Nate Silver and David Blaine, birds of a feather.

Nate Silver, we are so onto you. On election night, the rest of the world was riveted by your New York Times Five ThirtyEight blog--which received 20 percent of the website's traffic! With the rest going to an article about people worried about post-Sandy weight gain!--and you became a genius twice over by predicting the voting breakdown of all the states. Now you are our MATH GOD, who used statistical magic to re-elect Barack Obama.

Except we know what this was all about. You were just using the election as a viral marketing scheme to promote your new book, in which you explained how your dark arts were actually just science that anyone could do. (But not really, and only if they read your book.) Your honor, I present the following evidence to the court ...

Exhibit A: Nate Silver's Twitter feed shortly after the election was called for Obama.

Exhibit B: Sales for the book increased 850 percent on Amazon just 24 hours after the election.
Exhibit C: The question of magic and witchcraft started entering the cultural conversation.
Exhibit D: Nate Silver explained he just used science to predict all his answers during a Daily Show interview...

Exhibit F: Illusionist David Blaine's TED talk on how he held his breath underwater for 17 minutes ... which earned him the title of "scientist" in a no less an esteemed publication than The New Yorker.
http://youtu.be/XFnGhrC_3Gs
So you see, ladies and gentleman, Nate Silver is David Blaine. (Come on, it's just a coincidence they both live in Brooklyn?)

CASE DISMISSED!

Sullivan. (Derek Gee / Buffalo News}

Imagine your first two months as an editor at The New York Times.

You sell your house and car in Buffalo, move to the Flatiron District, plunk down in the Times newsroom and one by one take public swipes at your new colleagues—the incoming CEO, the celebrity profiler, the foreign desk in war-torn Libya, the nation’s most popular political forecaster.

“The role of public editor isn’t to be a friend,” Margaret Sullivan, the Times new public editor and first woman to hold the title, told The Observer from her office in the third-floor newsroom.

In a short time, Ms. Sullivan has taken what was previously a low-profile emeritus post for pre-retirees and transformed it into a bully pulpit of sorts. Rather than filing biweekly print columns like her predecessor Arthur Brisbane, she is tweeting, blogging and interacting with commenters. She has modernized the role of the public editor—a curious job, to be sure—and put more than a few ink-stained noses out of joint. 

“There is a joking, gallows humor when Margaret walks by someone’s desk,” said Times standards editor Phil Corbett. “People will say, uh oh, what did I do wrong?”

Last week, Ms. Sullivan went after statistician Nate Silver, the Times’s highly prized electoral statistician, for challenging Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough to a $1,000 bet on an Obama victory. Even though the money was going to go to charity, and Mr. Scarborough didn’t take the bait, Ms. Sullivan argued that betting on the outcome of a news event was unseemly for anyone at The Gray Lady.

“It’s also inappropriate for a Times journalist, which is how Mr. Silver is seen by the public even though he’s not a regular staff member,” Ms. Sullivan wrote in her post.

War broke out over the comments and tweets—it seemed that Ms. Sullivan hit a nerve with Mr. Silver’s cult-like fans by suggesting that he was benefiting from his association with The New York Times, rather than the other way around.

Times writers and editors were among those on Twitter publicly disagreeing with the new public editor. While there were some enthusiastic fans, the majority of wags accused Ms. Sullivan of going too far. “Nate Silver aka @fivethirtyeight is a credit to the New York Times. Period,” tweeted Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren. The comment was retweeted 115 times.

“I knew the Nate Silver topic would be hot, but I was a bit surprised by the volume and the vehemence,” Ms. Sullivan said. “ Nate is a rock star, and his fans are very protective.”

Created in 2003 after Jayson Blair was caught fabricating and plagiarizing stories, the position of the Times’s public editor has always been a bit awkward. The point is to hold the paper accountable to readers, which sometimes entails spanking colleagues as well as higher-ups in very public ways.

Daniel Okrent, the first to hold the post, was known for his brusque take on WMDs and Judith Miller. His successor, Byron “Barney” Calame, came to the Times from decades at The Wall Street Journal. He argued in favor of newsroom transparency in online forums. Next in line was Clark Hoyt, who worried about the preservation of the Times’s quality on the internet.

