I’m keeping a close eye on two new ventures in journalism – 538 and Ezra Klein’s Project X. I have obvious reasons for keeping on eye these projects. Are these places that will be friendly to untraditional writers? It’s important to me as a news junkie consumer of news and as an occasional writer.

Project X seems to be hiring younger, but traditional types of writers. Nate Silver is going in another direction.  He’s looking for people with serious quantitative chops. In an article for Time, Silver talks about his methods of hiring writers. In particular he wants to avoid the types that write op-ed articles for the major newspapers. He calls them the “crap quadient.”

“Two-thirds of the op-ed columnists at America’s major newspapers are worthless,” Silver says. He hates punditry, he hates narratives, he hates bold proclamations — and so too does he hate the media’s most willing vessels for all three.

I still think that the problem with opinion writers is the life-time career track. One year and move on.