At SimpsonScarborough we’ve professed—and proudly too—that we’re big `ol data geeks. Data drives our insights around marketing and branding in higher education. That’s why we were really excited about the explosion of infographics. And now comes data-driven reporting in mainstream media.
Nate Silver, formerly of the New York Times and a graduate of the University of Chicago and London School of Economics, recently launched FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation website that publishes articles on a wide variety of topics, typically creating or analyzing statistical information. Several recent stories have focused on topics like high school graduates skipping college, colleges with the best ROI, and interestingly, the inequality that exists in college towns.
Vox, started by Ezra Klein, formerly of the Washington Post and MSNBC and a graduate of UCLA, is also doing deep-dive stories with analytical and data-driven frameworks like these on the what truly constitutes the typical college student and state cut-backs in higher education funding.
It will be fascinating to watch these and other higher ed topics play out in the mainstream press in the coming months—and it just goes to show that data drives everything.
