Update: At around 8:20 p.m. the Needle returned. “The Needle is live!” New York Times analyst Nate Cohn wrote in the Times’ live blog. Cohn said in tweets earlier Tuesday afternoon that the Needle may not return or may appear in a limited capacity citing the Times Tech Guild’s ongoing strike.
A mainstay interactive from the New York Times’ election night coverage went missing briefly. It’s because the people who operate it are on strike.
Earlier this month, the Times announced that the Needle — a predictive tool offering real-time probability estimates early on in the night — would return. In 2016, its debut was largely mocked for heavily flip-flopping and underestimating Donald Trump’s chances.
But the news of the Needle’s return was quickly stifled without the necessary staffers on hand to run it.
On Monday, the Times Tech Guild staff went on strike following what members are calling repeatedly failed bargaining attempts with management. For months the Guild said it would go on strike during the election period if an agreement wasn’t reached, threatening the paper’s ability to cover election results.
“We love our jobs and we’re looking forward to being able to do them,” Tech Guild member and senior software engineer Kait Hoehne told the Washington Post. “But we haven’t seen enough movement from management and we’ve been bargaining for far too long … the ball is in their court.”
A Times spokesperson said the paper respected the union’s right to engage in protected actions but voiced disappointment that members would “strike at this time.”
Hoehne added that increased Election Night traffic adds stress on the website that the Guild’s experienced engineers are equipped to handle.
During Tuesday’s walkout, members chanted, “If you want a Needle, we need a deal.”
There are about 600 Tech Guild members including data analysts, designers, and software engineers who optimize the paper’s digital components — including the Needle.
Without those engineers on hand to keep the Needle in check, it looks like the Times is needle-less.
In a statement Tuesday morning, the election analytics team said it depended on the company’s engineers who are on strike to push the Needle live.
“While they don’t play a role in the model itself, they built and maintain the infrastructure that feeds us data and lets us publish on the internet,” said Times Chief Political Analyst Nate Cohn earlier in the day before the Needle returned at 8:20 p.m. Cohn added that the Times would likely run the model internally, without publishing it, and would report findings on the newspaper’s website through a mix of words, charts, and screenshots.
On social media, supporters of the strike had praised Guild members for holding the line and managing to keep the Times from publishing what’s become one of its signature Election Night elements.
