FiveThirtyEight: What Does The Fox Know?

FiveThirtyEight is a data journalism organization. Let me explain what we mean by that, and why we think the intersection of data and journalism is so important...

Blah blah blah...

...collecting data, organizing data, exploring data for meaningful relationships, and so forth. Data journalists have the potential to add value in each of these ways, just as other types of journalists can add value by gathering evidence and writing stories...

Our logo depicts a fox (we call him Fox No. 92) as an allusion to a phrase originally attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” We take a pluralistic approach and we hope to contribute to your understanding of the news in a variety of ways.

Out magazine Person of the Year  2012.

By no means do we think that everything can be broken down into a formula or equation. On the contrary, one of our roles will be to critique incautious uses of statistics when they arise elsewhere in news coverage. At other times, we’ll explore ways that consumers can use data to their advantage and level the playing field against corporations and governments...

Blah blah bloody blah...

We hope you’ll gain insight and pleasure from our approach to the news and that you’ll visit us from time to time. We hope to demonstrate the value of data journalism as a practical and sustainable proposition.

It’s time for us to start making the news a little nerdier.

Number-crunching gay boffin, Nate Silver, introduces the world to FiveThirtyEight 2.0, in a very, very long - some may some meandering - essay/manifesto

FiveThirtyEight.com re/launched yesterday.*

Thankfully there are lots of easy-to-understand infographics for simpletons like me.

* And not next Monday as I originally wrote - Oops! x 

Nate Silver: Obilgatory Gayer

Despite his mild-mannered reporter look, Silver has become a punchy voice in debates over the future of a profession shaken by disrupted business models and new competitors. Some political journalists may dismiss him as a mere blogger whose work could not be compared with theirs and Silver’s sources may be numbers rather than nominees, but he says what he does is “almost certainly journalism”. Bald men and combs come to mind when shrinking newsrooms argue over who can define themselves as a journalist, and press-pack conformity is not for Silver, who told Out magazine last year that being gay had encouraged his independent-mindedness. (He described himself as “sexually gay but ethnically straight”.)

Today's obligatory interview with a gayer in FT Weekend is with Nate Silver - the American political stats data blogger dude.
He has a very nice flat in New York and is "effeminate", we learn.