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The popular political poll news and analysis website, 538, is being shut down as part of a broader shuttering effort across ABC News and Disney Entertainment, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday night.
Disney is reportedly cutting 200 positions across ABC News Group and Disney Entertainment Networks, including shutting down the data-driven 538.
[...] FiveThirtyEight, which is named after the number of electors in the US electoral college, has become a popular website for predictions, analysis and watching the polls in the months and days leading up to election night.
But the website's workforce had been slowly dwindling for a couple of years. The 15 employees still with the outlet make up less than half of the team from 2023, when it had about 35 employees.
The decline began when 538's founder, Nate Silver, left the company two years ago when his Disney contract expired.
[...] The broader media landscape has been hit with mass layoffs seemingly nonstop for months. Last month, MSNBC announced a massive shakeup at the network that included letting go of Joy Reid and her production team, as well as no longer using the Spanish-language network Telemundo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 12, @05:00PM (1 child)
Just as it often happens when a mega corporation buys a much smaller business. They "integrate" it into the existing corporate structure, usually destroying whatever value it once provided, then it's thrown away when the shattered organization (shockingly. Not!) doesn't generate enough profit for the acquirer.
In the case of 538.com, it was even more so, as Nate Silver, as part of the deal to sell 538 to Disney, maintained ownership of the aggregation models he developed (which were what made 538 so useful and pretty darn accurate), making an even worse deal for Disney.
This result was inevitable, just corporations wasting money by driving their acquired businesses into the ground. Nothing political about it. It's just (bad) business.
If you're really interested in similar work to what 538.com used to do, Silver has a new site [natesilver.net].*
*This is not an endorsement of Nate Silver and/or his new site. I make no value judgements, as I don't frequent the site.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 12, @06:28PM
Oops. Included the link, but didn't check that I'd formatted it properly. In case some of you folks aren't familiar with Nate Silver, see link above.
Sorry about that.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr