Nate Silver Likely to Exit ABC News Amid Disney Layoffs
Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight — a news website that pioneered data journalism — and the journalist who accurately predicted the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, might depart from ABC News. This anticipated departure is part of the layoffs planned by the parent company, The Walt Disney Company, which aims to reduce its workforce by 7,000 jobs this year to minimize losses related to its streaming platform.
“I am sad and disappointed to a degree that’s kind of hard to express right now. My contract is up soon, and I expect that I’ll be leaving at the end of it. I had been worried about an outcome like this and have had some great initial conversations about opportunities elsewhere,” Nate Silver tweeted on Tuesday.
Silver began his career as a numbers expert who analyzed baseball statistics and, as a hobby, started writing about the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. After eventually launching the FiveThirtyEight blog in 2008, his predictions about U.S. elections and Senate races proved to be accurate. Later, the U.S. news giant, The New York Times, announced a partnership with FiveThirtyEight. Around 2013, Silver offered FiveThirtyEight to ESPN and later moved to ABC News in 2018.
With Silver leaving ABC News, the statistical models he built to predict election outcomes will no longer be available to the company. Once his contract expires, the company will lose the license for these models, and Silver will be free to use them in his future endeavors. As a result, ABC News will be unable to use them for predicting elections anymore, which is a significant setback for the company. Van Scott, ABC News’ vice president of publicity, stated that the media company is committed to data journalism and looks forward to analyzing the 2024 election results as usual. However, with Silver gone, they will find it challenging.
This situation may lead to a legal battle between Silver and ABC News, as highlighted by Clare Malone, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine covering the layoffs. “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…” she tweeted. This critical question is when Silver eventually departs since stories based on his models are significant traffic drivers to news websites close to an election year.
Most of the staff at the FiveThirtyEight website were let go in the past month. Elena Mejía, a visualisation expert and coder, Anna Rothschild, Senior video producer, Emily Scherer, a designer, Alexandra Samuels, a reporter were among the many laid off. Silver was apologetic about the layoffs, “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,” he tweeted.
These layoffs by ABC News are not unique, with many well-known news outlets shutting down in the U.S. in recent months. The Pulitzer Prize-winning digital media platform BuzzFeed News closed as its parent company sought to cut costs. The news portal will lose around 180 to 200 employees as part of its latest layoffs. Trade publication ADweek will reduce its workforce by 10%. Vox Media recently let go of more than 130 people. Entertainment outlet Fandom laid off about 10% of its workers. NBC News handed out pink slips to around 75 media employees, and The Washington Post has announced that they may dismiss some of its employees.
Considering that most of these news companies rely heavily on digital giants like Google and Facebook for advertisement revenues, the recent IT slowdown in the U.S. has impacted them as well. Google’s digital ad revenue experienced an unparalleled decline in the January-March company results published recently.