Under Attack, Nate Silver Picks the Wrong Defense

“Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes.”

The above words are those of Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's “Morning Joe” program. He's talking about Nate Silver, the statistics wizard whose FiveThirtyEight blog is licensed by The New York Times, and who writes for The Times frequently online as well as in print. Mr. Silver also has a desk in The Times's newsroom.

As the presidential campaign veers around the clubhouse turn and zooms into the home stretch, Mr. Silver is very much in the public eye.

For months now, he has been predicting that President Obama has about a 75 percent probability, give or take a few points, of winning re-election on Tuesday. He uses an algorithm â€" some call it a secret sauce - that combines the numbers in public opinion polls and produces a result t hat he then turns into a prediction.

That has endeared him to liberals and Democrats, just as it has infuriated conservatives and Republicans. Mr. Silver himself has said that he supported Mr. Obama in 2008 but his work tends to focus on numbers, not policy and politics.

He has been out there promoting his book, “The Signal and the Noise,” which has increased his visibility further. In short, he's everywhere and his name is on everyone's lips.

As Brendan Nyhan noted in Columbia Journalism Review, some pundits resent him because his methods represent a mortal threat to traditional “horse race” political commentary.

His skirmish with Mr. Scarborough is especially high profile. Mr. Scarborough, as noted above, disagrees with Mr. Silver's prediction, calling the race a dead heat and saying that Mr. Silver is a fool to say otherwise.

Mr. Silver is quite accurate in his argument against Mr. Scarborough. He clearly says that the closeness of the popular vote does not affect the probability that Mr. Obama will win. They are, simply, two very different things.

So on Thursday, frustrated and irritated, Mr. Silver challenged Mr. Scarborough to a wager in a Twitter message - $1,000 to the Red Cross. (The offer later climbed to $2,000.)

If Mr. Obama wins, Mr. Scarborough pays up; if Mitt Romney wins, Mr. Silver does the same.

 So far, Mr. Scarborough isn't biting on the offer and I could not reach him for comment Thursday.

In a phone conversation, Mr. Silver described the wager offer as “half playful and half serious.”

“He's been on a rant, calling me an idiot and a partisan, so I'm asking him to put some integrity behind it,” he said. “I don't stand to gain anything from it; it's for charity.”

He added that he is feeling the strain of being under attack and vulnerable to criticism as Election Day approaches.

“It's a high-stress time,” he said.

I can understand and sympathize with that.

But whatever the motivation behind it, the wager offer is a bad idea â€" giving ammunition to the critics who want to paint Mr. Silver as a partisan who is trying to sway the outcome.

It's also inappropriate for a Times journalist, which is how Mr. Silver is seen by the public even though he's not a regular staff member.

“I wouldn't want to see it become newsroom practice,” said the associate managing editor for standards, Philip B. Corbett. He described Mr. Silver's status as a blogger - something like a columnist - as a mitigating factor.

Granted, Mr. Silver isn't covering the presidential race as a political reporter would.

But he is closely associated with The Times and its journalism â€" in fact, he's probably (and please know that I use the p-word loosely) its most high-profile writer at this particular moment.

When he came to work at The Times, Mr. Silver gained a lot mo re visibility and the credibility associated with a prominent institution. But he lost something, too: the right to act like a free agent with responsibilities to nobody's standards but his own.

Wrestling With Expansion Plans

At the most recent meeting of the She Owns It business group, the owners gave updates on some longstanding issues, and raised a few new ones. Thinking Caps Tutoring, owned by Alexandra Mayzler, may be closing - and opening - a location. At the same time, Ms. Mayzler is moving ahead with the company's new tagline and a Web site redesign. Beth Shaw, who owns YogaFit, also has plans to revamp her Web site. But they've recently been delayed.

Ms. Mayzler opened a Houston location in January. Now she is considering closing it because the branch has failed to pay for itself, let alone make a profit. She's not sure why. Perhaps, she speculated, it's because of personnel changes in that office or maybe it's because Houston's population is so spread out. “But those are just excuses,” she added. For now, she plans to see how things go through December and determine whether Thinking Caps should adjust its Houston prices.