Which brings us to Mr. Brisbane, formerly a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, the editor and publisher of The Kansas City Star and a senior executive at Knight Ridder; a public editor who never seemed comfortable with the internet or the position in general. Seen as cranky, old-fashioned and out of step, he announced his retirement last spring.

Previous public editors split their time working from home and from far-flung offices in the Times Building; none were a fixture on the newsroom floor like Ms. Sullivan has become. Rather than issuing pronouncements from afar, she invites reporters to stop by her office, letting them “relax” by agreeing “that we’re off the record unless we specifically agree to be on,” she told The Observer.

Several reporters we spoke to had only good things to say about their new resident tattletale, even on background. She inspires respect, yet despite her open-door policy and the occasional lunch with reporters and editors near the Times Building, nobody wants to get too relaxed.

“Everybody understands that the public editor has a precarious role at the Times,” Ms. Sullivan said.

Ms. Sullivan came to the job after 12 years as a managing editor and editor in chief of The Buffalo News, and immediately jumped in. Barely a month into the job, Ms. Sullivan took Times Magazine writer Andrew Goldman to task for a misguided tweet at novelist Jennifer Weiner. The Times responded by suspending Mr. Goldman for a month, and clarifying its mostly common-sense social networking policy.

Then she raised the thorny issue of how much incoming Times CEOMark Thompson knew about a pedophilia scandal that occurred during his tenure as general director of the British Broadcasting Company—and questioned whether the new boss was fit to lead the company.

She broached the problematic practice of letting sources approve and change their quotes. There were posts about Libya coverage and about the use of the term “illegal immigrant.”

Then there was the Nate Silver blow-up, which likely won’t be the last time she finds herself in the center of controversy. “There are times when people disagree, but overall, everyone seems happy with Margaret’s willingness to hear people out and her openness,” Mr. Corbett said. “Being the public editor is tough. If everyone in the newsroom is happy with her, then she’s not doing the job.”

Even Mr. Silver defended the ombudswoman on Twitter, something Ms. Sullivan acknowledged in a response the following day that addressed Mr. Silver’s “hundreds” of defenders.

“I’m not a fan of what she says, but I love the way she says it!” Reuters blogger and media watcher Felix Salmon told us.

When Mr. Brisbane announced he was retiring last spring, the Times decided to find someone who was more socially engaged and internet-savvy. The paper envisioned a revamped position that was part blogger, part print columnist and a lot more work, like many journalism jobs these days.

“Two times a month in print wasn’t keeping up with the conversation anymore,” said Mr. Corbett, who led the hiring committee. “The conversation was happening on blogs and Twitter, and the public editor would weigh in two weeks later.”

Back in 2003, when the Times created the position, blogs were for gossip, social networks were Friendster, and the Times was above it all, despite Mr. Blair’s folly.

But a lot changed in nine years.

Ms. Sullivan had been interested in the position for some time, and after 12 years running The Buffalo News, she said she was ready for a change. Her kids were out of the house—her son is at Harvard Law School and her daughter at NYU—so when she read in a May 21 post on Eric Wemple’s Washington Post blog that Mr. Brisbane was retiring, she said the timing just felt right.

“I always thought the role of public editor would suit me, because I’m interested in media and liked the idea of being a reporter again,” Ms. Sullivan said.

After two rounds of interviews, Ms. Sullivan came downstate for a final round of back-to-back meetings with publisher Arthur Sulzberger, managing editor Jill Abramson and opinion editor Andy Rosenthal.

“It was one stressful day,” Ms. Sullivan said. Mr. Sulzberger called and offered her the job 10 days later.

She met with Mr. Brisbane over the summer. Although he didn’t give any specific advice, he did warn the incoming public editor that it was a tough and often thankless job.

Ms. Sullivan put her house on the market and began apartment-hunting in Manhattan. She looked at the Upper West Side, but settled in the Flatiron District, a neighborhood with the advantage of fewer run-ins with Times writers and editors.

And all the better to explore neighborhood spots, thanks to a “cheat sheet” to Chelsea restaurants that an enterprising reporter provided her with (because really, what is a better way to get in good with a public editor who is new in town?). A self-described “inveterate concertgoer,” the ombudswoman recently saw Jack White perform at Carnegie Hall and has tickets to see Alex Clare at Irving Plaza next month.

