Nate Silver, by just about any stretch of the imagination, is one of the most impactful journalists of the Internet era.

His start as an editor-in-chief, however, is proving to be a rude awakening.

Critics have lambasted his new website, FiveThirtyEight, since its launch on March 17 with a range of gripes including a lack of diversity, questions about its climate reporter and his initial post, and general disappointment about the content on the site.

And of course it wouldn't be the Internet without a healthy dose of snark.

Why everyone hates Nate Silver, in one chart

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) March 19, 2014

Silver is no stranger to enduring disparagement of his work. He became a popular target of attack from conservatives who felt his model unfairly favored Democrats in the run up to the 2012 election. Silver's model ended up accurately forecasting the presidential leanings of all 50 states, destroying pundits and rival models alike.

But everybody has their breaking point.

None of the voices in the chorus of critics has been as loud as Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who also serves as a columnist at Silver's old stomping grounds, The New York Times.

Krugman, who has his own blog titled "The Conscience of a Liberal," has published multiple posts featuring either his own criticism or the critiques of others. He has pulled few punches himself, writing recently about FiveThirtyEight: "So far it looks like something between a disappointment and a disaster."

Silver is not without some blame in the matter. In an interview with New York Magazine just days before the launch of FiveThirtyEight, Silver lumped the Times op-ed columnists with those of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal as "hedgehogs" that know "one big thing."

"They don’t permit a lot of complexity in their thinking. They pull threads together from very weak evidence and draw grand conclusions based on them," Silver told the magazine.

Silver and Krugman then exchanged barbs in a Talking Points Memo article,

It appeared on Wednesday that Silver felt he and FiveThirtyEight had endured enough criticism after Krugman published a post entitled "Data as Slogan, Data as Substance," which detailed the mostly negative commentary of economics blogger Noath Smith.

Silver fired back at Krugman with another bit of data journalism that showed the Times economics expert taking a decidedly more negative tone about Silver since he left the paper.

"While it can be easy to extrapolate a spurious trend from a limited number of data points, the differences are highly statistically significant," Silver wrote in the post.

What had been a mostly content-based discussion had turned personal, drawing even more negative attention to Silver and his still brand-new site. Among a variety of posts about the feud, Slate's David Weigel pointed out that Silver seemed to have a liberal idea of what constitutes a "positive" post.

Others jumped in with praise for Silver's snarky response.

I love this. http://t.co/aKXC3lbLX3 via @fivethirtyeight

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) March 27, 2014

If you question @FiveThirtyEight, @FiveThirtyEight will go @FiveThirtyEight on you. http://t.co/PVaOTWctHY

— Joel Stein (@thejoelstein) March 27, 2014

 

For Columnist, a Change of Tone http://t.co/zIzCPR3Bvg (this is now the textbook definition of a sick burn)

— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) March 27, 2014

Journalists tend to be hard on their own, and Silver is no exception. The media eagerly anticipated FiveThirtyEight. Silver helped to redefine data and political analysis while at the Times. If that's what he could do with a blog, imagine what he could do with an entire website bankrolled by ESPN and ABC.

"I think all the criticisms of the new 538 site are based on the idea that Nate Silver is exceptional and can do better than the middle of the pack," wrote Noah Smith in an update to the blog post that Krugman quoted. "It's the curse of high expectations."

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.