Thinking Caps' location in Austin, Tex., is doin g fine, Ms. Mayzler said. New York, where the business started, remains its largest market. And despite the disappointing results in Houston, Ms. Mayzler is still interested in expanding. But this time, she plans to stay closer to home.

She has set her sights on central New Jersey, a location Thinking Caps can manage from New York with existing staff. Despite high demand for tutors in “the obvious places like Long Island, Westchester, and northern New Jersey,” Ms. Mayzler said it's been hard to find tutors to service those areas. “No 20-year-olds live in Westchester,” she said. “So you wind up sending tutors out there, which is a logistical pain and very difficult and exhausting for the tutors.”

Central New Jersey appeals to her because it is close enough to keep an eye on from New York, yet far enough from the city to pull in different clients. And with Princeton and Rutgers in the area, there are plenty of graduate stud ents to draw on as potential tutors. She said she has already interviewed a few promising prospects. Additionally, Thinking Caps is contacting schools and education professionals in the area. “We're just feeling it out - we're not going to do anything crazy,” she said. But if everything falls into place, she hopes to move forward.

In addition to making these decisions, Ms. Mayzler is overseeing the redesign of her Web site, which she said is proceeding on schedule. “I was thrilled to see all the comments Deirdre got,” she said, referring to reactions to my previous post in which the group member Deirdre Lord, who owns the Megawatt Hour, solicited feedback on her company's site. Ms. Mayzler said many of the comments addressed issues that wouldn't have crossed her mind.

“Did you ever pick a tagline?” asked Ms. Lord, following up on a discussion from previous posts.

Yes, she said. “We're going with, ‘Where bright students become brilliant learn ers.'”

Ms. Lord said she loved it but didn't recall hearing it among the options Ms. Mayzler mentioned during earlier meetings.

Actually, said Ms. Mayzler, it was one of her first ideas. When she came up with it, she ran it by two people. One liked it and the other said it was too long, so she scrapped it. But recently, she revisited all her old ideas. She realizes it's long but, “I'm not coming up with the next, ‘Just do it,'” she said, referring to the Nike slogan. Thinking Caps' logo will be redesigned to complement the longer tagline.

Further refining Thinking Caps' tutor-training program, which Ms. Mayzler revamped last fall, is also on her 2012 to-do list. “By December 15, a lot of stuff needs to get finished at Thinking Caps,” she said.

The conversation turned to Ms. Lord, who said Green Capital Empire, which introduces investors and start-ups, just named her company one of the 50 most promising privately held green tech companies i n New York. She said she is trying to figure out what, if anything, this will mean for the Megawatt Hour. At the very least, it puts the company on the radar screens of potential angel investors and V.C.'s, she said. “We'll see about what it really turns into, but it's better than not being on the list,” she added.

Ms. Shaw said she is back to “square one” with YogaFit's Web site redesign plans. “I thought I had found a company to redo our Web site and they ended up bailing,” she said.

“Why?” Ms. Mayzler asked.

“They wanted us to switch to their back-end system to go forward and then said their quote was going to be higher than they anticipated, so I'm thinking they didn't realize the scope of the work when they first looked at the project,” she said. YogaFit now uses Orderwave to manage its inventory, which includes apparel, books, DVDs and CDs. Ms. Shaw said that Orderwave, unlike the back-end system the Web design firm proposed, is co mpatible with QuickBooks, which her company uses. Additionally, she said YogaFit has invested at least $100,000 into the Orderwave system and has no plans to switch to another one.

In future posts, we will take a closer look at all of the companies' Web sites. In the meantime, do you think Ms. Mayzler's expansion plans make sense? If your business has expanded geographically, how did you decide on the right location?

You can follow Adriana Gardella on Twitter.

Some Businesses Choose Not to Grow

One of the biggest decisions business owners face is whether to try to expand their businesses. This may seem like a silly question: Who wouldn't want a business to grow? But owners who choose growth can get stuck. For some, the issue is how to handle delegation. For others, it's about raising enough capital. And for still others, it's about learning the technical skills required to manage a growing business.

