FWIW, I’ve received various inquiries from readers over the past few months about whether I plan to reacquire the FiveThirtyEight trade name from Disney after they shuttered the site earlier this year. The short answer is “no”.

For clarity, this is really just about the “FiveThirtyEight” trade name and logo (and Fivey Fox, I suppose). I already own the models and the former employees have dispersed to the four winds … please hire them BTW.

Warning: this is going to get slightly inside baseball.

The longer answer is I did put out a feeler through my representatives. It’s worth something >$0 to me at the right price. But I also have considerable ambivalence because:

• I’ve put a ton of work into building Silver Bulletin over the past two years and making it the name that people primarily associate with my work and the models. So I’m not even sure what I’d do with the FiveThirtyEight name.

• I think they cheapened the IP by abandoning the attractive site design and logo that we’d invested a lot of time into for an ABC News version that — you be the judge — but IMO is far less attractive and doesn’t even use the trade name correctly (it should be styled as FiveThirtyEight not 538).

Alas, Disney informed us that they wouldn’t sell the name to me specifically because I’ve publicly criticized them at points since my tenure ended there. I think these criticisms have been balanced and often fairly gentle, expressing frustration at the situation but support for my former colleagues. I’ll continue to speak candidly about my experiences in media, and I hope that can be instructive to other founders.

Thank you for reading Silver Bulletin, and we believe the future is very bright here at Substack!