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Nate: "I wasn’t technically laid off — but my existing contract was set to expire in June 2023, and there was profound mutual disinterest in negotiating a new deal."

The interesting thing about his experience, though, is that he had the clout (and foresight?) to craft the deal so that he was merely licensing his models to Disney, and ever since he left, Disney has not been able to use them (well, for some of the sports-related ones, Disney was permitted to keep a copy, but not benefit from further work on it).

So Silver still seems to have the rights to the important stuff that made FiveThirtyEight what it was. He can (and has been) more or less building a new version of it, using all his old IP as a base.

Seems like just the natural samsara of the news world. Small outlets are acquired by larger ones, eventually dismantled, staff moving onto build new ones and starting the cycle anew.