Years ago, my two-person company was transformed by an acquisition that forced me to make several changes. I immediately had to learn skills that many learn over a period of years. The acquisition caused our sales to grow to $1.5 million from $75,000 and employment to grow to more than 20 full-time workers from one part-time employee. There were more changes four years later, when we bought a company that was located out of town. Now, I not only had to manage more than 30 employees, I had to figure out how to manage a company in a different city.

During the last 30 years, I've come to understand that there are three types of business. Each one places burdens on its owners that are different and distinct. But the point is that a business owner has a choice: You don't have to get swept up in growth. Here are the options:

Microbusinesses are where all start-ups begin. The vast majority of the 27 million businesses in the United States are microbusinesses. Some are start-ups, some have been in business for years and some would like to be bigger, but the owners can't figure out how to make the leap.

Microbusinesses are often one-person shows. If the owner becomes disabled or dies, the business falls apart. The biggest challenge with a microbusiness is keeping a steady stream of income. In my case, when I had a microbusiness, I would fill vending machines, make sandwiches for our machines, order stock for our warehouse, fix vending machines when they were broken, do our bookkeeping and co unt the money - in other words, I was the chief cook and bottle washer.

For me, being in a microbusiness was similar to buying myself a job. And in my case, the job was mostly about filling vending machines and making sure they worked. There was no time to think strategically or act strategically. I even found it difficult to find time to make sales calls. For many microbusinesses, there just isn't time or money to make the jump. My break came when one of our competitors went out of business and we were able to buy its assets. This catapulted me to the next level.

I think of the next largest group of businesses as traditional small businesses. These businesses usually have five to 25 employees. They are more complex in that the owners don't do all of the direct work themselves. They have moved into a role supporting or supervising others. As with microbusinesses, many owners decide this is a good place to be and don't want to make their business any larger.

Those owners who do want their companies to move to the next stage have to develop the ability to create capital for growth. They also have to learn tools and techniques for running a larger company. Sometimes these owners get stuck because their businesses don't make enough money or because they haven't learned the right skills.

When my business was in this stage, I didn't delegate well. I often felt like a firefighter. I had people who could help but no one who could manage. If there was a problem, it always came to my attention. Actually, I wanted it that way. I was convinced that no one could do anything in the business as well as I could. I wasn't ready or willing to let go and have others help run my company.

This was my personal roadblock. I didn't know how to manage; I just knew how to provide good service through brute force.

Those who do move on can become a lower middle market business, which is a business that can be sold. That means the busine ss has to be able to run for long stretches without the efforts of the owner. Businesses that create enterprise value typically have more than 25 employees and produce more than $5 million in sales per year. The United States Census Bureau says there are about 300,000 businesses in this category.

Owners of successful companies that produce enterprise value know how to act and think strategically. They have created companies that function with tactical excellence; they are not just trying to get through the day. The truly successful businesses in this class have also achieved strategic excellence. It's when tactical excellence is joined by strategic excellence that real value is created for the owner.

Moving into the lower middle market was a very difficult transition for me. I had to learn to trust my employees, allow others to make mistakes, put together dashboards to monitor what was happening in the company and find a way to take myself out of day-to-day opera tions. Oh, and I almost forgot - I also had to find a way to finance the growth and additional resources that we needed.

Over the next few weeks I'll delve more deeply into the positives and challenges that come with each of these types of business. Please feel free to share your experiences owning a business in one of these stages - or moving from one to another.

Josh Patrick is a founder and principal at Stage 2 Planning Partners, where he works with private business owners on wealth management issues.

Sounding the Warning on Preparedness for Hurricane Sandy

The Times had a strong story on the front page Wednesday under a headline that says a great deal: “For Years, Warnings That It Could Happen Here.”

“It,” of course, refers to a disaster like the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

That article, by Mireya Navarro and David Chen, may have reminded some readers about another front-page effort about seven weeks ago by Ms. Navarro.

