NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, July 29th, 2011

Seattle Post-Globe calls it quits

Two and a quar­ter years after the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer ceased print pub­li­ca­tion, one of the Web star­tups that emerged in its after­math is clos­ing down:

It’s been an event­ful two years – some­times fun, some­times a moun­tain of work, but always worth­while. And now it’s time for the Post­Globe to say good­bye and thank you. It’s time for us to move on.

We start­ed as a non­prof­it news site cre­at­ed by laid-off staffers of the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer after the 146-year-old paper print­ed its last edi­tion on what for oth­ers was a fes­tive St. Patrick’s Day in 2009. More than 100 jour­nal­ists lost their jobs as the paper scaled down its staff and went online-only. Some end­ed their jour­nal­ism careers that day, as news­pa­per jobs nation­al­ly con­tin­ued to evap­o­rate – near­ly 15,000 oth­er print jour­nal­ists lost their jobs that year.

Post-Globe cofounder Sal­ly Deneen not­ed that adver­tis­ing nev­er gen­er­at­ed any mean­ing­ful rev­enue, and that dona­tions have fall­en off. “[A]s a vol­un­teer-run site, we’ve run out of help­ing hands as unem­ployed jour­nal­ists have left for jobs. (Which is a good thing!),” Deneen added lat­er in the good­bye mes­sage excerpt­ed above.

On behalf of the team at NPI, I want to add our thanks to that of the well-wish­ers who have com­ment­ed on Deneen’s good­bye mes­sage. I myself have expe­ri­ence build­ing an orga­ni­za­tion out of noth­ing with vol­un­teer labor, and I know how hard it is. I’m glad Kery and Sal­ly and the oth­er peo­ple who helped estab­lish the Post-Globe were able to keep it going as long as they did.

I’m also glad to hear that the site will be pre­served online as an archive. It’s impor­tant that the sto­ries and opin­ion pieces that the Post-Globe pub­lished remain avail­able and acces­si­ble, and not sim­ply disappear.

Since this blog, The Advo­cate, began in March of 2004, the media land­scape has under­gone some pro­found changes, leav­ing the future of jour­nal­ism uncer­tain. For instance, many of the polit­i­cal reporters I got to know after becom­ing an activist have since retired or gone onto oth­er jobs. Some of my favorite pub­li­ca­tions, like the Seat­tle P‑I and the Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor, are now only avail­able online. Oth­ers have closed down forever.

Though it is hard to dis­cern what the next few years have in store, I think it’s like­ly we will con­tin­ue to see a great deal of change tak­ing place. The Post-Globe will not be the last of the media out­lets that we see come and go.

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