FiveThirtyEight has shut down.
Its founder, Nate Silver:
Last night, as President Trump delivered his State of the Union address1, the Wall Street Journal reported that ABC News would lay off the remaining staff at 538 as part of broader cuts within corporate parent Disney.
John Gruber expressed frustration about the site not remaining online in an archive state:
But the standard behavior when closing a web publication is to just pull the plug. When the whole company goes under, that’s one thing. But when there’s a parent company, especially a thriving one, there’s no justification for pulling the plug other than spiteful disregard for the work. From the perspective of a company the size of Disney, it would cost veritable pennies to keep FiveThirtyEight’s website around forever. What a disgrace.
I could not agree more. I relied heavily on the site for my past attempts to start a company and my current confidential side project as a data soccer analyst. Which made me feel sad and disappointed about FiveThirtyEight’s fate.
And then this:
Stephen A. Smith has agreed to a new contract with ESPN worth at least $100 million for five years, an agreement that will result in Smith continuing to star on “First Take” on ESPN while scaling back some of his other required appearances on the network, which would free him up to talk even more about politics, sources briefed on the agreement told The Athletic.
This is driving me mad. The coincidence of these two events reflects capitalism at its worst: promoting fast-paced, nonsensical, emotionally-driven rants over data-driven analysis. The only thing I appreciate about Smith — or many other similar pundits — is its hilarious caricature by the Simpsons.
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