18 votes

FiveThirtyEight has been integrated into ABC News with the original website redirecting to the new vertical

Posted by shiruken
Tags: politics, journalism, elections, polling, fivethirtyeight, abc news, announcements, author.nathaniel rakich, author.amelia thomson deveaux, source.go, short read
https://abcnews.go.com/538/introducing-538-abc-news/story?id=103218541

Link information

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Title
Welcome to the new 538 website
Authors
ABC News
Word count
272 words

9 comments

  1. burkaman
    (edited )
    Link
    Wow this sucks. Much worse design, spammy unrelated "top stories" at the right of every single article. Sometimes they do these "Slack chats" which are now kind of unreadable with this new...

    Wow this sucks. Much worse design, spammy unrelated "top stories" at the right of every single article. Sometimes they do these "Slack chats" which are now kind of unreadable with this new featureless styling: https://abcnews.go.com/538/bidenomics-working-biden/story?id=103120921. There's even a new (terrible) logo.

    Look at this story, with some embedded tables and graphs: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/vivek-ramaswamy-is-climbing-where-can-he-go/. Now look at the new version: https://abcnews.go.com/538/vivek-ramaswamy-climbing/story?id=103033252. They just took out the tables and graphs, because the CSS was too hard? That's like the whole point of 538.

    I enjoyed following their live blogs for some elections, which used to look like https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/trump-arraignment-2023-election-results/ and will now look like https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/republican-debate-primary/?id=102507215. Just so generic.

    I followed 538 through their RSS feed which presumably will stop working, so I guess I'll just stop reading it and don't need to worry about these design changes.

    Edit: Ok this is dumb, but with the new URL format you can change the story name to whatever you want and the link still works: https://abcnews.go.com/538/abc-sucks/story?id=103033252

    25 votes
  2. [3]
    MimicSquid
    Link
    This was pretty much inevitable with the exit of whathisface, the prior owner. It was pretty much only a vehicle for him and his brand of analysis, and I can see why ABC would want to integrate it...

    This was pretty much inevitable with the exit of whathisface, the prior owner. It was pretty much only a vehicle for him and his brand of analysis, and I can see why ABC would want to integrate it more fully now that he's no longer in the picture.

    10 votes
    1. rkcr
      Link Parent
      IIRC Nate Silver left because of the planned integration, no the other way around. He wasn't fired but he didn't want to be around anymore.

      IIRC Nate Silver left because of the planned integration, no the other way around. He wasn't fired but he didn't want to be around anymore.

      13 votes
    2. shiruken
      Link Parent
      Nate Silver FWIW, FiveThirtyEight has been owned by Disney/ABC/ESPN since July 2013 when ESPN acquired the property from the New York Times. It transferred to ABC in 2018.

      This was pretty much inevitable with the exit of whathisface, the prior owner.

      Nate Silver

      It was pretty much only a vehicle for him and his brand of analysis, and I can see why ABC would want to integrate it more fully now that he's no longer in the picture.

      FWIW, FiveThirtyEight has been owned by Disney/ABC/ESPN since July 2013 when ESPN acquired the property from the New York Times. It transferred to ABC in 2018.

      11 votes
  3. [5]
    Xenophanes
    Link
    This bums me out more than it should. I used to really enjoy their podcast, but it also seemed to be dying a slow death over the last few years.

    This bums me out more than it should. I used to really enjoy their podcast, but it also seemed to be dying a slow death over the last few years.

    6 votes
    1. [4]
      WeAreWaves
      Link Parent
      I think it took a turn for the worse with Clare Malone leaving and never quite recovered. Though maybe for me it was also that that style and focus on the horse race seemed a little off in the...

      I think it took a turn for the worse with Clare Malone leaving and never quite recovered.

      Though maybe for me it was also that that style and focus on the horse race seemed a little off in the actual political environment.

      I hadn’t listened often enough to know that Nate Silver had left - this is the first I’m hearing of it. It’s like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias leaving Vox…

      9 votes
      2. [2]
        Qis
        Link Parent
        Clare Malone caught a job as a staff writer at New Yorker magazine. Haven't seen anything from her over there yet but she's still working!

        Clare Malone caught a job as a staff writer at New Yorker magazine. Haven't seen anything from her over there yet but she's still working!

        6 votes