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Comment by hnnewguy | Hacker News Reader

>It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.

It's our fault, they're catering to our demands. You can't run a media company any other way. No one wants to read read (although I'd bet on average everyone spends far more time reading). So you get wham-bam, buzzfeed-esque content. Even on HN, long form articles will inevitably be met in the comment section with a "tl;dr?".

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There's nothing wrong with asking for a tl;dr when you're trying to find out if the long form is worth your time. (Most are not.) In academics, the tl;dr is called the abstract, and it would be silly to think that they should be eliminated because people ought to just read everything.

The real problem seems to be that Nate Silver's (and 538's) brand value exceeded the available payment from NYTimes. So he did the rational thing and tried to capture it in the open market.

But Nate's a stats guy, not a marketer. Brand dilution is a thing. I don't begrudge him for selling out. I just wish my domain-based trust filter hadn't been broken in the process.

I sure hope they put together some solid election coverage.

> But Nate's a stats guy, not a marketer. Brand dilution is a thing. I don't begrudge him for selling out.

Incidentally, Nate didn't sell out when 538 left the NYT, he sold out when 538 was picked up by the NYT.

Monetarily, perhaps -- which if true makes the subsequent devaluing all the more disappointing.

But content quality was higher (and volume lower) at NYT than post. I've been a reader since well before the NYT imprint, and I don't think the quality went down significantly at NYT.

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