Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and Poynter donor, writes on the Poynter ethics site about a New Republic article that asserts, using anecdotes, that ageism is rampant in Silicon Valley.
Newmark says he was taken aback, and that as far as he could tell, discrimination against older people is no different in SV than elsewhere in business.
But he also says: “If somebody asserts something factual, I want them to back it up with more than anecdotes, so that readers can trust it.”
So he turned to friends in the journalism world, including Dan Gilmor and Liz Spayd, for their take on the subject and asked: “When is anecdotal reporting enough to support broad conclusions without concrete data? This recent article on ageism in Silicon Valley seemed to paint an entire group of people based [on] a handful of examples. Is that fair?”
Read their answers.