Consider these paragraphs from her prescient Sept. 11 article:

But even as city officials earn high marks for environmental awareness, critics say New York is moving too slowly to address the potential for flooding that could paralyze transportation, cripple the low-lying financial district and temporarily drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Only a year ago, they point out, the city shut down the subway system and ordered the evacuation of 370,000 people as Hurricane Irene barreled up the Atlantic coast. Ultim ately, the hurricane weakened to a tropical storm and spared the city, but it exposed how New York is years away from - and billions of dollars short of - armoring itself.

“They lack a sense of urgency about this,” said Douglas Hill, an engineer with the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University, on Long Island.

I spoke with Ms. Navarro on Wednesday. The Metropolitan section reporter who covers the environment said that she is glad that she wrote that article last month and that The Times gave it front-page display.

But now, she added, the situation â€" in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Sandy - has moved from the theoretical to the all-too-real.

It's not in the job descriptions of reporters to make policy, but often they are in an unusually good position to make cogent observations about what they cover. Ms. Navarro did just that when we spoke.

“Rather than constant studies, we need some action steps now,† she said. “The subway alone is a major thing. If the subway goes, the city goes.”

It's notable that her September article drew nearly 250 comments from deeply interested readers, from Manhattan to the Netherlands. Infrastructure may not be a sexy topic on its face, but it matters deeply to people's lives and creates passionate responses.

The Times has given this subject significant attention, not only in the metropolitan region, but also nationally.

In its national reporter John Schwartz, The Times has a full-time infrastructure reporter, a major commitment of resources. His reporting has frequently sounded alarms about infrastructure deficiencies in the United States. In the paper's long-term, sustained coverage of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans, The Times showed that it knew just how important infrastructure is.

And talk about prescience. As early as 2008, Mr. Schwartz was writing about New York's vulnerability to storms wit h an article titled “Waiting for the Big One.”

But readers â€" from governors to city residents to federal officials â€" often have short attention spans and limited ability to focus on important, hugely expensive and seemingly unexciting topics.

Now the subject has come home in an undeniable way.

Ms. Navarro noted that those action steps are extremely expensive and take sustained effort over time.

“The plan is to stick with the coverage,” she said. “We know that this is not going to go away.”

Mr. Schwartz put it another way: “People do the right thing after we've been shamed into it. We don't learn our lessons until we have to.”

That moment, apparently, has arrived. But a newspaper can only do so much. So far, The Times has done its job admirably. Now it's time for public officials to do theirs.

Why I Manage My Own AdWords Campaigns

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read “My AdWords Debacle” - and especially to those who left comments. I'd like to respond to some of the most commonly asked questions. So without further ado:

Why didn't you spot the pattern sooner?

Am I just plain stupid? Not really. When I sat down to write these posts, the theme I had in mind was how difficult it was for this small-business owner to identify patterns in the blizzard of incoming data and to figure out what to do next. I hope that this idea wasn't lost as the post changed into a story about AdWords.

Life doesn't present itself as a tightly formed narrative. It's my job as a blogger to turn messy reality into an entertaining and informative story. Unfortunately, the format of this blog precludes a full exploration of the many twists and turns along the way. For instance, the sales problem could have been presented as simply a random variation that is mathematic ally inevitable when incoming jobs range widely in size (which ours do, by a factor of 10). The sales data conform very well to this hypothesis, and that's a pattern I have often seen in the past.

If I had decided to believe that story, then the post I wrote might have been about planning for inevitable downturns, and I could have expounded on how my cash management and backlog forecasting systems allowed me to ride out the dip without layoffs. Or the story could have been about how we were responding to incoming inquiries and what happened when I decided to completely overhaul our sales process. In fact, I did do that, and I believe that it had a large effect on our return to a profitable level of sales.

Or it could have been about how I responded to a big problem with a multi-pronged counterattack involving my marketing, my sales operations, our shop management, and my own financial planning. That's what actually happened - I tried everything I could think of, and each change probably had some effect on the ultimate result. But that story is very difficult to tell, in particular as it is happening. It would be better suited for a book, where each thread in the narrative can be developed fully.

