Nate Silver has hired 15 journalists for his new version of data journalism site FiveThirtyEight, which has migrated from the New York Times to ESPN/ABC.
The new FiveThirtyEight, launching later this year, will also go beyond politics and elections, its original core mission. (Its name refers to the number of votes in the U.S. Electoral College.) The new site will bring data journalism to "almost any topic in the news," Silver wrote in a blog postthis week. "Our idea is that the site's mission will be defined by how we cover the news rather than what we cover."
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"What is data journalism? In one sense, data journalism can refer to the application of statistics and other quantitative methods toward issues in the news. Plenty of us are 'stat geeks' at FiveThirtyEight. However, our methods will also include data visualization; the development of interactive graphics and features; and investigative and explanatory reporting, especially as applied to publicly-available data sets," he wrote.
Silver said that 15 journalists have been hired thus far, with more positions yet to be filled. The data maven was lured away from the Times with the offer to build out his own vertical under ESPN, similar to Grantland, the culture and sports site run by Bill Simmons.
Marie Donoghue, a senior vice president at ESPN who oversees Grantland and FiveThirtyEight, told Mashable earlier this year that ESPN was eager to embrace individual talents like Silver and Simmons by giving them some autonomy.
"First and foremost, we are investing in very specific, unique talents: Bill and Nate," Donoghue said. "Bill was already here and wanted to explore the intersection of sports and pop culture in a way that we thought would best be served by a new site."
Donoghue said the experience with Grantland had helped attract Silver and provide a roadmap for FiveThirtyEight.
"I think Nate's been quite honest that one of the reasons he looked at ESPN and ultimately chose to come to work with us was because we had executed with Grantland, so Grantland was a huge benefit when we tried to come to terms with Nate," she added. "We really feel that the Grantland product has met all our goals and is an excellent product that provides great value to ESPN and our users. We have the same high hopes for FiveThirtyEight."
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