ABC News Boss Reads from Script While Laying Off FiveThirtyEight Staff
Alright, so let’s talk about something that’s been making waves in the media world—ABC News just laid off the entire staff of FiveThirtyEight, and the way it went down has left a lot of people shocked.
Imagine this: You find out you’re losing your job not from your boss, not even from an official email, but from a news article the night before. That’s exactly what happened to the team at FiveThirtyEight, the well-known data-driven news site. According to reports, the president of ABC News, Almin Karamehmedovic, addressed the 15 employees only after the Wall Street Journal had already broken the story. And even then, it wasn’t much of a conversation—he just read from a script, took no questions, and ended the meeting within 15 minutes.
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Shortly after, FiveThirtyEight staffers were locked out of their ABC News accounts, and the site itself was completely shut down. Just like that, years of work in political data journalism disappeared.
This was all part of a much bigger wave of layoffs hitting ABC News and Disney Entertainment Networks. Around 200 employees—about 6% of the total workforce—lost their jobs, with a large chunk of them based in New York. ABC News isn’t just shutting down FiveThirtyEight; it’s also merging “Good Morning America” and “GMA3” under one leadership, cutting executives, and restructuring programs like “20/20” and “Nightline.”
For those who followed FiveThirtyEight, this is a major blow. The site, originally founded by Nate Silver, was a go-to source for political polling, data analysis, and election predictions. Silver himself left in 2023 amid earlier layoffs, but even he was heartbroken by the news. He posted online that the team was hardworking and provided valuable insights that helped people understand politics better. He ended by saying, “They deserved much better.”
One of the former employees, G. Elliott Morris, confirmed the grim reality, saying that since they weren’t allowed to publish anything new, all updates to polls and data averages were canceled indefinitely. He called it a “huge loss” for political data journalism.
Inside ABC News, the mood was reportedly grim. Staff members were crying in the hallways, making frantic phone calls, and trying to process what had just happened. One employee even compared the layoffs to “Squid Game,” saying they felt like they had barely survived another brutal round.
So, what happens now? ABC News says they’ll continue providing political data analysis, but it’s unclear how, especially without the FiveThirtyEight team. Meanwhile, Disney is making more cuts across its networks, including Disney Channel and FX.
At the end of the day, this whole situation raises questions about how media companies handle layoffs and treat their employees. To be told you’re losing your job from a news report before hearing it from your own employer? That’s rough. And for a site like FiveThirtyEight, which played such a big role in data journalism, it’s an even bigger loss.
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