Dem
51
GOP
49
It would seem that FiveThirtyEight, which is being hit by the same cost-cutting that is being imposed on most other Disney properties, looks like it will soon be down one. And that one is the big one, namely site founder and editor-in-chief Nate Silver.
It was Variety that broke the news that Silver is leaving, although the paper's reporting was a little uneven on that point. The lead to the linked story is this: "FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver is exiting ABC News as The Walt Disney Company ramps up layoffs, Variety has confirmed." However, the message that Silver sent to his staffers, and then tweeted, is this:
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.
Note that "I expect I'll be leaving" could, in some circumstances, be a negotiating ploy. Something along the lines of, "I'm definitely willing to leave unless you make it worth my while to stay, Disney." That said, the cost-cutting and the fact that Disney has moved away from personality-driven sites like FiveThirtyEight, Grantland, The Undefeated, etc., suggests they aren't particularly interested in keeping Silver, even if he's hinting that he could be persuaded to remain.
Per the terms of Silver's deal with Disney, they own the name now, not him. And executives say that they expect FiveThirtyEight to continue, albeit in a "slimmed-down" form. Truth be told, that could work out very well. As we have noted multiple times, too much of the site's content is, in effect, serious-research-type questions, but with the "research" done on a daily deadline. The end product, in these cases, is usually not great.
Another bad habit the site has indulged in is trying to apply numerical analysis to situations where it doesn't work or, at least, where Silver & Co. don't know how to make it work. We have noted, in the past, silly pieces like "The Five Types Of Nicolas Cage Movies," which try to impose mathematical rigor on art. That just doesn't work, and even in the rare cases where it is somewhat plausible, well, who really cares exactly how many Bob Ross paintings have cumulus clouds in them?
By contrast, imposing mathematical rigor on sports can work, and is how Silver got his start. But while his ideas about baseball were innovative (in their time), he and his staff don't really know enough to do useful analysis of other sports. It can be done, but it's done by people who work full-time, every week of the year, on that particular sport. When Silver tries his hand at basketball, on the other hand, he ends up with nonsensical stuff, like using the first four games of Jeremy Lin's career to conclude that he was likely to be an All-Star, and could well be headed to the Hall of Fame. That did not happen, to say the least. For readers who do not know Lin, we will put it this way: You could have his career ten times, and you still wouldn't have as much value as one Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or one Wilt Chamberlain.
Point is, there's a lot of fat at FiveThirtyEight. What it's useful for is aggregating polls and crunching the numbers, both to tell the audience what the big picture looks like, and also to document which pollsters are doing good work. These tasks should be doable by a leaner, meaner staff, even if Silver isn't there to supervise.
And as to Silver, he alluded to conversations he's had about "opportunities elsewhere." He certainly could do what his former colleague Bill Simmons (founder of Grantland) did and re-create the same basic concept under a different name (in Simmons' case, The Ringer). That seems unlikely, however, as the capital backing is probably not there for something like that (there's way more money in sports coverage than wonky stats analysis). Silver seems likely to end up with a podcast somewhere, and he might head to some outlet to be their numbers guru (MSNBC?). He's already written books, so he might turn to that full-time. His brand is a little damaged right now, in part due to some high-profile misses, and in part due to an unfortunate habit of engaging in "hot takes." This would be a pretty good opportunity for him to recalibrate and to get back to what brung 'im in the first place. Looks like we will soon see if he'll seize that chance. (Z)