4 ms·

I had really high hopes for FiveThirtyEight. I really enjoyed the work of their roster of writers previously and respect Silver's work in both the political an

by hoopism 12y ago

I had really high hopes for FiveThirtyEight. I really enjoyed the work of their roster of writers previously and respect Silver's work in both the political and sports arena. All that being said the format has left a lot to be desired. My criticism unfairly is less about this article (though I found it to look largely like an ad with very little substance... in fact legitimizing some of the offerings as being valuable services is somewhat dangerous). I love the in depth statistical analysis of sports and popular and culture. It's a really cool space. Pop culture and sports daily blogs also are very popular. The problem is that producing high quality versions of the former in the latter format has proven to be a very difficult exercise. The articles come off as shallow and border on slideshow/buzzfeed/BleacherReport type content. I hope they figure it out. But despite the great roster it hasn't cracked my must reads. Did I just hijack this?

cwal37 12y ago
Since it was promoted as something similar to Grantland under ESPN's umbrella (semi-autonomous site run by an individual with strong creative control) I thought it would be able to cherrypick individuals who were not just competent with data, but also writing. After the first couple months, I kind of gave up. Even when a piece is interesting, the quality of the writing has been disappointing. It also irks me a bit that one of the guiding principles in Nate Silver's manifesto was that they would not chase the news, but would take their time to provide different insights than other outlets. Instead, it feels like they're constantly chasing the story of the day or yesterday. Finally, a disappointing number of articles feel half-finished. As if one of their staff writers had an idea, ran with it for a while, then got tired and stopped at their first set of results. Sometimes I take that as a challenge and go scrounge up more data to try and pull together what else is going on, but most of the time I just end up not caring. They still have a handful of lengthy and interesting pieces, but they're rare enough that I only check the site maybe once a week. Conversely, I check Grantland 10+ times a day, because their writers are engaging whether it's basketball stats or pop culture junk.
- hoopism 12y ago
  Having done some work with sports data in the past (with some pretty "viral" results) I know that roughly 75% - 90% of the ideas I started with ended up just not being compelling once I looked at the data. When the pressure is to get something out every week (or more frequent) then sometimes you will have to use one of those bad ideas. We tried to come up with something weekly and it took a TON of time (trial and error). We ended up abandoning our little blog after moderate success due to the time demands of getting quality content regularly. It's kinda funny. I have the exact opposite reaction to Grantland. They take a tremendous amount of time and effort on long form pieces but lack any statistical or data compelling pieces. I would rather Grantland do what FiveThirtyEight does (well written quick hit posts) and FivethirtyEight do what Grantland does (well researched long form infrequent posts). It's all backwards.
  - cwal37 12y ago
    Wait, what? No statistical data-compelling pieces? You would have to completely ignore a bunch of articles by Zach Lowe/Kirk Goldsberry (basketball), Bill Barnwell(football), or Rany/Jonah Keri(baseball, I don't follow that as much.) Rany was one of the baseball prospectus guys, and Barnwell ran with football ousiders, both groups that developed a bunch of the advanced stats used in the sports now. It's not always the most advanced stuff, but they certainly bring compelling data to the table (Barnwell in particular), they just don't hit you over the head with it as it tends to be more embedded in the text rather than presented in a graph (except Goldsberry, he's a graphical dude by profession/professorship).
    - hoopism 12y ago
      Yeah, you are right. They have done some substantial pieces and may not go as far as I would like, but certainly are beyond where most sports sites would venture. I mostly follow Basketball pretty well. Zach does a great job.
bachmeier 12y ago
A lot of their posts are not of much higher quality than I'd expect from the best students in an undergraduate class. "shallow" and "BleacherReport" are good descriptions.

by hoopism 12y ago

cwal37 12y ago

Since it was promoted as something similar to Grantland under ESPN's umbrella (semi-autonomous site run by an individual with strong creative control) I thought it would be able to cherrypick individuals who were not just competent with data, but also writing. After the first couple months, I kind of gave up. Even when a piece is interesting, the quality of the writing has been disappointing. It also irks me a bit that one of the guiding principles in Nate Silver's manifesto was that they would not chase the news, but would take their time to provide different insights than other outlets. Instead, it feels like they're constantly chasing the story of the day or yesterday. Finally, a disappointing number of articles feel half-finished. As if one of their staff writers had an idea, ran with it for a while, then got tired and stopped at their first set of results. Sometimes I take that as a challenge and go scrounge up more data to try and pull together what else is going on, but most of the time I just end up not caring. They still have a handful of lengthy and interesting pieces, but they're rare enough that I only check the site maybe once a week. Conversely, I check Grantland 10+ times a day, because their writers are engaging whether it's basketball stats or pop culture junk.

hoopism 12y ago
Having done some work with sports data in the past (with some pretty "viral" results) I know that roughly 75% - 90% of the ideas I started with ended up just not being compelling once I looked at the data. When the pressure is to get something out every week (or more frequent) then sometimes you will have to use one of those bad ideas. We tried to come up with something weekly and it took a TON of time (trial and error). We ended up abandoning our little blog after moderate success due to the time demands of getting quality content regularly. It's kinda funny. I have the exact opposite reaction to Grantland. They take a tremendous amount of time and effort on long form pieces but lack any statistical or data compelling pieces. I would rather Grantland do what FiveThirtyEight does (well written quick hit posts) and FivethirtyEight do what Grantland does (well researched long form infrequent posts). It's all backwards.
- cwal37 12y ago
  Wait, what? No statistical data-compelling pieces? You would have to completely ignore a bunch of articles by Zach Lowe/Kirk Goldsberry (basketball), Bill Barnwell(football), or Rany/Jonah Keri(baseball, I don't follow that as much.) Rany was one of the baseball prospectus guys, and Barnwell ran with football ousiders, both groups that developed a bunch of the advanced stats used in the sports now. It's not always the most advanced stuff, but they certainly bring compelling data to the table (Barnwell in particular), they just don't hit you over the head with it as it tends to be more embedded in the text rather than presented in a graph (except Goldsberry, he's a graphical dude by profession/professorship).
  - hoopism 12y ago
    Yeah, you are right. They have done some substantial pieces and may not go as far as I would like, but certainly are beyond where most sports sites would venture. I mostly follow Basketball pretty well. Zach does a great job.

bachmeier 12y ago

A lot of their posts are not of much higher quality than I'd expect from the best students in an undergraduate class. "shallow" and "BleacherReport" are good descriptions.