What started out as a joke on Twitter quickly spread like wildfire Tuesday as Politico‘s Dylan Byers initially helped fuel the speculation that he’d landed a new job with ESPN Nate Silver‘s 538 blog.
As the false news went viral, at least in Washington enclaves, facts were disseminated in the most f–ked up way possible. So eventually it was ‘Dylan Byers is going to the New York Times!’
But no. He wasn’t. Or, for that matter, to ESPN to work for Silver.
The trail begins with Daily Beast Washington, D.C.-based reporter Ben Jacobs, who wrote, “Congratulations to @DylanByers on his new job with @fivethirtyeight!”
Byers retweeted the “news” by retweeting Jacobs and adding, “Scooped!”
To his credit, a minute later Byers wrote, “Guys there’s a 99.8 percent chance that was a joke.”
At 3:46 Washington Post‘s wonky Ezra Klein jumped into the fray, saying, “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”
The only truth was that ESPN’s Silver has staffed up his blog and Byers reported it.
The backstory is that Byers and Silver would be the strangest of bedfellows, considering they’d each probably die a slow death rather than work together. Byers first trashed Silver during the 2012 presidential election cycle with the headline, “Nate Silver: One-term celebrity?” Returning the favor, Silver told Out magazine that Byers was a “terrible journalist.” What’s more, it would likely be a cold day in hell before New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson brought Byers on board because, as it happens, Byers has trashed Abramson and Abramson has trashed Politico.
Asked for comment on the debacle, Byers told The Mirror, “I thought Ezra’s tweet was by far the best response to the joke. It was a tweet I appreciated very much.”