It's also easy to forget that a story that took five days to recount took five months to develop. It's hard to interpret data until you have enough to draw conclusions. And it's hard to see how responses will work without giving them some time. It can take quite a while for a situation to develop to the point where it can be understood and even longer to see whether the fixes are working.

One commenter suggested that I could have avoided all of this by simply thinking about what might happen before I took action. Apparently, a little “scenario planning” allows one to see the future with perfect clarity. Really? I'd like to know what planet he lives on. Certainly not Earth, where even plans developed by the richest and smartes t businesses and governments can go badly awry.

I'm sure that I am not the only small-business owner who tries lots of things to improve sales and operations. News flash: some of them don't work and sometimes for reasons that aren't readily apparent. Any plan you can think of has potential negative consequences. Sure, some plans are so stupid that their downsides would give anyone pause. For instance, I can clearly see that it would be a bad idea to heat my shop by setting my lumber supplies on fire. But then there are plans that seem perfectly reasonable, like introducing new products to see how they will do in the market. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. Sometimes the failure is complex and subtle. I can't let that possibility keep me from trying things.

Why don't you stop managing your own advertising and hire an expert?

Plenty of commenters took me to task for trying to run my own AdWords campaign. Oddly enough, 100 percent of them - by my r ough count - were people who make their living as search-engine marketing consultants. But if I look beyond that fact, there is merit to considering the question.

AdWords, after all, is an extremely complicated program. Aside from the mysterious algorithms that drive search results and keyword quality scores, there is the incredibly complex set of controls and reporting functions that Google has provided. If I were starting from scratch today, I would hire someone to help, just as I have hired a bookkeeper and accountant to do my taxes, and a Web site developer to do my Web site. Please keep in mind, though, that I have been running the account for years and have reached a point where it is, by any reasonable standard, successful. If you measure gross sales as the metric by which R.O.I. is calculated, my return is between 15 and 20 to one. It's worked well enough to expand the business for the last three years and, with improvements we are making to the way we handle i nquiries, it should work even better in the future.

I get lots of calls and e-mails from S.E.M. consultants, even on weeks when I'm not writing about AdWords. I take the time to talk to quite a few of them, just out of curiosity. Most of them are reading from a script. “Hi, Paul. I've been looking at your Web site, and we think that with the proper help, we can get your search results onto the first page.” Dude, if you were actually looking at my Web site, you'd know that we are already at the top of free results for the search strings I care about.

“Hi, Paul. Did you realize that you could be saving money by optimizing S.E.O. results, which would let you turn off AdWords entirely?” No, pal, I don't realize that because I don't believe you, and my grand experiment last year proved that turning off AdWords was a bad idea for me.

“Hi Paul, did you know that optimizing your bids would save you money?”

“Really, that's interesting. Suppose I' m spending $10,000 a month. How much could I save?”

“Up to 20 percent!”

“And how much would it cost me to hire you?”

“At that level of service, about $2,500 a month.” Sigh.

I had a phone meeting last week with an S.E.M. company that had been recommended by some colleagues. I had contacted them and given them read-only access to my AdWords account so they could look at whatever they wanted to look at. They commented that the campaigns were well organized and that all of the obvious things - split-testing ads, using negative keywords, separate ad groups and separate campaigns, etc. - were already in use. They suggested that I increase my budget to $15,000 a month to get more clicks. But I don't need a consultant to tell me that increasing my spend by 50 percent will get me more traffic.

Here's what I would want a consultant to do: First, tell me something I don't already know about my campaign. Second, offer to provide services free for two months, so that I can see what the results are. I would happily agree to pay for those months, maybe even with a bonus, if the results were to my liking. Also, the consultant needs to be able to explain to me, up front, the thinking behind any suggested changes, and it has to make sense to me. I wouldn't hire an accountant who believed that the government didn't actually have the power to tax individuals, and I won't hire an S.E.M. consultant whose view of how Google works conflicted with mine.

There's another reason I continue to run my own AdWords campaigns - because I'm interested in it. I've always found that marketing is the most challenging and fascinating part of being in business. At its root is the whole concept of getting money, freely given, from people in exchange for the stuff that I have designed and built.

