FiveThirtyEight Shuttered
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ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 68
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Location: Long Island, New York
06 Mar 2025, 9:19 am
Disney and ABC News cuts include the shutdown of FiveThirtyEight
Quote:
As President Donald Trump was giving his State-of-the-Union-type address on Tuesday, there was another breaking political news story.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint reported that Disney was cutting about 6% — or 200 people — from ABC News and Disney Entertainment Networks. But here’s where the political drama played out: The cuts include shutting down FiveThirtyEight, the political and data-driven news site known for its focus on election polling and predictions. It employed 15 staffers.
Thus ends a site launched in 2008 by Nate Silver, best known for its near-perfect prediction of Barack Obama’s victory in that year’s presidential election. (The site was correct in 49 of 50 states and nailed every senate race that year.)
Silver took FiveThirtyEight to The New York Times in 2010. The site, which also included sports content, moved over to ESPN in 2013 and then was moved under ABC News in 2018. Silver left his role as the top editor in 2023.
Silver tweeted late Tuesday night, “Oh geez, I just saw the news about 538. My heart goes out to the people there. They were tremendously hard-working and produced a lot of extremely valuable data and insight for everyone who wants to understand politics better. They deserved much better.”
Then, on Wednesday, Silver took to his Substack to write a few more thoughts about the end of his creation.
He wrote that “the basic issue is that Disney was never particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business, even though I think it could have been a good business. Although they were generous in maintaining the site for so long and almost never interfered in our editorial process, the sort of muscle memory a media property builds early in its tenure tends to stick. We had an incredibly talented editorial staff, but we never had enough ‘product’ people or strategy people to help the business grow and sustain itself. It’s always an uphill battle under those conditions, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, who were constantly being poached by outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post.”
The Daily Beast’s Liam Archacki noted, “The site had been in a downturn after Silver departed and took his powerful election forecasting model with him.”
And while it did way more than predicting elections, FiveThirtyEight, like many in the polling business, has taken plenty of hits over the past several election cycles, most notably with how many were off with Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But many still correctly argue FiveThirtyEight’s relevance.
The 19th’s Grace Panetta tweeted, “This is such a catastrophic loss not only for election journalism but also as an election data resource — can’t even count the number of times I’ve relied on 538’s polling averages, redistricting trackers, etc for my reporting.”
The New Yorker’s Clare Malone wrote in a tweet that “538 closing is a very sad end to a place that was always misunderstood by the companies that owned it.”
Chris Cillizza, the former CNN reporter who just joined NewsNation this week as a contributor, tweeted, “Idiotic. 538 is an amazing brand that does GREAT work
Meanwhile, the news about FiveThirtyEight wasn’t the only notable part of ABC News’ cuts.
The news magazine shows “Nightline” and “20/20” are being moved into one unit, meaning more job cuts. In addition, according to Flint’s story in the Journal, “all three hours of ‘Good Morning America’ branded shows will be consolidated under one person; previously, the third hour had a separate production team.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint reported that Disney was cutting about 6% — or 200 people — from ABC News and Disney Entertainment Networks. But here’s where the political drama played out: The cuts include shutting down FiveThirtyEight, the political and data-driven news site known for its focus on election polling and predictions. It employed 15 staffers.
Thus ends a site launched in 2008 by Nate Silver, best known for its near-perfect prediction of Barack Obama’s victory in that year’s presidential election. (The site was correct in 49 of 50 states and nailed every senate race that year.)
Silver took FiveThirtyEight to The New York Times in 2010. The site, which also included sports content, moved over to ESPN in 2013 and then was moved under ABC News in 2018. Silver left his role as the top editor in 2023.
Silver tweeted late Tuesday night, “Oh geez, I just saw the news about 538. My heart goes out to the people there. They were tremendously hard-working and produced a lot of extremely valuable data and insight for everyone who wants to understand politics better. They deserved much better.”
Then, on Wednesday, Silver took to his Substack to write a few more thoughts about the end of his creation.
He wrote that “the basic issue is that Disney was never particularly interested in running FiveThirtyEight as a business, even though I think it could have been a good business. Although they were generous in maintaining the site for so long and almost never interfered in our editorial process, the sort of muscle memory a media property builds early in its tenure tends to stick. We had an incredibly talented editorial staff, but we never had enough ‘product’ people or strategy people to help the business grow and sustain itself. It’s always an uphill battle under those conditions, particularly when it comes to recruiting and retaining staff, who were constantly being poached by outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post.”
The Daily Beast’s Liam Archacki noted, “The site had been in a downturn after Silver departed and took his powerful election forecasting model with him.”
And while it did way more than predicting elections, FiveThirtyEight, like many in the polling business, has taken plenty of hits over the past several election cycles, most notably with how many were off with Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But many still correctly argue FiveThirtyEight’s relevance.
The 19th’s Grace Panetta tweeted, “This is such a catastrophic loss not only for election journalism but also as an election data resource — can’t even count the number of times I’ve relied on 538’s polling averages, redistricting trackers, etc for my reporting.”
The New Yorker’s Clare Malone wrote in a tweet that “538 closing is a very sad end to a place that was always misunderstood by the companies that owned it.”
Chris Cillizza, the former CNN reporter who just joined NewsNation this week as a contributor, tweeted, “Idiotic. 538 is an amazing brand that does GREAT work
Meanwhile, the news about FiveThirtyEight wasn’t the only notable part of ABC News’ cuts.
The news magazine shows “Nightline” and “20/20” are being moved into one unit, meaning more job cuts. In addition, according to Flint’s story in the Journal, “all three hours of ‘Good Morning America’ branded shows will be consolidated under one person; previously, the third hour had a separate production team.”
Most of my interaction with them was through their podcast where I have been a regular listener since the 2016 election cycle. They were unique in the world of political podcasting which is usually agenda driven. They covered politics through the lens of data and polling. Sometimes opinions broke through but all in all they were a refreshing difference to political coverage in general.
As seen above a lot of the criticism of the sites shutdown involves ABC’s mishandling of the site. Many regular listeners say after this person was fired or that person left the podcast was not as good as it was. My opinion is of course the podcast of 2025 was not the same podcast it was in 2016 but the basic thing of what they did had not changed and that is why they are gone. There just is not demand for unemotional analytical takes on current political news. Whatever ABC could have done better does not change that.
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