I am really disheartened by the way most of these new “explanatory/data journalism” sites seem to be developing. vox.com and 538 especially. I never really figured Greenwald’s site to be anything other than a dudebro gathering place, but I thought Klein and Silver might do a better job turning their personal brand into a worthwhile product.

Instead, Silver’s site has been bitten by some huge data interpretation mistakes (like this one about kidnappings, and the climate change debacle a few weeks ago), and has a whole lot of fancy charts that are the equivalent of cotton candy.

And Klein’s site, when it isn’t engaging in trolling for clicks (bicyclists shouldn’t be required to wear helmets), comes up with headlines like “Everything you need to know about _x_” (See for example Everything you need to know about Nigeria’s kidnapped girls, which is a lot like the headline of a Gawker article published two weeks earlier: Here Is What You Need To Know About the Kidnapped Girls of Nigeria). There is no way a single explanatory article can tell me everything I need to know about _x_ story. Hyperbole in the service of journalism is no virtue.

Perhaps they will grow out of these start-up pains, but I am pessimistic. I think this points to the fact that just because someone has a sharp mind and a vision doesn’t mean that they have the necessary tool kit to implement that vision in a way that does it justice.

It seems they’re all chasing the Buzzfeed model in a slightly less listicle-tastic manner, which is a shame.

Edit: minor changes for clarification.