As a goodbye present, the staff at The Buffalo News got Ms. Sullivan memberships to MoMA and the Whitney. She is remembered there as “feisty” and “courageous” for her public apology to an angry community association after the paper published the criminal records of shooting victims, said Lee Coppola, a former Buffalo News reporter.

We asked Ms. Sullivan: does she ever worry about making mistakes?

“I’m afraid of factual mistakes and spelling errors on Twitter,” she said, “but I don’t see myself as the kind of person to pop off.”

ksmoke@observer.com

This afternoon, the FiveThirtyEight blogger and Times writer challenged Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough to a 21st century type of duel. The terms? If Barack Obama wins, Mr. Scarborough will have to pay up. If Mitt Romney wins, Mr. Silver will pay. The wager? A $2,000 (it was raised from the original $1,000) donation to the Red Cross. The method for laying down the challenge? Twitter, of course. It is 2012, after all.Mr. Scarborough has not taken the bait so far, but that hasn't stopped Ms. Sullivan from finding Mr. Silver's behavior to be unseemly for someone with a desk in the Times newsroom. Mr. Silver is not actually a staff writer at The New York Times--his blog is licensed by the Times and he writes for the paper of record (and the website of record).

"It’s also inappropriate for a Times journalist, which is how Mr. Silver is seen by the public even though he’s not a regular staff member," wrote Ms. Sullivan.

Ms. Sullivan asked the arbiter of Times style, standards editor Phillip B. Corbett, to weigh in.

“I wouldn’t want to see it become newsroom practice,” Mr. Corbet said. Although he doesn't sound like the biggest fan, Mr. Corbett explained that the mitigating factor is that Mr. Silver is a blogger, which is "something like a columnist."

The blogger defense didn't placate the public editor. It is the Times, after all.

"But he is closely associated with The Times and its journalism – in fact, he’s probably (and please know that I use the p-word loosely) its most high-profile writer at this particular moment," she wrote. Flattery can only get you so far. Ms. Sullivan pointed out that the Times is a good brand on any resume.

"When he came to work at The Times, Mr. Silver gained a lot more visibility and the credibility associated with a prominent institution," Ms. Sullivan wrote.  "But he lost something, too: the right to act like a free agent with responsibilities to nobody’s standards but his own."

Ms. Sullivan previously went after freelancer Andrew Goldman after his poorly thought out Twitter outburst. The catch, of course, is that a Times byline may come with expectations, but unless you are on staff, it doesn't come with health insurance.

(nytimes.com)

Mr. Silver analyzes:

Coverage spiked after an incident on Sept. 24, however, when three protesters were hit with pepper spray by the police despite, apparently, posing no imminent threat. The next day, the volume of news coverage increased to 96 hits, about six times its previous rate.

"Fundamentally, I’ve always seen FiveThirtyEight’s mission as being parallel to journalism," wrote Mr. Silver. "Therefore, this is a pretty natural partnership. But I also recognize that this will lead to greater criticism and scrutiny," he added.

Mr. Silver also restated the purpose of his work for new readers.

Politics is not the only place where a poor understanding of probability and statistics can color news coverage. In baseball (which I covered prior to politics), “intangibles” like clubhouse chemistry are sometimes treated as being more important than batting average, or E.R.A. But you wouldn’t find very many sportswriters who would claim, in a game in which the Yankees were trailing Boston 7-2 in the 9th inning, that it was “too close to call,” no matter how shaky the Red Sox bullpen looked, or how confident Mark Teixeira seemed at the plate. That’s the equivalent of what those pundits were doing on The McLaughlin Group.

Instead, there seems to be something about politics that can make the rational parts of the brain turn off. FiveThirtyEight was designed to be the antidote to that.

The antidote has gotten better recently. Mr. Silver touted some tweaks to the model that he will use to forecast the senate election. In 2008, he correctly predicted 35 races. Pretty sure he's just competing against himself at this point.

By the way (cue plaid blazer, "Moe!") what makes the "calcified old fuckers" on The McLaughlin Group such an easy target?

