Nate did an informal Q&A on Deadspin today. It was a lot of sports stuff but there was a little politics and 538 info as well. He answered questions in the comments below the brief introduction.
http://deadspin.com/...
Here are a few examples:
When we were negotiating with ESPN, they said 'yes' to an awful lot of things, in terms of our vision for the site. But the one thing they were firm about is that they had to buy the 538 brand name and the URL. The basic reason is that they're going to be investing lots of additional resources into 538, and no well-run business is going to be willing to do that and then have the brand yanked away from them at the end of the contract.
There's a saying in poker — don't tap the glass (meaning, don't berate the fish/bad players.) After all, you make all your money from them. Likewise, the thing to keep in mind about the poor quality of discourse and analysis among political pundits is that allows me to look really good by comparison, just by being somewhat familiar with empiricism.
In general also, I'm a big fan of Nassim Taleb's notion of having "skin in the game" — meaning, people who stand to make or lose money (or prestige) on the basis of their analysis. The reason we know that political punditry is dysfunctional is not because people are wrong — there is lots of wrong-headed analysis in every field — but because the people who are wrong face essentially no consequences for being wrong, and continue to get invited back on TV or continue to write the same op-ed column for years at a time
Obviously, there are SOME sports pundits who are total hacks. But I'd argue that MOST political pundits are completely useless; the outliers are the few who are actually worth reading.
It is a good read if you want to get a better feeling of where Nate is heading. I haven't read through all the comments so if anyone sees anything interesting, post it below.