ESPN’s Nate Silver, editor of the FiveThirtyEight blog, is known in D.C.-NYC media circles. But is he in the nationwide zeitgeist?
Unless you’re Politico‘s Dylan Byers or Mike Allen or some other journalist trying to pound nails in his coffin, I tend to think that our grandmothers don’t yet know who Silver is. But the NYT‘s Social Q’s advice column seems to think he’s a household name.
Over the weekend, he got a pretty significant shout-out when lesbian woman wrote in to ask columnist Philip Galanes how she should handle being ignored when her beautiful girlfriend gets so much attention for being so hot.
Galanes’ answer: “We all want to be the pretty one. Yet tragically, most of us are not. And we don’t need Nate Silver to build us a fancy statistical model to prove it.” A casual stroll through any Whole Foods will do. But there is a silver lining here (or if not silver, then bronze — or surely tin).” He goes on to say that physical beauty is something of a burden and that “good looks” are a “genetic accident.” (Read the rest of his answer here.)
Speaking of genetic accidents, Silver, after receiving such shitty press in the last year, is defending his traffic and giving himself a pat on the back. In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, he gives his blog a B+.
“It’s always the case that some things are harder than you thought, and not many things are easier than you thought,” Silver said in an interview with Lucas Shaw. “Readers are responding favorably, and we are pleased with the traffic and advertising support. We want to become more multidimensional in different ways.”