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.