Posted by cmsparks 2 hours ago
--Nate Silver (538 founder)
ABC seem pretty petty here.
Any exec who operates that way should be shown the door ASAP as they are likely doing similar emotional management of other aspects of the business.
Who's shareholders are the public.
> The shareholders aren't going to care
This is not a valid defense in court. You can't let "attitude of investors" override "sound financial decisionmaking."
(Internally I'm sure they could probably phrase it some other less negative way such as chance of people confusing the brand as still owned by them, etc) association
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/net-inc...
"It's okay set millions of dollars on fire because we have billions in this pile over here!"
Not that it's always the same company doing both at the same time, but it's crazy 538 was just left to die. It was a very recognizable brand among wonky professionals, a very desirable customer base. It's not as if politics and sports have gotten less relevant in the world over the past decade. ABC's decision to toss this aside is baffling.
Much of the 538 alumni seem to be doing well, either independently or as part of a major organization, so I don't think much was lost overall. But I sure empathize with the folks who lost their dream job and ABC looks pretty bad for frittering away a successful business for seemingly no reason. Taking down these articles is nonsensical.
Things got worse after Disney had their first round of layoffs. Their problem was they weren't profitable outside the presidential election years when interest peaked in the general public. 3 out of 4 years only diehard election polling wonks tuned in.
If Nate Silver buys it back (for pennies on the dollar) and then makes it successful, it's embarrassing and makes ABC look bad at business.
Maybe that was the logic on ABC's part but it's ridiculously wrong given how much clear market demand there is for the 538 people and content.
Guess we better back up their GitHub repos before that gets taken down as well
I expected it would be resurrected outside the Pushkin network, but hasn't happened yet.
What I _don't_ miss is listening to podcasts on Pushkin. I had nothing against Malcolm Gladwell, but something about having his voice on every one of the network's very numerous ads became incredibly grating.
Gladwell also annoys me, so that didn't help matters.
i was a casual reader of 538 back in the day. his substack feels pretty similar, if smaller in scope.
After reading this book, The Party Decides https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo592160... , he was a big advocate of the idea that the "endorsement race" of state officials and unelected party leaders.
There was a whole "Party Decides: Endorsement Tracker" graphic and everything, but Trump securing the Republican nomination and eventually the presidency pretty conclusively showed that theory to be a relic of the past.
So the 538 election coverage that year was: - Party endorsements matter more than early polling (they didn't) - Hillary's up so big there's no way Trump can win (he did, and yes I know they didn't actually say that but that's what the layman saw)
(ironically the Party Decides thesis seems to have correctly predicted events in the Democratic primary that year)