Wow. It appears that Daily Kos has concluded that Research 2000 was providing them with fabricated polling data over the last year and a half and they are suing them for breach of contract.
Interesting Development
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I read the links to Markos, WaPo and, finally, at TPM it got really interesting — “$50, $60, $70,000” allegedly past due. Dude, how much money does Markos make off of DKos? I mean, I know he has to make a lot to afford to live in Berkeley and on top of that he earns enough to possibly run up a tab like that with R2K?! Whoa. This is gonna continue to be interesting — and ugly — as it unfolds.
I’m not particularly a fan of dkos or its founder, but, get real. The founder and owner of a newspaper or television station with that kind of market penetration would be wealthy beyond your or my dreams. I’m not sure which is worse: the criminal difficulty for anyone talented (including BooMan) to make a decent living producing political content online, or the sniping from some on the left when it happens, as if wanting a fair market value for your work somehow makes your opinions and insights less “authentic.”
The dude started from scratch and still oversees a major national media institution. If Kos were conservative and had done that he’d be flying everywhere in a Lear jet today. Give it a break.
I think he makes a lot off his sports franchise, too.
What part of my comment sounded like sniping? I don’t begrudge Markos making money. I was simply wondering, how much? Seriously. Give ME a break.
I think 2008 was the first year he had over $1,000,000 in revenue(by his own admission on the site).
Why does it matter? Why is it relevant to the story? Why would tens of thousands of dollars that a polling firm allegedly owes a national media company be any reflection on the income or lifestyle of its head? And why on earth would his residence in Berkeley indicate anything beyond probably at least a middle class income? (I live in a large, expensive city on a lot less than that.) And why does all that the stuff that supposedly makes the story “interesting” when it’s the validity of the polling numbers that’s in question?
I usually like the comments you post, so it kind of surprised me, and perhaps hit a nerve – I know a lot of talented writers who’ve really struggled to make a bare-bones living from their blogs. Online writing is badly devalued compared to almost any other media platform. dKos is the nation’s largest political blog, with literally millions of regular and occasional visitors, but somehow a $50,000 or so tab for national polling – which would be relatively inconsequential for, say, a TV network – is some sort of reflection on the income or lifestyle of Kos?
Something about your response seemed completely out of whack, in a way I’ve encountered a lot from left activists. Sorry I came off too harshly, but if we want to be players at the level this stuff is played, those kind of dollars are child’s play.
He has categorically denied owning them anything. So we’ll just have to see.
The empire strikes back: “[WaPo] UPDATE, 3:37 p.m.: The attorney for Research 2000 tells Justin Elliott that the firm may counter-sue. And just in, um, Time, the magazine sez’ dKos is ‘overrated’. Huh. Never woulda guessed.
Looks like R2K may def sue, and now Nate Silver and 538 has been dragged into it.
About 1 hour ago, Nate and therefore 538 was sent a “cease and desist” letter from R2K lawyer firm. Here’s nate commenting on the letter:
Research 2000 Issues Cease & Desist Letter to FiveThirtyEight
by Nate Silver @ 5:09 PM
Wait for R2K to send Nate a cease and desist letter against posting his cease and desist letters. I think the letter was more damning that anything Nate could have said further.
I am impressed. For once it didn’t refer to “The Daily Kos” but “the Daily Kos” clearly realizing that “the” is not part of the name.
Also in light of the Dave Wiegel fuster cluck, do you think NYT is regretting that deal made with him about now?
Kos and Nate Silver will wipe the floor with those nitiwt lawyers for Research 2000. Those are two very smart young dudes.
This raises a very interesting question about polling firms in general. How many are boilerplating survey results delivered to several different clients? How many are capable of asking the non-canned questions that the Daily Kos frequently asked? Is it a matter of “If it’s not canned, it’s fake”?
These are important questions given the extent to which polling drives political narratives and expectations and is blown back in voter behavior.
Frankly, I’m surprised that Markos posted all of this detail with litigation forthcoming. Being an attorney, I would have assumed him to be more cautious in his statments.
Adam B. is representing them.
I am a statistician. What I find odd, very odd, is that, apparently, R2K has been asked to produce raw data, and has as yet not done so. In the world of data analysis, it is often difficult to reproduce findings exactly unless you 1) save all data files – raw and interim 2) save all production process files.
If they analyze this data with production files (that is, not by running thru menus and clicking), they should be able to reproduce results. If they do not, god help them, because analysis which is not saved/archived/journaled is not of value.
I used to analyze huge datasets. We’d have backups of our backups of raw data. I almost always wrote out the code, but in the few cases I used menus, there was always a text version of the statistical analyses. But that was in academia…
While we’re talking shop, there was always something that never made sense to me: we’d have someone else independently check all the data entry, but no one ever proofread code. That seemed backwards, since a misplaced semicolon or Boolean operator could throw the results in a way that poor data entry on such a small scale couldn’t. I worked without any independent quality assurance and could have had much longer lunches if I didn’t care about data integrity.
Why is this so interesting?
It is simply big media business as usual.
Web version.
The entire system in built upon lies.
The best liar wins…at least until the lies pile up so far that even the least perceptive among us can smell the Enron/Madoff/BP -style stench.
Here is what is going to happen.
Something will happen.
Anything.
Maybe Drudge…err, ahh, I mean Moulitsos…goes down. (There’s not much difference between the two, y’know. Really. Both hustlers are full of shit.)
Maybe not.
Maybe a major polling firm gets Madoffed.
Scapegoated.
And maybe not.
But I will tell you this for sure.
No matter what happens, the leftiness clones will be back contentedly sucking at one leftiness tit or another in a week or two or three. Believing the polls and talking/writing/blogging heads that agree with them, ignoring and/or opposing those that do not.
Totally ignoring he ongoing fact that the entire major media system…any part of it that gets big enough to be “important”, to be granted major media space itself, to make real money…the entire major media system is basd on lying.
On advertising, right out front.
Because if you do not lie in support of your so-caled “beliefs”, people will not pay attention to you in this system. The whole thing has gotten so inflated that only massive falsehoods are large enough to get he attention of masses of people.
Bullshit.
BP just got caught. It is no more guilty than every other major oil company. So the media piles on. It skewers the talking asshole that BP puts up as a sacrificial Head Lamb; everybody is satisfied and the game contes underneath the surface, amost totally uncovered by major media.
Why would they?
Bite the hand that feeds them?
Please!!!
And so, once again I reiterate:
(I do keep trying…)
Later…
AG