One of the main rewards of owning a small business is the ability to do something you like to do, and I like to think about complex prob lems. AdWords is just one part of a whole chain of interactions with clients that ultimately results in a sale. I need to understand it to think about how to keep the entire marketing operation working. If I outsource that piece of it, I am handing over a very important piece of our sales operation to people who neither know nor care about how the rest of the process works. There is no one better than I am, at this time, at overseeing our sales operation. I might well create a position within the company to do this, but I am not ready to outsource it.

What else did you do to fix the problem?

I did hire a consultant to examine our selling process and to recommend changes. This has been very interesting and has led to a marked upgrade in the way we respond to inquiries. I'll be writing about this in the near future.

Are you going to diversify your lead sources?

A number of commenters were concerned that I rely so heavily on AdWords. That's a legitimate point. In addition to beginning to explore exports and joint ventures, we are submitting (at long last) our application for a General Services Administration contract this month. If accepted, this will allow us to expand the business we do with the federal government. And I am finally beginning an organized effort to establish regular contacts with potential repeat customers. I'll be writing about that, soon, as well.

Thank you again for your comments. Please feel free to address anything I have missed.

Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside Philadelphia.

Making Your Best Pitch

It's time to wrap up Make Your Pitch, and it is striking to me that even with the feedback on each pitch, we received very few pitches that nailed it. That being the case, I thought it might be useful to review some of the lessons we've learned.

Specifics trump generalities: Concrete figures, numbers and statistics add scale or a benchmark to your opportunities and accomplishments. Saying that I have raised a lot of capital for companies does not have nearly the impact of stating that I have raised more than a billion dollars. Saying you have a large market opportunity doesn't resonate in the way that saying you have had $50 million in revenue in four years does. Specific numbers create context, whether perceived or real.

Use the same specifics-over-generalities approach in the tactics portion of your pitch. In the TugCam pitch, for example, instead of glossing over marketing, the pitchers said specifically that they were going to leverage insurance companies who were willing to provide policy discounts as a means to reach the end users. The more detailed you can be, the better.

Founders can inspire confidence: The video pitchers have ranged from very nervous to cool and collected. While being in front of a camera - or even another person - can be a bit uncomfortable or intimidating, it's critical to remember that the main thing that an investor is banking on is you. You have to instill confidence that you are someone who can execute, and if you come across as anything less than fully confident, your chances of executing a successful pitch are slim-to-none. Also, know the difference between being confident and being arrogant. Being secure is desirable, but being a know-it-all is a turn-off.

Simplicity sells: In terms of business models, the KISS principle (Keep it simple, stupid) continues to reign. The more complicated the business opportunity, the more challenging it is to understand an d to execute. Do something and do it well; then, you can branch out into additional products and services. If you try to accomplish too much up front, you risk losing investor interest.

Take some risk out: To investors, ideas are interesting, but execution is better. Plus, the more you can achieve in terms of milestones, the less risk there is for an investor. This can range from creating prototypes to finding paying customers. The more risk you take, the less you demand of an investor, which increases your credibility, shows that you have skin in the game, and demonstrates that you can execute.

Explain how you are making money: No idea is interesting to investors if they can't make money from it. Be clear on the business and revenue model. How much do your products or services sell for? What kind of profit margins are there? How exactly do you make money? This is a critical focus for any business and needs to be addressed clearly and concisely.

Anticipate and counter objections: When you discuss your business idea or practice a business interview, there are going to be objections - stumbling blocks that will come up over and over from any savvy investor or interviewer. Know what those objections are and address them up front. Hestia Tobacco did that effectively when it acknowledged that it had a major competitor, American Spirit. Where you can, be sure to anticipate negatives, address them head-on and turn them into positives.

Communicate your differences: Ideas are only as good as the execution behind them. When you pitch, be clear about your secret sauce. Tell the investor what you are doing that is different from what everyone else does. Also, be clear if you have any protection on your difference (such as partnerships, patents, etc.). Furthermore, when it comes to execution, be clear about experience, qualifications and resources that you bring to the table to make you the absolute best person or team to dominate yo ur market opportunity.

