PubliCola closes its doors; writers moving gossip site’s feature columns to Crosscut

Pub­li­Co­la, the polit­i­cal news and gos­sip blog launched by for­mer Stranger news edi­tor Josh Feit three and a quar­ter plus years ago, is ceas­ing pub­li­ca­tion, its founder announced this afternoon.

Feit’s farewell post, which went live just before 3 PM, did­n’t mince words.

“I’ve got a seri­ous after­noon Jolt: Pub­li­Co­la is going out of busi­ness. Sort of,” Feit wrote. He added:

While Pub­li­Co­la has been suc­cess­ful pro­duc­ing influ­en­tial, must-read news cov­er­age and build­ing a loy­al read­er­ship (more than 400,000 month­ly page views dur­ing the elec­tion sea­son and cur­rent­ly more than 10,000 Face­book and Twit­ter fol­low­ers), we haven’t been suc­cess­ful as a busi­ness. Adver­tis­ing rev­enue has been lim­it­ed and inconsistent.

Con­se­quent­ly, the site is shut­ting down, thought Feit says its main fea­tures will con­tin­ue to live on for the time being at Cross­cut, anoth­er local news start­up. Feit and fel­low Pub­li­Co­la writer Eri­ca C. Bar­nett have already moved into Cross­cut’s offices in Pio­neer Square, and may ulti­mate­ly wind up as beat writ­ers for Cross­cut — though no long-term agree­ment has been reached yet.

Feit and Cross­cut founder David Brew­ster have report­ed­ly been in dis­cus­sions about a tie-up for weeks and are still talking.

Feit sound­ed opti­mistic that some­thing will get worked out.

We don’t know where this Cross­cut Pub­liCorner, if you will, is going to lead. But there do seem to be some excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties: A com­bo of these two promi­nent local news sites—with Crosscut’s in-depth, ana­lyt­i­cal week­ly arti­cles and PubliCola’s on-the-ground, break­ing news—could be awe­some. And we’re con­sid­er­ing it. Plus we could use their infra­struc­ture, edi­tors, and  copy edit­ing (they’ve got all that too). And they could use our younger read­ers and pro­gres­sive voice. This could end up being a real win for the community.

Brew­ster, for his part, told The Stranger’s Dominic Hold­en he is work­ing on rais­ing mon­ey to allow Cross­cut to afford the new hires.

There is an ambi­tious effort to raise this mon­ey over a two-year peri­od to allow us to hire an impres­sive fig­ure as leader of the com­pa­ny… I and the board want to see Cross­cut oper­at­ing at a con­sid­er­ably high­er lev­el of fund­ing in order to have more sta­bil­i­ty, more impact, and more full-time reporters.

Brew­ster is also try­ing to bring aboard for­mer Seat­tle P‑I man­ag­ing edi­tor David McCum­ber to run Cross­cut and over­see its team of writ­ers. The Seat­tle Week­ly reports that dis­cus­sions between Brew­ster and McCum­ber are still ongoing.

While we nev­er much cared for Pub­li­Co­la’s gos­sip-laden, horse-race dri­ven fea­tures (Morn­ing Fizz and After­noon Jolt) we did appre­ci­ate the leg­isla­tive ses­sion cov­er­age the site offered, as well as the guest posts and more lengthy sto­ries it published.

We wish Josh and Eri­ca the best as they decide whether join­ing Cross­cut’s sta­ble of writ­ers is what they want to do long-term.