Mediagazer: Why Do We Expect So Much From Nate Silver? (Benjamin Wallace-Wells/New York Magazine)

10:10 AM ET, March 19, 2014

Top News:

Leon Wieseltier / The New Republic:

Nate Silver could learn a lot from those op-ed columnists he maligns — Nate Silver could learn a lot from those op-ed columnists he maligns — I wish to say a word or two in defense of “bulls**t.” That is Nate Silver's meticulously chosen term—he does nothing imprecisely—for opinion journalism.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells / New York Magazine:

Why Do We Expect So Much From Nate Silver? — “It is time for us to start making the news a little nerdier,” Nate Silver announced in an essay, written in a Red Bull—aided last-minute cram session, which aimed to explain the philosophy behind his new ESPN-housed data journalism venture, FiveThirtyEight, which launched this week.

Discussion: The Week, MIT, @nymag, @bryanjoiner, @thestalwart, New York Times, @jayrosen_nyu, @themarkberman, @chadwickmatlin, @edmundlee, Talking Points Memo, Columbia Journalism Review, @moorehn, Politico, stratechery and The New Republic

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Huffington Post UK pursues 60-second political news videos — In its first foray into short-form video content creation, Huffington Post UK has reported ‘more than 25,000’ plays of the first eight versions of its minute-long opinion-led videos — Huffington Post UK is the latest news outlet …

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Pandora raises One price to $4.99 per month for new subscribers and scraps annual option, blames royalty rates — Pandora today announced changes to its Pandora One subscription plan, which charges users to listen without advertising. The company is keeping the same pricing …

Discussion: Pandora Blog, Bloomberg, SlashGear, Engadget, CNET and TechCrunch

Peter Kafka / Re/code:
Streaming Subscriptions Are Now a Billion-Dollar Business, but Music Sales Stall

Discussion: @jyarow

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The nonprofit Africa Check wants to build more fact-checking into the continent's journalism — The words are superimposed over a photo of a soccer stadium sitting empty at dusk: “Imagine a dead body in each seat of this World Cup soccer stadium...THAT is the amount of whites killed in [South Africa] in black on white violence!”

Discussion: @raju and @niemanlab

Bekah Grant / Medium:

Confessions of an ex-tech journalist — 20 months, 1,740+ articles, and countless pitches later, I've got some truths to tell — I know how a gazelle feels. There you are, working hard out on the savanna and then BAM! The predators descend, chasing you across the plains, licking their lips …

Discussion: PandoDaily, @grivlin, @bazzacollins, @susie_c, Guardian, @alexisohanian, @lalwanivikas, @robinwauters, Professional Blog, @chrissyfarr, @rafat, @tomgara and @bekahgrant

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Introducing ‘AnonyWatch’: Tracking Nameless Quotations in The Times — This post is the inaugural edition of an effort to point out some of the more regrettable examples of anonymous quotations in The Times. I've written about this from time to time, as have my predecessors, to no little or no avail.

Discussion: Mediaite, FishbowlNY, @antderosa, @mattbai, @emptywheel, Politico, @dangillmor, @nickfoxnyt and @jayrosen_nyu

Om Malik / Fast Company:

Why native advertising will work for social media but no one else — WHY NATIVE ADVERTISING WILL WORK FOR SOCIAL MEDIA BUT NO ONE ELSE. — The lens through which I view the media world is pretty simple: If you are in the business of sucking up attention, then you are in the media business.

Discussion: @bill_gross, @halvorson and @niemanlab, Thanks:@steverubel

BBC:

Phone-hacking trial: Andy Coulson ‘urged silence on hacking’ — Andy Coulson is one of seven people on trial at the Old Bailey — An ex-News of the World journalist was told by editor Andy Coulson he would get his job back if he “kept silent” about the extent of phone hacking at the paper, the Old Bailey has heard.

Sam Kirkland / Poynter:

AP's White House staff: Press losing presidential access as Obama officials close doors — AP's White House correspondent Julie Pace and its chief White House photographer Charles Dharapak warned colleagues on Tuesday that once the press loses its access to the president, it cannot be recovered.

Discussion: ap.org

Andrew Albanese / Publishers Weekly:

Judge Rules for HarperCollins in Open Road E-Book Dispute — In a significant ruling regarding backlist e-book rights, a New York court this week held that e-book publisher Open Road infringed HarperCollins' copyright with its e-book edition of Jean Craighead George's 1973 bestselling children's book Julie of the Wolves.

Discussion: Melville House Books, TeleRead and Plagiarism Today

Jim Romenesko:

Jonathan Eig sells his ChicagoSide sports site — ChicagoSide founders Jonathan Eig and Sol Lieberman are selling their two-year-old site to Nick Tranfaglia of ticket broker TiqIQ. — “We set out to create the best online sports outlet in Chicago, and we met feel like we met our goal,” they write in an email.

Discussion: @mr_innovation and Robert Feder

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Q&A: Engin Önder and Zeynep Tufekci on 140journos and the state of journalism in Turkey — Engin Önder is not a journalist, and he'll be the first to tell you that. ("No way," he said, laughing, when I asked.) Instead, Önder, who cofounded the Turkish citizen journalism …