Thousands of FiveThirtyEight Articles Seemingly Vanish From the Internet
The New York Times • • business
Key Points:
- The archived website of FiveThirtyEight, known for its data journalism and election models, now redirects users to ABC News, its owner, making thousands of articles from 2008 onward inaccessible.
- FiveThirtyEight was shut down by ABC in March 2025, following its merger with ABCNews.com in 2023, but the earlier standalone version had remained archived until recently.
- The exact timing and reason for the removal of FiveThirtyEight’s archived content remain unclear, and ABC News has declined to comment on the issue.
- Nathaniel Rakich, a former senior editor at FiveThirtyEight, highlighted the loss of around 700 of his articles and criticized the erasure of valuable data-driven journalism.
- Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight’s founder who left in 2023, also noticed the disappearance when trying to reference past coverage, underscoring the suddenness of the content removal.