This is not really a good thing to do I think, however I have just discovered this blogger and find the site and the content very good and thought you might want a look and then regularly check it out. FAIR BLOG Jul 24 2013 Nate Silver Didn't Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World By Jim Naureckas 26 Comments Nate Silver Nate Silver (photo: JD Lasica) In retrospect, Nate Silver's move from the New York Times to ESPN is not too surprising; there's really not too much to say about electoral polling in non-election years, whereas sports (which are what got Silver interested in number-crunching to begin with) generate statistics all year every year. And Silver's new employer is going to let him write about whatever interests him: political forecasting as well as sports, along with economics, say, or the weather (Guardian, 7/22/13). (Hopefully not too much about the weather.) I did find New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan's comments (7/22/13) on Silver's departure interesting; Silver "went against the grain for some at the Times," as the headline of her post put it. Sullivan wrote: A number of traditional and well-respected Times journalists disliked his work. The first time I wrote about him I suggested that print readers should have the same access to his writing that online readers were getting. I was surprised to quickly hear by e-mail from three high-profile Times political journalists, criticizing him and his work. They were also tough on me for seeming to endorse what he wrote, since I was suggesting that it get more visibility. Sullivan doesn't detail what kind of complaints these journalists had about Silver's work–which is perhaps an indication that she didn't find it too persuasive–but around that time, shortly before the 2012 election, well-known media figures from a variety of outlets were making a fairly consistent critique. Here was the Washington Post's Dana Milbank (FAIR Blog, 11/5/12): There's Nate Silver, a statistician-blogger at the New York Times, who predicts with scientific precision that President Obama will win 303 electoral votes and beat Romney by 2 percentage points in the popular vote…. The truth is anybody who claims to know what is going to happen on Election Day is making it up and counting on being lucky. And MSNBC's Joe Scarborough (FAIR Blog, 11/2/12): 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. And the Times' own David Brooks (FAIR Blog, 11/2/12): If you tell me you think you can quantify an event that is about to happen that you don't expect, like the 47 percent comment or a debate performance, I think you think you are a wizard. That's not possible. The thing is, Silver didn't think you could use polls to project the outcome of elections because he had a mystical faith in the power of polling–rather, he had looked at a large number of pre-election polls and found that they had a consistent correlation to the results on Election Day. But this kind of empiricism is weirdly frowned upon in journalism circles; the pundits denouncing Silver as a joke or would-be wizard in 2012 seemingly didn't even bother to go back and check how he had done in 2008. (He had called all but one state, Indiana, correctly.) This is what I like to describe as the difference between objectivity and "objectivity." Objectivity is the belief that there is a real world out there that's more or less knowable; the "objectivity" that journalists practice holds that it's impossible to know what's real, so all you can do is report the claims made by various (powerful) people. The chief benefit of "objectivity" is that it means you will never have to tell any powerful person that they're wrong about anything. If someone comes along and tells you that, no, there are ways to figure out what's actually happening with the world, and simply repeating without question what interested parties claim to be happening is not a very helpful approach, that's going to be, as Sullivan put it, "disruptive." That's what I think she's really getting at when she says, "I don’t think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that." Filed Under: Election, New York Times, Polling Tagged With: ESPN, Margaret Sullivan, Nate Silver ← Not Much Diversity Among Media's 'Stay-at-Home Dads' Maddow Tells the Story of ALEC and Gun Laws–But Leaves Out One Character → About Jim Naureckas Extra! Magazine Editor Since 1990, Jim Naureckas has been the editor of Extra!, FAIR's bimonthly journal of media criticism. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the '90s. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Jim was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in political science. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR's program director. You can follow Jim on Twitter at @JNaureckas. Profile Sign in with Twitter Sign in with Facebook or Name EmailNot published Website Comment Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. 26 Replies 25 Comments 0 Tweets 1 Facebook 0 Pingbacks Last reply was 1 hour ago Snowshoe 2 days ago Not fitting in is a badge that Silver should wear with pride. Blair Houghton 2 days ago Judith Martin fit in with the Times' culture, and the Bush43 White House used her credulity and the paper's credibility to start an illegal war. So, they should be ashamed of that. No Difference 2 days ago Interesting FAIR blog post. Naureckas quoting a NYT journalist commenting on quotes by other NYT journalists on their opinions on Nate Silver. Any chance we could get a FAIR blog entry on the quality of Sullivan's own work, or perhaps an entry about the work of those "top" NYT journalists who have opinions on Nate Silver? Third- and fourth-hand criticism chains don't compel me very much. Buffalo Reader 2 days ago I was amazed when Margaret Sullivan was hired by the NYT. She led an increasingly complacent Buffalo News. While the paper's fiscal performance was reasonable, its content continued to decline under her tenure. Apparently, not pushing people to get actual facts, but just regurgitating press releases and quotes is what passes for journalism. I guess it's much more convenient, it's much easier to hold whatever opinion you want when you don't bother to check reality. Jim Naureckas 2 days ago No Difference: Did you know that we've written more than 500 blog posts on the New York Times? Not to mention Extra! articles, Action Alerts and CounterSpin broadcasts. rinicook 2 days ago ESPN win! NY Times loss! Political prophet sails on… Eric Werner 2 days ago I am aware of Silver only since the last presidential election. If he is a crackpot and has been a lucky guesser, these are not evident in his methodology (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/). And he has background in sabermetrics, which concerns mathematical/statistical analysis of baseball and is an academically respected subject (usually taught at the advanced undergraduate or