Friday, June 4, 2010

Silver Goes For The Gold

Nate Silver, that is.  After blogging politics for only about six months longer than I've been doing it, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com is partnering up with the NY Times.
In the near future, the blog will "re-launch" under a NYTimes.com domain. It will retain its own identity (akin to other Times blogs like DealBook), but will be organized under the News:Politics section. Once this occurs, content will no longer be posted at FiveThirtyEight.com on an ongoing basis, and the blog will re-direct to the new URL. In addition, I will be contributing content to the print edition of the New York Times, and to the Sunday Magazine. The partnership agreement, which is structured as a license, has a term of three years.

There are two particular reasons why we felt the Times was the best home for FiveThirtyEight. On the one hand, I very much see what we are doing as a type of journalism, in the sense that it consists of doing original research on a timely basis to help inform the public discourse. Thus, the Times' unflinching commitment to quality journalism makes for a natural fit, and I expect that the relationship will evolve in exciting ways as FiveThirtyEight is incorporated into a "traditional" newsroom setting. On the other hand, the terrific work of their graphic and interactive journalists was a major draw. The new blog should look and feel great, and should be substantially more robust and feature-rich than the simple, one-page design that we have now.
It's good to see the blogosphere's best stats guy get the props he deserves.  Nate's one of the reasons I got into blogging, after all.  If a baseball stats junkie can try to make sense of the world of Washington politics, then anyone can try their hand at it.


Nate of course is much better than most, and congratulations to him and the FTE staff.  If anyone can keep the Times honest on the numbers of politics, it's Nate Silver.


Maybe he can take some of the stupid out of Village Stupidity.
Related Posts with Thumbnails