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.