graduate level in math departments). So if his critics have not informed themselves of his political forecasting methodology and have not based their concerns about his work on this information (and especially if they have not at least made serious inquiries into his methodology), it is or should be embarrassing to them and their employers. The reference/link above is very recent and so maybe Silver has not published his ways until now? But that he has at least practical experience with sabermetrics is not news and should at least indicate that he might be more than those critics mentioned in Naureckas' article think that he is. I am not suggesting that his political methodology is an extension of sabermetrics. frozenmonkey 2 days ago Name names, Margaret Sullivan. Who are these three "well-respected" "high-profile" Times political journalists criticizing Nate Silver and his work, that readers might reassess them. Donald 2 days ago I would love to see Silver do a statistical analysis on how often the aforementioned pundits that were talking out of their asses were categorically wrong. Perhaps correlate that with their pay. jackalope 1 day ago It is a scientific fact that you can never be so wrong as to endanger your job if your wrongness is in support of power. Nate's situation proves that you can never be so right as to keep your job if what you're right about is in opposition to the power your employer represents. Joe Irvin Conover 1 day ago Interesting … Joe Irvin Conover 1 day ago Always take the national "media" with a large grain of salt. WiZaRd 23 hours I think we all should follow Silver's gift of prophecy and go against the status quo of conformity. The brainless pundits and think tanks of the Far Right can go roast themselves in a lava pit!! Richard Friedman 23 hours Thing is, most people, and especially journalists, do not understand statistics the way Nate (and any professional statistician) does. Yet they use polls, and report on polls without taking into account any inaccuracies or questionable data the way Nate does. I think the NY Times reporters who complained were afraid of losing their mystique and cred, which was mostly unearned anyway. Glad to see that Nate has found a home where he doesn't have to call it "journalism". Marxo Grouch 22 hours What Milbank, Scarborough, Brooks, et al, are also conveniently ignoring is that Silver repeatedly said that his predictions were not intended to be missives directly from the Oracle. He freely admitted that if it was 99% to 1% on any issue, that still meant that the 1% could happen. Which means that, along with having a better grasp of science than those twerps, he also has a better sense of humility. Jeff Thompson 22 hours The New York Times and it's readers are poorer because the culture at the Times didn't fit Nate Silver's objectivity. Not the other way around. Jeff Thompson 22 hours Most of what goes for campaign reporting has to do with the "horse race" aspect. Conveniently, it's a good way to keep readers interested in the race. And for the election that Nate Silver covered, he paid a lot of attention to the electoral college, not the latest polls on undecided likely voters. So while the election may have looked fairly close from the polls of undecided swing voters, the electoral college was pretty well wrapped up in favor of Obama. If there's a culture in the media, it's to get more readers and viewers, not to be accurate. Elliot Linzer 22 hours I will miss Nate Silver. I just finished reading his book, "The Signal and the Noise." His approach was completely scientific and rational. He was able to apply his statistical analysis to almost every topic imaginable, from baseball to poker, chess, daily weather forecasts, the stock market, and everything up to national elections. This is a major loss for the New York Times and its readers. Kevin Cahill 21 hours It's a big loss for the NYT and for its readers. The real problem is that most journalists don't like numbers. Many are bad at math and never learned any science. That's one reason why we burn more coal than uranium warming the planet and causing an epidemic of lung disease. PaulForChange 21 hours Nate Silver was too scientific in his analysis. You can't use science to justify a prediction if it goes against "conventional wisdom". Thank god he was correct. William Barclay 20 hours Definitely the NYT's loss. This is really a bad decision on the part of the powers that be at the NYT. I and my wife will continue to read the NYT (we live in a suburb of Chicago – that should be enough to tell you why we need an actual newspaper instead of the Chicago Tribune or Sun Times). However, we will certainly not expand to a 7 days sub as the NYT keeps asking us. Bruce Rosen 18 hours Queer, isn't it, who's the straight shooter?! Liz 7 hours The reason journalists don't like Silver is because they need to keep the electoral horse race going during an election, or they are out of a job! This "neck-and-neck" coverage, even when unjustified, keeps folks reading those news sources! michael e 2 hours Love to hear what he thinks about the peeter tweeter repeater in New York.If he picks him to win all you Dems should jump out the window.Dont worry we wont be far behind michael e 1 hour ago As far as Obama….I felt if any candidate could make a dent in the 99% black vote he would get….it would be over.I think Silver knew that that would not change no matter what.Like mississippi in the 50s where a black man would never receive any white votes and a white man would get 99% of the votes from whites.Woman under the age of 30 hurt Mitt.They bought that he hates woman …as silly as that sounds.The percentage of fools who believed this president really never changed either.So was it really a surprise?only to people like me who can't understand an unqualified man who has never succeeded at anything being voted in as top dog.I remember when he said he would not let Detroit go bankrupt and a lib friend thumped the table.To me it was just a blatant lie.But like Weener(who may still win) no lie matters to the ever growing left.And I suppose you deserve what you get.Problem is is i dont!If only you would look at the results that some of these legislators have accomplished and vote on that basis……but Im whistling in your grave yard.You simply can;'t or wont.I left the Dems long ago.Republicans last few years.Entrenched washington one like the other.The tea party is an honest American movement to hold legislators to the fire.If they fail they are gone.Right or left.As long as you on the growing left…people lied to ,and on the government dole more and more continue to vote without thinking,you WILL become a forgone conclusion Rebecca Rens 1 hour ago Nate Silver saw correlations and is a smart young fellow. I applaud his work and I don't care if he fit in at the "Times" among the older writers. I look forward to reading what he will be writing at ESPN.