No. The 'old school' hated 538 and polling wonks in general. Back in the 2000s there was a huge push back because this blog guy had numbers going against whatever narrative they were trying spin.

I feel like it proves the opposite. A small entity was able to become a valued source of information, a big entity bought it, but then was unable to do anything with it, since being a “big” media seller does not matter due to the accessibility of the internet.