4 ms·

Does NYT have a policy about taking on outside work or accepting money from outside sources? If NYT means New York Times, is this something to do with journalis

Does NYT have a policy about taking on outside work or accepting money from outside sources? If NYT means New York Times, is this something to do with journalistic integrity? I liked the author's suggestion about donating unwanted tips to charity or turning them back around into tips.

jashkenas 13y ago
Yes. When you're working in the newsroom, you generally need to steer clear of accepting any gifts, free services, or free products. It really matters when it's from a company that the Times has covered, or might write about in the future -- but that's a pretty wide net, and most startup employees would arguably fall into that category. The Khan Academy's sponsored donation program certainly would. Here's the actual language: Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. (Exceptions may be made for trinkets of nominal value, say, $25 or less, such as a mug or a cap with a company logo.) Gifts should be returned with a polite explanation. From this little gem of a handbook: http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf ... it's the Times' internal ethics rulebook specifically aiming at the conundrums of journalism -- but I think that quite a lot of it applies to ethical business practices in general.
- whit537 13y ago
  I had a go-round on this with Gabe Stein of FastCo.Labs. Since Gittip is anonymous in the particulars I thought maybe that would get around the journalistic conflict of interest, but Gabe articulated how that probably wasn't sufficient because there's always the threat of finding out (as with jashkenas and Khan in this case). Queued up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s Not sure yet what, if anything, is to be done about this. Gabe is experimenting with Gittip as well: https://www.gittip.com/gabestein/ https://www.gittip.com/gabestein/
  - patcon 13y ago
    What if there was a mode that folks could set their accounts to, where they couldn't cash out and could only pass it on to other users? People could go into that mode when they were in a job that frowned upon gifts, and it could be displayed prominently so that allow donors were aware :) Perhaps the system could even convert dollars to some sort of non-monetary "token", which they could pass along to someone who could cash it out, and then there's further reason that it wouldn't be considered a gift?
    - whit537 13y ago
      If you don't connect a bank account then this is effectively what happens. Also, it's currently public on your profile whether you've attached a bank account.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        But presumably you could let cash accumulate, and add a bank account later. I think probably passing the money through to a charity is the safest.
    - jashkenas 13y ago
      I'm afraid that wouldn't help in this case. The conflict of interest here is the possibility of any appearance of favoritism -- whether you happen to be on the giving or the receiving end of the equation doesn't make much difference. There are sections in that guidebook about donations to political parties. Gittip forwarding would be a similar, albeit grayer, area -- donating to (say) prominent folks from Microsoft Research would be iffy. More so if you then proceeded to work on any Microsoft-related stories in the future.
    - rmc 13y ago
      That would still allow bribes. Let's say I'm a jouralist and a good friend of mine is on gittub. Someone can give me money, and I give it all to my friend. I now think very highly of the person who gave that money.
- opsmgmt 13y ago
  Maybe a gittip feature (I don't know if it already does this) is an option to make all donations anonymous so that the recipient does not know the source. This should remove the conflict of interest then.
  - spicyj 13y ago
    As whit537 mentions in a sibling comment, all Gittip donations are already anonymous, but blog posts like John's here end up removing the anonymity for particular donations.
  - rmc 13y ago
    That doesn't stop bribes. I could "gittip" you a lot of money. It comes up as anonymous, but I tell you that it was me.

jashkenas 13y ago

Yes. When you're working in the newsroom, you generally need to steer clear of accepting any gifts, free services, or free products. It really matters when it's from a company that the Times has covered, or might write about in the future -- but that's a pretty wide net, and most startup employees would arguably fall into that category. The Khan Academy's sponsored donation program certainly would. Here's the actual language: Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. (Exceptions may be made for trinkets of nominal value, say, $25 or less, such as a mug or a cap with a company logo.) Gifts should be returned with a polite explanation. From this little gem of a handbook: http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf http://nytco.com/pdf/NYT_Ethical_Journalism_0904.pdf ... it's the Times' internal ethics rulebook specifically aiming at the conundrums of journalism -- but I think that quite a lot of it applies to ethical business practices in general.

whit537 13y ago
I had a go-round on this with Gabe Stein of FastCo.Labs. Since Gittip is anonymous in the particulars I thought maybe that would get around the journalistic conflict of interest, but Gabe articulated how that probably wasn't sufficient because there's always the threat of finding out (as with jashkenas and Khan in this case). Queued up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OerW0Q_2_7o#t=32m03s Not sure yet what, if anything, is to be done about this. Gabe is experimenting with Gittip as well: https://www.gittip.com/gabestein/ https://www.gittip.com/gabestein/
- patcon 13y ago
  What if there was a mode that folks could set their accounts to, where they couldn't cash out and could only pass it on to other users? People could go into that mode when they were in a job that frowned upon gifts, and it could be displayed prominently so that allow donors were aware :) Perhaps the system could even convert dollars to some sort of non-monetary "token", which they could pass along to someone who could cash it out, and then there's further reason that it wouldn't be considered a gift?
  - whit537 13y ago
    If you don't connect a bank account then this is effectively what happens. Also, it's currently public on your profile whether you've attached a bank account.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      But presumably you could let cash accumulate, and add a bank account later. I think probably passing the money through to a charity is the safest.
  - jashkenas 13y ago
    I'm afraid that wouldn't help in this case. The conflict of interest here is the possibility of any appearance of favoritism -- whether you happen to be on the giving or the receiving end of the equation doesn't make much difference. There are sections in that guidebook about donations to political parties. Gittip forwarding would be a similar, albeit grayer, area -- donating to (say) prominent folks from Microsoft Research would be iffy. More so if you then proceeded to work on any Microsoft-related stories in the future.
  - rmc 13y ago
    That would still allow bribes. Let's say I'm a jouralist and a good friend of mine is on gittub. Someone can give me money, and I give it all to my friend. I now think very highly of the person who gave that money.
opsmgmt 13y ago
Maybe a gittip feature (I don't know if it already does this) is an option to make all donations anonymous so that the recipient does not know the source. This should remove the conflict of interest then.
- spicyj 13y ago
  As whit537 mentions in a sibling comment, all Gittip donations are already anonymous, but blog posts like John's here end up removing the anonymity for particular donations.
- rmc 13y ago
  That doesn't stop bribes. I could "gittip" you a lot of money. It comes up as anonymous, but I tell you that it was me.