Two views of journalism clash in debate over Nate Silver’s work

By calling Nate Silver’s poll-driven journalism “overrated,” Politico reporter Dylan Byers has become a symbol of another view of journalism, creating a debate between practitioners and protectors of both types. Politico and Silver, who writes The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog, both specialize in making you feel like an insider. Both approaches serve news consumers very well. One lets you consume politics as entertainment. The other, politics as math. Entertainment is fun, and math is hard.