The pre-eminent pollster and mathematician Nate Silver is leaving The New York Times for ESPN. His reasons are unclear, but the public editor at the Times, Margaret Sullivan, reports that Silver "went against the grain for some at the Times" and that when she wrote about him in her column, "three high-profile Times political journalists" criticized him and his work, and were tough on Sullivan "for seeming to endorse what he wrote, since I was suggesting that it get more visibility."
Sullivan wrote:
His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or “punditry,” as he put it, famously describing it as “fundamentally useless.”
The upcoming elections will be tougher to call without Silver's extraordinary analyses. It's not a good sign that the Times could not hold on to him. Perhaps it should have sent the pundits to ESPN.
-Paul Raeburn
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