Political reporters put too much effort into predictions instead of focusing on issues

Three months into its rebranding as a politics site, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan says political reporters really know nothing. Instead of focusing on policy issues, Nolan says political reporters are putting too much of their efforts into trying to draw conclusions that often turn out to be wrong from statistically insignificant samples of voters and campaign events: “We live in a world in which people with no inherent expertise in anything at all (reporters like me) are expected to be able to produce grand insights into the future behavior of one hundred million demographically diverse people based upon how energetic the crowd of five dozen at the last Jeb Bush town hall meeting was.”

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from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/20qu1oV