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August 21, 2011
Looking back at Andrew Zimbalist's work for hire: bad math, obliviousness to the news of a Newark arena, and several updated reports never made public
Atlantic Yards Report
Responding to criticism of the self-serving Atlantic Yards fiscal impact study he prepared on behalf of Forest City Ratner, sports economist Andrew Zimbalist told the 6/29/04 New York Times, in an article headlined A Plan Passes And an Arena Is Protested In Brooklyn, "I was very careful in my use of numbers."
I'd call that a classic example of the "journalism of assertion" the Times purportedly eschews in favor of the "journalism of verification."
While I've spent a lot of time dissecting Zimbalist's work, I--and everyone else, I believe--missed a sloppy, careless error that was not fundamental to his argument but exemplifies, I'd argue, the casual manner in which he prepared his for-hire study.
That math error misreported the number of estimated jobs.
Beyond that, Zimbalist, as if oblivious to any responsibility for verification, missed the news that a new arena was coming in Newark.
Still, Forest City Ratner's business savvy in hiring Zimbalist led to credulous editorials, like this one, from the 5/4/04 New York Sun, headlined Sports, Jobs, and Taxes (echoing the title of one of Zimbalist's books):
Mr. Zimbalist is the nation's leading expert on the financing of sports arenas and co-author of the bible on the subject, a report issued by the Brookings Institution called Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums. He has a national reputation for arguing against the use of public dollars to pay for sports arenas. But even Mr. Zimbalist likes the proposed Brooklyn arena deal.
It also led to slapdash coverage like a New York Post article headlined "NETS GOOD SPORT$," in which Gersh Kuntzman (now editing the Brooklyn Paper) asserted that "developer Bruce Ratner's proposed arena for the New Jersey Nets in Downtown Brooklyn would pump more than $800 million into city and state coffers over the next 30 years."
Neil deMause noted that the sum referred to revenues from the entire project, not just the arena, prompting Kuntzman to comment that, while he understood Zimbalist's findings, he was just using "shorthand."
Posted by steve at August 21, 2011 5:15 PM