FiveThirtyEight to Relaunch on March 17
I have been wishing for Nate Silver's crunchy numbers and insights into this midterm election season for months, even if it means that the 2016 primary models also go up. Well, the Republican side should be good for pointing and laughing, with popcorn.
We're still completing final testing on the new website, and tweaking the final elements of the site's design. But we estimate the probability of a March 17 launch at 90.617854%. [sic ^_^]
A list of FiveThirtyEight's staff can be found here.
The new site will cover much more than elections. But will there be pie? Orange pie?
Here is the staff list. If you know, tell us how good they are. Note that there will be a science reporter. In addition, Nate is hiring freelancers on a wide range of subjects, listed further down.
Editorial Personnel
Carl Bialik (@CarlBialik) -- lead writer, news; formerly of The Wall Street Journal
Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) -- chief writer, economics; formerly of The Wall Street Journal
Mona Chalabi (@MonaChalabi) -- lead writer, FiveThirtyEight blog*; formerly of The Guardian
Lisa Chow (@lisaechow) -- features editor, podcast host, economics reporter; formerly of NPR
Micah Cohen (@micahcohen) -- senior editor, FiveThirtyEight blog*; formerly of The New York Times
Carla Correa (@pinkgrammar) -- general editor and social media coordinator; formerly of The Washington Post
Harry Enten (@forecasterenten) -- senior writer and analyst, politics; formerly of The Guardian
Kate Elazegui (@KateElazegui) -- creative director; formerly of Pentagram, New York Magazine
Andrew Flowers (@andrewflowers) -- quantitative editor, economics writer and analyst; formerly of Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
Walter Hickey (@WaltHickey) -- senior writer, lifestyle; formerly of Business Insider
Ritchie King (@RitchieSKing) -- visual journalist, science reporter; formerly of Quartz
Simone Landon (@simonelandon) -- general editor; formerly of Huffington Post
Chad Matlin (@ChadwickMatlin)-- features editor; formerly of Reuters, Slate
Allison McCann (@atmccann)-- visual journalist, data reporter; formerly of Bloomberg Businessweek
Benjamin Morris (@skepticalsports) -- senior writer and analyst, sports; formerly of skepticalsports.com
Neil Paine (@Neil_Paine) -- senior writer and analyst, sports; formerly of sports-reference.com
Andrei Scheinkman (@ascheink) -- deputy editor and director of data and technology; formerly of Huffington Post, The New York Times
Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) -- editor-in-chief
Mike Wilson (@mWilstory) -- managing editor; formerly of The Tampa Bay Times
Noneditorial and Affiliated Personnel
Lauren Bork (@laurenbork) -- director, sports management, ESPN (Lauren's responsibilities include FiveThirtyEight ad sales)
David Cho (@davidcho) -- senior director, business development, Grantland (David is also serving as director of business development for FiveThirtyEight on an interim basis)
Marie Donoghue (@mariepdonoghue) -- senior vice president, global strategy & business development, ESPN (Marie is my boss and FiveThirtyEight's overseer)
Amanda Gordon (@Amandables) -- administrative assistant, FiveThirtyEight
Jeremy Weinrib (@espnjeremy) -- senior director, mobile technology, ESPN (Jeremy is leading the backend development of our website and CMS)
Freelancer topics
One major focus for freelance content is our science vertical. Potential subtopics within science include but are not limited to the following:
Weather*
Health and medicine*
Technology*
Energy, climate and environment*
Biology and neuroscience
Psychology
Hazards and disasters (e.g. earthquakes, asteroids)
Geography
Philosophy of statistics and mathematics
Our lifestyle vertical is broad. We’d be interested in people who provide data-driven analysis of these topics, along with others:
Education*
Travel and transportation*
Food and drink*
Sex, dating and romance*
TV and movies*
Parenting
Music
Crime statistics and criminal justice
Games (video games or otherwise)
Gambling
Within our sports vertical, we have several writers on staff who provide coverage across multiple sports. But there are a couple of ways that we might expand upon their coverage, such as with writers who:
Focus on one sport in particular, e.g.
Baseball
Football
Basketball
Soccer
Ice hockey
Tennis
Golf
Examine the intersection between sports and other FiveThirtyEight verticals, e.g.
Sports science
Sports economics and finance
In politics, we have strong coverage of U.S. elections on staff, but we’d consider pitches in the following areas:
Congressional voting and behavior*
Fundraising and lobbying
Political rhetoric and media framing
Demographics
International elections
National security and military strategy
The Supreme Court and legal affairs
In economics, we have strong coverage of micro- and macroeconomic data on staff, but we'd be interested in someone with a strong understanding of:
Personal finance
Trading markets, or,
Overseas economies, particularly in the developing world
These are paying assignments.