Volunteer index resurrects FiveThirtyEight's archive after ABC shutdown

A community-built site catalogs FiveThirtyEight’s back catalog as preserved on the Internet Archive, offering navigation by publication year and by author byline. The index surfaces output counts for the site’s most prolific contributors, with founder Nate Silver topping the list at nearly 5,000 pieces, followed by Neil Paine, Walt Hickey, and Aaron Bycoffe.

The project matters because Disney-owned ABC News shuttered FiveThirtyEight in 2023, putting more than a decade of data journalism on politics, sports, economics, and science at risk of becoming hard to find. Without a maintained index, archived pages exist but are effectively unsearchable by author or topic.

The effort is a small example of the Internet Archive’s role as a backstop for orphaned editorial work, and of how third-party tooling is often needed to make Wayback Machine holdings genuinely usable. It also underscores the fragility of digital journalism when ownership changes and corporate parents decide a publication is no longer worth hosting.