Know what you want - and communicate it: AmericanWay was very clear in its pitch that it was looking for a loan at a certain interest rate. Know what you are seeking from an investor in terms of the amount of capital and what it will be used for. Be clear about whether you are looking for equity investors or lenders (or perhaps you are flexible). A great pitch can be wasted if you don't conclude by suggesting the next step.

This may seem like a lot of information to incorporate into a short pitch, but with practice, you can nail it.

I wish you much success in your professional endeavors.

Carol Roth is a business strategist who has helped clients raise more than $1 billion in capital. You can follow her on Twitter.

With Digital Readership Up and Pay Wall Down, The Times Covers the Storm Robustly

The New York Times had many more readers than usual on Monday and early Tuesday as Hurricane Sandy devastated the metropolitan area and beyond.

And that was for many good reasons. The Times's offerings on the storm have been robust, authoritative and remarkably varied. They were also accurate, which is more than you could say for some of what was available elsewhere, where hyped reports and faked photos added to what was already a chaotic situation.

Those offerings included everything from a webcam on the building's roof, with images updated minute-by-minute, to the overall reported story under the byline of James Barron â€" surely one of the best rewrite men in the business - with contributions from dozens of reporters in the field, and a great deal more. An interactive storm tracker was one of many graphics intended to help readers understand what was going on. A frequently updated gallery of startling photographs helped tell the tale, as did video.

I nternet traffic to the Times site went through the roof, said Ian Fisher, the associate managing editor in charge of the dayside home page and Web site.

“Digital traffic was about double what would be our highest normal day,” he said.

His aim? “Trying to do a bit of everything â€" cover all the basic news, the announcements from public officials, but also to catch the sheer scale of the devastation and the human drama and emotion.”

In addition to the quality of the report, the removal of the paper's pay wall â€" which blocks readers from digital access after a number of visits â€" was surely a part of the increased traffic.

The free access to The Times's digital sites will continue at least until tomorrow morning, said John Geddes, managing editor of The Times.

Why did The Times remove its pay wall?

“It's a quaint term but it's public service,” Mr. Geddes said. “This is a situation in which dissemination of information may h elp people make life and death decisions.” He said the free access would continue at least until 7 a.m. Wednesday.

Print readers in the New York metropolitan area were less fortunate. Bridge and tunnel closures meant that getting papers from the printing plant in Queens to Manhattan and most other parts of the metropolitan area was impossible; the paper was printed and distributed nationally. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, said that undelivered Tuesday papers would be included in Wednesday's delivery wherever possible.

The fast-moving story, though, was far more suited to digital news anyway. “There's a lot of misinformation out there and we hope that people come to The Times to find out what's true,” said Fiona Spruill, who is in charge of emerging platforms, which these days tends to mean mobile devices like tablets and smartphones.

All of this doesn't happen by magic. When I got to The Times's newsroom on Tuesday morning, many of the reporters and editors who were still at their posts had barely left them since Sunday.

Carolyn Ryan, the metropolitan editor, had not slept in more than two days when I spoke to her on Tuesday afternoon. As the editor at the center of the paper's coverage, she had 42 reporters and nine editors on the story.

“We most want to be useful, we want to be truthful, we want to be encompassing and contextual,” Ms. Ryan told me.

An article that is very likely to be on Wednesday's front page is one that provides that context: A report on the city's flood zones that will detail, she said, “that the water table has changed and the infrastructure hasn't.”

It suggests, Ms. Ryan said, that “we can't live like this.”

For the breaking story, Ms. Ryan relied heavily on Mr. Barron, the rewrite man who has been working at The Times for more than 35 years â€" since a week after his graduation from Princeton University in 1977.

His challenge in writ ing the main news story, he said, is to “take a big story and turn it into something that makes sense, is accurate and reads well.” Weaving together reports from many reporters in the field is part of the challenge.

“When they are all clamoring for the copy and everything is still happening,” it's difficult, he said. “Getting it right is the first and foremost thing.”