them seriously.

 

This. A lot of think tanks, universities, ect., routinely send out news releases with contact info on their experts on everything from accounting to zoology. It would seem to make the most sense for most papers if they cover a team into sabrmetrics to have these numbers/sites handy.

 

Journalists, by and large, aren't the experts on any particular subject. And they have never claimed to be. (Although it certainly helps them do their jobs better if they can claim some personal credibility on their beat, I agree.)

But I think it's quite condescending to say many reporters are ignorant or have no value.

The skill journalists bring is to be able to synthesize information from the real experts and other sources -- including and especially sources that don't want to be found -- and then convey that information accurately and objectively to the general public on a daily basis.

Policymakers and organizations can't be trusted to do that, as has been proven over and over and over again. So it's not enough to say the experts now have more of an ability to communicate directly with readers. We still need someone who can run checks and balances over what they're communicating. Academics have a peer-review process for the same reason.

 

But the academic peer-review process has the advantage of being run by experts. And even it's not infallible, because of the insular nature of some fields and the sluggish pace at which they publish. But again, the Internet has helped exposed those weaknesses by giving primary actors the ability to communicate directly with readers, who can make their own independent evaluations (many of them have the same, or better, critical facilities journalists do). The economics blog community is a wonderful example of this.

Yes, ideally, journalists would aide readers who either: 1.) don't want to spend the time culling their own information; 2.) possess even less expertise than the journalists themselves. But how often does this occur in practice? Too many stories get filed without any critical evaluation at all, clinging to the idea of "objectivity*" as excuse to give two sides equally weight when they don't deserve it. And, whether reporters will admit it or not, stories are too often shaped by pure happenstance, such as which "expert" decided to call them back first. That is, of course, when they decide to even address policy arguments at all, instead of merely writing a policy-oriented story which requires less knowledge.

One hopes this causes journalists to rethink about the way they deliver news to readers. Yes, they still have a valuable role to serve. But they also need to realize they no longer serve as the gatekeeper to readers. When they fail to acquire the proper expertise, their ignorance will be revealed, as it has, for instance, in the areas of sabermatrics.


* Assuming true "objectivity" actually exists. Many policy debates can only be resolved because of subjective beliefs about the underlying values and outcomes against which they should be evaluated.

 

I knew this little missive was going to draw the buckster out before it even happened.