<story><title>Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times</title><url>http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/nate-silver-went-against-the-grain-for-some-at-the-times/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chasing</author><text>I feel like traditional pundits got pissed off because he kept wrecking their narratives. And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.&lt;p&gt;Anyway: The New York Times should&amp;#x27;ve worked harder to keep him. They should fire Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd and put those resources into the kind of analysis Nate Silver espoused. Y&amp;#x27;know, the &amp;quot;actual journalism&amp;quot; kind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>halo</author><text>&amp;gt;And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.&lt;p&gt;How did he do that?&lt;p&gt;If anything, I would argue the opposite, because his model is proprietary and his explanations (presumably deliberately) vague. 538 is awash with numbers but the algorithms used to generate them are the very definition of &amp;quot;eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times</title><url>http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/nate-silver-went-against-the-grain-for-some-at-the-times/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chasing</author><text>I feel like traditional pundits got pissed off because he kept wrecking their narratives. And he upset them further by turning political prognostication into something understandable by common readers -- instead of something only pointy-hatted political wizards could divine with the right amount of eye-of-newt and other secret ingredients.&lt;p&gt;Anyway: The New York Times should&amp;#x27;ve worked harder to keep him. They should fire Tom Friedman and Maureen Dowd and put those resources into the kind of analysis Nate Silver espoused. Y&amp;#x27;know, the &amp;quot;actual journalism&amp;quot; kind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_watcher</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure if they could compete. Disney&amp;#x2F;ESPN is as deep pocketed, lets him get closer to sports (don&amp;#x27;t forget, he made his name originally as the guy who created PECOTA), and gives him as much or more freedom as the NYT.  Also, I don&amp;#x27;t doubt he looked at what ESPN has allowed Grantland to become under Bill Simmons.</text></comment>