The US news site 538 has long been a kind of digital success story where a blogger, Nate Silver, became a new kind of news source, one specialised in the statistics of politics, specifically polling and elections. As a digital native organisation, they produced content with an eye to new formats, networked media, multi-modal approaches, and active and direct engagement with readers. That meant including news comments, which they did consistently.
But as with other digital native media organisations, they did not disrupt the media landscape as much as get absorbed by it – first into the NYT, then ESPN. 538 remained an innovative digital native producer, presenting content that provided some diversity of media types and content and remaining multi-modal with comments on nearly every news story.
However, as is typical with increasing ownership consolidation through mergers and acquisitions, 538 hasn’t fared that well from its various new ownership structures. Following the lapse of Nate Silver’s contract as well as other layoffs earlier in the year, 538’s current holder – Disney’s ABC – has fully absorbed 538’s ‘brand’ as a column on their own news website, conforming to the forms and features of its typical product offerings, with none of the streaming conversations, podcasts, or provocations that are perhaps most emblematic of the 538 ‘brand’. More starkly, the news comments that were a mainstay under their articles, almost exclusively frequented by an enduring small gaggle of vitriolic combatants, have completely disappeared, an oddly consistent decision for broadcasters.
Here again, in another small anecdote for the pile, there is a demonstration of what research has long suggested: rather than offering a lifeline, media consolidation shows little capacity to augment media diversity and even less inclination to try.
Tim Koskie, CMT researcher
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