Bloomberg.com launches a new site called Gadfly — its is geared to be data-centric, graphic heavy, smart reporting — my kind of site. The Twitter handle is @BFly (Gadfly is an expansion of the site I write for, Bloomberg View).
The focus is finance and technology. It is an impressive roster of authoritative columnists drawing on a treasure trove of data and analytics from the Bloomberg terminal. You’ll notice every column has a data source and specific chart/table. (Here is Micklethwait’s announcement).
Its very cool.
There is a proliferation of garbage commentary and junk science on the internet, especially regarding all things financial. This is the intelligent pushback to that.
click for live site
It’s a neat way to collect and present Bloomberg’s data-based analysis and commentary, although I wouldn’t go as far as to describe it as anti-junk science – I can point to very specific and recent examples (at other sources, not Bloomberg) where data has been profoundly mishandled to advance some really spurious or highly deficient analysis that wouldn’t necessarily be recognized as such by traditional editors in the media, some of whom have picked up and promoted it.
To the extent that Gadfly might avoid those issues is something that will weigh heavily on the ability of its editors and the quality of its team, which appears to be pretty capable bunch coming out of the gate.