https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/04/disney-is-shrinking-fivethirtyeight-and-nate-silver-and-his-models-are-leaving/ [foundation] Fellowships Reports Lab Storyboard Nieman Foundation at Harvard HOME About Fuego Subscribe Archives Foundation Reports Storyboard LATEST STORY Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving Business Models Mobile & Apps Audience & Social Aggregation & Discovery Reporting & Production [lab-logo-c] ABOUT [ ] [Search] SUBSCRIBE * Business Models * Mobile & Apps * Audience & Social * Aggregation & Discovery * Reporting & Production * Translations * Fuego [niemanlab_A_1950s-style_cartoon_illustration_of_a_very_sad_fox] April 25, 2023, 3:58 p.m. Business Models Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving Silver on ABC: "They have limited rights to some models post-license term, but not the core election forecast stuff." By Sarah Scire and Laura Hazard Owen @SarahScire April 25, 2023, 3:58 p.m. April 25, 2023, 3:58 p.m. FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver and at least some of the data-driven site's 35-person staff are leaving ABC News as part of broader layoffs at The Walt Disney Company. (Or, in the words of ABC News, FiveThirtyEight is being "streamlined.") Silver said on Tuesday that he expects to leave the politics and sports news site when his contract ends this summer. Several others at FiveThirtyEight -- including deputy managing editor Chadwick Matlin , sports editor Neil Paine, senior audience editor Meena Ganesan, senior science reporter (and 2015 Nieman Fellow) Maggie Koerth, business operations manager Vanessa Diaz, and senior designer Emily Schererand -- announced they were affected by layoffs, too. Disney layoffs have substantially impacted FiveThirtyEight. I am sad and disappointed to a degree that's kind of hard to express right now. We've been at Disney almost 10 years. My contract is up soon and I expect that I'll be leaving at the end of it. -- Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 25, 2023 I had been worried about an outcome like this and so have had some great initial conversations about opportunities elsewhere. Don't hesitate to get in touch. I am so proud of the work of FiveThirtyEight staff. It has never been easy. I'm so sorry to the people impacted by this. -- Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 25, 2023 FiveThirtyEight -- named, of course, after the number of electors in the U.S. electoral college -- has its roots in the "Community" section of the liberal news site Daily Kos, where, in 2007, a 29-year-old baseball statistician named Nate Silver began writing posts about the 2008 U.S. presidential election under the username "poblano."1 [ Click here to see the future of news in your inbox daily ] RELATED ARTICLE Articles of incorporation: Nate Silver and Jim Roberts on the NYT's absorption of FiveThirtyEight Megan Garber June 3, 2010 Silver launched FiveThirtyEight as its own blog in March 2008, and in the general election that year, his model correctly predicted the results in 49 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as all 50 winners of the U.S. Senate races. The early, wondering coverage of Silver's work frequently invoked magic. "Silver's box of tricks sounds baffling, laced as it is with talk of regressions, half-lives and Monte Carlo analysis," The Guardian's editorial board wrote in 2008." The New York Times, announcing its FiveThirtyEight "partnership" in 2010, referred to Silver a "statistical wizard." FiveThirtyEight quickly became a massive traffic driver for the Times, where his presence provided fodder for then-public editor Margaret Sullivan. (He is now the frequent subject of discussion by the Times' current public editor, Twitter.) In 2013, Silver left The New York Times (Sullivan wrote about that, too) and took FiveThirtyEight to ESPN. Under parent company Diseny, it was transferred from ESPN to ABC News in 2018 as ESPN sought to distance itself from political commentary, and has operated from there since. When Silver leaves ABC News, he'll leave behind the FiveThirtyEight trade name, but his models will go with him. "The models are licensed to them and the license term is concurrent with my contract," he confirmed to Nieman Lab in a message. "They have limited rights to some models post-license term, but not the core election forecast stuff." Van Jones, ABC News' VP of publicity, said in a statement that "ABC News remains dedicated to data journalism with a core focus on politics, the economy and enterprise reporting -- this streamlined structure will allow us to be more closely aligned with our priorities for the 2024 election and beyond. We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of the team members who will be departing the organization and know they will continue to make an important impact on the future of journalism." Not mentioned in that statement: Sports or science, both of which are key verticals on the current FiveThirtyEight. I think the big biz question with this is, what happens to the 538 models in late JUNE when the contract and licenses expire? Almost an election year... https://t.co/sYZeXN195p -- Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) April 25, 2023 Horserace always tends to suck up the oxygen, but the FiveThirtyEight crew has done a metric ton of smart, thoughtful work on data, politics and society. Sending good thoughts to everyone affected. https://t.co/qUoDpGURSS -- Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) April 25, 2023 Buzzfeed News and FiveThirtyEight are huge organizational leaders in data transparency and reproducibility, ie. sharing your work. It's a sad time for data journalism. -- Andrew Ba Tran (@abtran) April 25, 2023 "A 1950s-style cartoon illustration of a very sad fox," Midjourney 1. Bill Kristol, writing in The New York Times opinion section in February 2008: "An interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio." -[?] POSTED April 25, 2023, 3:58 p.m. SEE MORE ON Business Models FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver Show tagsHide tags TWITTER FACEBOOK EMAIL SHARE ON FACEBOOK TWEET FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver Show comments Hide comments Show tagsHide tags What's the best way to follow how the news is changing? Our daily email, with all the freshest future-of-journalism news. [ ] [Subscribe] Prefer a once-a-week email? >> Cite this articleHide citations CLOSE MLA Scire, Sarah. "Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving." Nieman Journalism Lab. Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 25 Apr. 2023. Web. 25 Apr. 2023. APA Scire, S. (2023, Apr. 25). Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving. Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved April 25, 2023, from https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/04/ disney-is-shrinking-fivethirtyeight-and-nate-silver-and-his-models-are-leaving / Chicago Scire, Sarah. "Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving." Nieman Journalism Lab. Last modified April 25, 2023. Accessed April 25, 2023. https://www.niemanlab.org/ 2023/04/ disney-is-shrinking-fivethirtyeight-and-nate-silver-and-his-models-are-leaving /. Wikipedia {{cite web | url = https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/04/ disney-is-shrinking-fivethirtyeight-and-nate-silver-and-his-models-are-leaving / | title = Disney is shrinking FiveThirtyEight, and Nate Silver (and his models) are leaving | last = Scire | first = Sarah | work = [[Nieman Journalism Lab]] | date = 25 April 2023 | accessdate = 25 April 2023 | ref = {{harvid|Scire|2023}} }} The latest from Nieman Lab Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News, and what matters is why Joshua Benton "Tell a more complete story" and other lessons from a new report on mistrust of news media Sarah Scire A history of BuzzFeed News, Part II: 2017-2023 Laura Hazard Owen A history of BuzzFeed News, Part I: 2011-2017 Laura Hazard Owen The Harvard Crimson aims to fill local news gaps with a new Cambridge-focused newsletter Hanaa' Tameez Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email. 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