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Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#61

Post by stfu »

jordanb wrote: post #52
criley2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they made Nate an incredible offer and were willing to meet any of his demands. It sounds like they would have done anything to keep him. Their offer to him was already grating to many others at the Times, I imagine. They offered him quite the little staff, and expansion into any topic he wanted. I don't think his decision to leave was about their offer, that, or ESPN/ABC just dreamed bigger and gave h…

I'm glad Nate walked. He was always a poor fit at the New York Times. Actually Krugman is also a poor fit. I wish he'd walk away and just keep doing what he does independently. At least then I wouldn't have to go into privacy mode to read his articles.

Absolutely agree! Kurgman is a poor fit for any media outlet that tries to appeal to a mainstream audience. It is just saddening that such a brilliant academic mind now dedicates his life to partisan punditry.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#62

Post by aclevername »

stfu wrote: post #61
jordanb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad Nate walked. He was always a poor fit at the New York Times. Actually Krugman is also a poor fit. I wish he'd walk away and just keep doing what he does independently. At least then I wouldn't have to go into privacy mode to read his articles.

Absolutely agree! Kurgman is a poor fit for any media outlet that tries to appeal to a mainstream audience. It is just saddening that such a brilliant academic mind now dedicates his life to partisan punditry.

Well, I love the concept of proto-Krugman as much as you, but nothing really keeps Krugman at NYT. He obviously enjoys the influence that punditry brings him over flexing his academic mind.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#63

Post by clarky07 »

wilfra wrote: post #23
mjn wrote: post #8

It's interesting that he would go to a sports network over the culture clash between statistics and narrative. Sports has traditionally been extremely negative on "stats geeks", and favored narrative explanations, along with factors like "grit" and "determination" and that kind of thing. Silver's own former work in sabermetrics was a frequent target of pot-shots from ESPN commentators for years. There used to be a bl…

The geeks are winning that culture clash. ESPN.com now includes a lot of advanced metrics in their stats and last year in the Mike Trout vs Miguel Cabrera MVP race they discussed why Mike Trout was the favorite of the new school at length, constantly discussing his obscene WAR[1]. Nate Silver was ahead of his time on those advanced metrics but he was undoubtedly one of the pioneers. If people had been more receptive…

slightly off topic, but it's absurd to think that Trout should have won the MVP, when Cabrera was the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years. I don't care what his WAR was.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#64

Post by taurath »

the_watcher wrote: post #58
chasing wrote: post #4

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. Anyway: The New York Times should've worked harder to keep him. They should fi…

I'm not sure if they could compete. Disney/ESPN is as deep pocketed, lets him get closer to sports (don'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't doubt he looked at what ESPN has allowed Grantland to become under Bill Simmons.

I think he took the easy path. Probably a lot more money, but also he gets to work on sports predictions instead of angering relatively powerful people.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#65

Post by wilfra »

clarky07 wrote: post #63
wilfra wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geeks are winning that culture clash. ESPN.com now includes a lot of advanced metrics in their stats and last year in the Mike Trout vs Miguel Cabrera MVP race they discussed why Mike Trout was the favorite of the new school at length, constantly discussing his obscene WAR[1]. Nate Silver was ahead of his time on those advanced metrics but he was undoubtedly one of the pioneers. If people had been more receptive…

slightly off topic, but it's absurd to think that Trout should have won the MVP, when Cabrera was the first Triple Crown winner in 45 years. I don't care what his WAR was.

That was the old school argument, verbatim. The new school disagrees. I don't really have an opinion but I'm pretty certain Nate agrees with the new school and would disagree strongly with your view.

The new school argument is something like: the Triple Crown is an overvalued and superficial accomplishment and giving a player the MVP based solely on that is making a similar error to the scenes in Moneyball where the scouts cared about irrelevant things like whether a player has an attractive girlfriend or how he gets on base (walks vs hits).

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#66

Post by kanamekun »

encoderer wrote: post #50
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #21

I really hope to see future election coverage from him; not sure how that will happen at ESPN.

Because it's owned by ABC, which will host his election coverage..

Definitely agree that ABC will host election coverage, and that Nate will appear on the network!

But did want to mention that ESPN is 80% owned by The Walt Disney Company (which also owns ABC)... and 20% owned by Hearst.

Here's the history of ESPN's ownership, from Wikipedia: "In 1984, ABC made a deal with Getty Oil to acquire ESPN. ABC retained an 80% share, and sold 20% to Nabisco. The Nabisco shares were later sold to Hearst Corporation, which still holds a 20% stake today. In 1986, ABC was purchased for $3.5 billion by Capital Cities Communications. In 1996, The Walt Disney Company purchased Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion and picked up the 80% stake in ESPN at that time." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ESPN

I've met with Hearst a few times, and their executives love to mention their 20% stake in ESPN!

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#68

Post by inselkampf »

ebbv wrote: post #18
chasing wrote: post #4

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. Anyway: The New York Times should've worked harder to keep him. They should fi…

I couldn't agree more. My respect for the NYT is shaky and them letting Nate Silver leave while keeping the vacuous talking heads you named is just shameful.

No, Nate left.

Read this NiemanLab article from 2010. It was always clear (to me at least and a few others) that the NYT thing was just a step along the way (partnership vs acquisition - 3 yr contract, etc):

http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/articles-of-incorporation-n...

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#69

Post by stfu »

aclevername wrote: post #62
stfu wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree! Kurgman is a poor fit for any media outlet that tries to appeal to a mainstream audience. It is just saddening that such a brilliant academic mind now dedicates his life to partisan punditry.

Well, I love the concept of proto-Krugman as much as you, but nothing really keeps Krugman at NYT. He obviously enjoys the influence that punditry brings him over flexing his academic mind.

I am not sure if this is real influence or perceived influence. But it would be extremely interesting to get his personal take on his very own path towards punditry. In my opinion becoming just another shouting voice in the wind weakened his expert opinion that he previously had through his academic credentials. Previously quoting Krugman had at least some a general appeal, but today it is making a political statement.

Re: Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times

#70

Post by foobarqux »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #53
danso wrote: post #29

On the data journalism mailing list, we've had a small discussion about how Nate could be replaced by any of the other data-minded journalists...it's not because his work was simple, but Silver himself has said that his analysis is straightforward and the math is accessible...the difference is that Silver gives a damn about context and analysis In a methodological way. He definitely brings in good writing talents and…

Which mailing list? There seem to be several on this topic. Also, you're probably right, there are at least three other prominent electoral college forecasters who write well, were as accurate as Nate, and who could possibly be contracted to provide the same analysis and commentary: Andrew Tannenbaum [1], Drew Linzer [2], and Sam Wang [3]. Unlike Nate, forecasting is not their primary career, but it's clearly a labor…

I think the added value that any of these forecasters, including Silver, is greatly overstated. When their accuracy is touted it is usually based on the prediction the day before the election. Is that really useful?

More importantly you can get the same predictive power by just directly using recent polling data.

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