Nate the Great Heads Back to Sports

Tuesday Update:   Ezra Klein at Wash Post on too much focus on Silver as stats-geek--actually a great overall journalist.  "Lots of people can run the numbers. But Silver can use those numbers to tell readers an engaging, fast-paced and constantly changing story about subjects they care about. That’s a rare talent."

Silver with much more in chat with Wash Post's Erik Wemple, including complaint about "stuffy" style at NYT, such as mandated use of  honorifics. "It's hard to be informal...It's hard to be cheek and sarcastic."  Also describes feel of new sites.


Monday Update:  Nate breaks silence to tweet that he'll still be doing a good deal of elections work at ESPN, just mixed in with much more sports, of course.  Also hiring a lot.  And tweets:  "There are lots of amazing people in the NYT newsroom. I will miss them. I greatly admire the job that Jill Abramson is doing."  Margaret Sullivan, the Times' excellent public editor, offers her own assessment of why Silver left.  Just didn't fit in there--lacked respect from some key folks. 

UPDATE #1:  Lengthy Mike Allen probe at Politico on why Silver left NYT.   Certainly not just for money.  Remember that Politico was one of many places Nate showed up in his accurate predictions on races, but still much insidery stuff here. Note:  Will get airtime at ABC as well, notably for the Oscars during next seven years...Wants to expand stats applied to such things as weather, etc....Times make great efforts to keep him.

Earlier:

Surprise news tonight that Nate Silver is exiting NYT for ESPN2, where among other things he will guest on Keith Olbemann's new latenight show.   Silver's career started in the baseball stat/analysis biz so not a total shock.  My post here from awhile back on baseball as his favorite subject.