

At this point, I think Dylan Byers, the "media" reporter at Tiger Beat On The Potomac, gets up every morning, gathers the crew aft, and nails a solid gold Spanish ounce to the mast as a reward for the first man who spots Nate Silver on the horizon.

You may recall that Silver handed Byers back his own ass several times during the 2012 campaign. Byers, apparently, has not forgotten this. Now, he's taking advantage of the current sniping between Silver and Paul Krugman to sound "Thar she blows!" and lower away the boats once again.

Silver doesn't care about being first or breaking news - fine, he doesn't need to. But he needs to at least be relevant. So far, Silver's site has achieved relevancy just twice - once with his March Madness picks, which were largely useless, the second time with his Senate predictions, which reportedly scared the bejeezus out of Democrats. But aside from these "events," there is little reason to check in with FiveThirtyEight on a daily basis, unless you're an adoring fan.

Yes, this is a guy from a publication that defined itself by "winning the morning" and based on the proposition that Matt Drudge rules its world, the one-stop shoppe for political clickbait, being snotty about "relevancy."

Krugman's chief gripe with the new FiveThirtyEight was not unrelated: He wanted more than just data. He wanted context and meaning - the "so what" of journalism. "Tell me something meaningful! Tell me why the data matter!" he wrote at the end of one critical post. To that, I would add, give us data that is relevant to what's going on in the news. The value of news editors is that, in addition to checking your copy for glaring faults, they are able to gauge the news cycle and think about ways to push big stories forward. If the news of the day is Yellen, what can we do on Yellen? For instance. Such an editor would also serve the valuable purpose of telling Silver not to engage in petty, snarky attacks on his former colleagues.

Again, "media" reporter for Drudge-whoring, click-bait monster pleading for more data, relevance, and stricter editorial standards of the kind that, I guess, include being a big old 'ho for whatever corporate sponsorchipped in this week. As it happens, I fall a bit on Krugman's side in this tempestuous teapot but, really, do we need more whining about "petty, snarky attacks" from this particular quarter? It's not like Silver bit off his leg or anything.

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