What We're Reading: Great Reads from John Broder, Nick Kristof and others

The unexpected outcome of the presidential election has sent the polling community into intense self-examination. Modelers and forecasters, in particular, are trying to figure out why they were off, sometimes astonishingly so. Nate Silver, the founder of the forecasting site FiveThirtyEight (and a former New York Times analyst), was off by less than most, but still gave Mrs. Clinton 2-1 odds. Here, he takes a cold-eyed look at what went wrong. [The New York Times] What We’re Reading If your friends would enjoy our recommendations of stories from around the web, forward this email and invite them to sign up at [nytimes.com/wwr]. [Large Image] Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for AWXII FiveThirtyEight [A Post-Mortem for Pollsters…] The unexpected outcome of the presidential election has sent the polling community into intense self-examination. Modelers and forecasters, in particular, are trying to figure out why they were off, sometimes astonishingly so. Nate Silver, the founder of the forecasting site FiveThirtyEight (and a former New York Times analyst), was off by less than most, but still gave Mrs. Clinton 2-1 odds. Here, he takes a cold-eyed look at what went wrong. [Go »] [author] John Broder Editor of News Surveys [Large Image] Damon Winter/The New York Times Bloomberg Businessweek [… and a Favorable Skew] “We’re going to win so big.” Donald J. Trump’s words at the Republican National Convention sounded like wishful thinking to me. But this inside look at Mr. Trump’s campaign shows how his data team imagined a voting bloc that could carry him to victory — an older, whiter, more rural, more populist and more angry electorate. And that group came into being partly because the candidate reached out for it. The rest is history, unfolding before us day by day. [Go »] [author] Michael Roston Senior Staff Editor, Science [Large Image] Boris Grdanoski/Associated Press BuzzFeed [Not the News] Most of us know that there are websites that transmit fake news, often from an extremist conservative perspective. But this BuzzFeed investigation, published in the days ahead of the election, found out that many of these sites aren’t operated by conservatives or even Americans — but by entrepreneurs in the Balkan country of Macedonia. They’re just trying to get clicks and advertising dollars, and political porn works even better for that than traditional porn. [Go »] [author] Nicholas Kristof Op-Ed Columnist [Large Image] John Greim/LightRocket, via Getty Images The Atlantic [Foresight] Jane Jacobs wrote books about how cities work or don’t work, and got pigeonholed as a kind of urban policy wonk. But her real canvas was the deeper nature of place. Now, at a time when class and education and — especially — geography have defined and divided the electorate, this story takes us back into Ms. Jacobs’s head, and her prescient worries about the fragility of democracy. [Go »] [author] Kirk Johnson Seattle Bureau Chief [Large Image] Marko Djurica/Reuters Balkan Insight [Balkanized] In a terrifyingly personal [Rolling Stone article] earlier this year, the Bosnian-born writer Aleksandar Hemon drew on his experience of rising nationalism and racism culminating in crimes against humanity to warn that political rhetoric should be taken seriously. He argued against “the self-protective proclivity to dismiss the unimaginable as impossible.” The political scientist Jasmin Mujanovic, also citing the surprising nationalist takeover in the former Yugoslavia, offers “some lessons and warnings” for the United States. [Go »] [author] Sheri Fink Correspondent Make a friend’s day: Forward this email. Get this from a friend? [Sign up here]. Share your feedback on What We’re Reading. Email us at [wwr@nytimes.com] This is an automated email. Please do not reply directly to this email. You received this message because you signed up for [NYTimes.com]'s What We're Reading newsletter. Click to [unsubscribe]. [Copyright 2016 The New York Times Company]. [NYTimes.com] 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018