Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight Founder, Expects to Depart ABC News Amid Layoffs

Nate Silver, the founder and editor of the data-driven news web site FiveThirtyEight, mentioned on Tuesday that he anticipated to depart ABC News as layoffs rattle its mother or father group, the Walt Disney Company.

Mr. Silver, who began FiveThirtyEight in 2008, and was affiliated with The New York Times from 2010 to 2013, mentioned on Twitter that the Disney layoffs had “substantially impacted” the positioning.

“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,” he wrote. “My contract is up soon and I expect that I’ll be leaving at the end of it.”

Mr. Silver famous that he had begun having conversations about different alternatives, as a result of he had been apprehensive about “an outcome like this.”

In an announcement, ABC News mentioned that it remained devoted to knowledge journalism with a core deal with politics, the economic system and enterprise reporting.

“This streamlined structure will allow us to be more closely aligned with our priorities for the 2024 election and beyond,” the corporate mentioned. “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.”

Three folks with information of the cuts to the positioning, who spoke on the situation of anonymity, mentioned that greater than half of the 35 employees positions at FiveThirtyEight had been slashed.

Mr. Silver, whose contract expires in summer time, owns a number of the mental property utilized by FiveThirtyEight, two of the folks

mentioned.

Internal Slack messages by which Mr. Silver advised staff he anticipated to depart had been leaked to the Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.

ABC News has mentioned it is going to hold the FiveThirtyEight model title.

On Tuesday, Mr. Silver, who rose to nationwide fame together with his correct projections in regards to the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, apologized on Twitter to these affected. “I am so proud of the work of FiveThirtyEight staff,” he mentioned. “It has never been easy.”

The New York Times licensed FiveThirtyEight’s content material from 2010 to 2013, with politics as its fundamental focus, although it additionally supplied numbers-crunching analyses of sports activities, economics and different disciplines. In 2013, the franchise moved to ESPN, the sports activities empire managed by the Walt Disney Company. It was acquired by ABC News in 2018.