Mr. Silver gained national attention in 2008 for his analysis of polling data during election season. In a Times profile that year, Mr. Silver's father recounted a time when his son, "a numbers machine," spent an entire day of preschool counting into the thousands.

Content from Mr. Silver's blog FiveThirtyEight will be folded into The Times politics coverage online, and he will also contribute to The Times Magazine.

Mr. Silver also ran the numbers behind New York's "Most Livable Neighborhoods" guide in April.

Here's the release:

NEW YORK, Jun 03, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) --This summerThe New York Times will incorporate the political blog FiveThirtyEight into the political news section of NYTimes.com. Blogger, polling expert and founder of FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver will continue to oversee the blog and will also be a regular contributor to The New York Times and to The New York Times Sunday Magazine.

"Nate won considerable recognition during the 2008 presidential campaign for his timely and prescient reports on the electoral races and on public opinion," said Bill Keller, executive editor, The New York Times. "We look forward to his unique perspectives on statistics, covering a wide swath of issues relating to politics, culture and sports."

Mr. Silver will also work with many of the award-winning interactive journalists and software developers who present political data on NYTimes.com and who innovate new and imaginative ways of communicating with The Times's audience.

FiveThirtyEight will continue to exist as a separate blog under Mr. Silver's direction, but under the banner and the auspices of NYTimes.com. Its contents will be featured daily on NYTimes.com/politics.

It was a complicated calculation: Silver took each governor’s approval rating, and adjusted it to compensate for each state’s population size and partisan makeup, and came up with a -44 score for Paterson, just below Nevada's troubled Jim Gibbons.

It's another way to get at what we've been seeing and hearing.

In other ranking news, Silver also put Kirsten Gillibrand’s seat in the top 15 Senate seats that might change parties.

For several publishers within Penguin, however—that is, all of the ones whose interest in Mr. Silver's books was subsumed under the "house bid" Penguin submitted last week to his literary agent Sydelle Kramer—that was only round one. Round two took place over the course of the past week, as Mr. Silver and his agent considered their options.

There were lots! At least three Penguin imprints were in the mix, among them Geoff Kloske's Riverhead, Paul Slovak's Viking, and Ann Godoff's Penguin Press. Then, as of yesterday, the game was over, and everyone but Ms. Godoff had taken their ball and gone home.

According to Tracy Locke, the publicity director at the Penguin Press, Mr. Silver's two books—one a Freakonomics-style book on polling called Electrometrics and the second a survey of people who predict things for a living—will not be published in the order that the author originally had in mind. The "predictors" one will come out first, though it's unclear exactly when, Ms. Locke said, and the one about polling will come out in time for the 2012 election. Laura Stickney will edit.

According to several sources, that auction has ended, and Penguin Group USA has prevailed.

Which of Penguin's imprint will publish Mr. Silver has not yet been determined, however, as there are at least three within the company that are jockeying for the privilege. The pricetag, we hear, is above $600,000 but below $1 million—a healthy sum even though it's paying for two books rather than just one. Update, 5:00 p.m.: New intelligence says Mr. Silver's advance is in the neighborhood of $700,000, give or take a few grand.

Now Mr. Silver just has to choose which imprint he likes best, a process that is unlikely to be resolved before next week.

Penguin Group's corporate publicists Marilyn Ducksworth and Dave Zimmer did not immediately respond to requests for more details.

Mr. Silver's statistical skills were ratified when the outcome of the presidential race aligned almost exactly with his final predictions both for the popular vote and the Electoral College breakdown, and thanks to the exposure he received during the past six months on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News (as well as in Newsweek, New York, The New York Times, and numerous other publications), publishers in New York are eager to get him under contract as soon as possible.

Mr. Silver's agent, Sydelle Kramer of the Susan Rabiner Agency, is giving them their chance this week, having sent out a brief proposal with instructions to indicate interest by Tuesday.

According to someone who saw the proposal, Mr. Silver is looking to write two books. The first is a Freakonomics-style guide to politics that answers questions like "Is there really a Bradley Effect?" while the second is on the art of prediction, a book that will draw on interviews with people who have to predict things for a living. In his proposal, Mr. Silver spent two pages describing each book.

Expect an update when Mr. Silver’s book finds a home.