Torontoist, a Canadian branch in the Gothamist empire, is closing down.
At the end of this month, I will be stepping down as Torontoist’s Editor-in-Chief. I’ve loved everything about this job since I started it, and my decision to leave was not an easy one to make, but it is, ultimately, the right one at the right time for the right reasons. Gothamist has decided, as a result of both my resignation and the recession, to close Torontoist on January 1, 2009 and concentrate on their more lucrative American sites. That decision is the right one, too: as it exists now, Torontoist can barely be sustained, let alone developed, and it has survived and thrived as long as it has, in spite of modest means, largely because of the ceaseless hard work of that aforementioned collective.
Torontoist was actually pretty funny a lot of the time. And they also provided a paid blog outlet for Christopher Bird*, who is always a delight. It sounds like Seattlest is okay, but I’m willing to bet this won’t be the last paid blogger collapse of 2008.
*And if you follow that last link to Bird’s Mightygodking website, you will find a link to a blog named Way to Suck That Dick!, which is a critique of amateur porn that has been posted on the Internet. It’s pretty funny and also creepy, which is what I like to call a “difecta.”
I think it’s pretty much a given that we’ll see several Gawker sites shut down before the New Year. And I’m specifically thinking of Io9, Consumerist, Jezebel and Deadspin.
What other sites are left in the paid blogger world that haven’t announced any layoffs/shut downs?
Yeah, Seattlest is okay, largely on the strength of having a single paid staff writer. The Torontoist situation was made difficult by Canada being a foreign country and Gothamist thus having to negotiate a separate advertising contract for each of its advertisers, which is sort of the opposite of why they built a network of city blogs. Also Topping is, in a very real way, irreplaceable. *sniff*
I’ve been wondering for several months how long SFist can keep going; daily posts are *way* down from a year ago and don’t start until very late, and there are days when they don’t post at all when most of the other Gothamist sites stay busy.
So much for the New Media.
@1: I think that Gawker (who pays all their writers) has already cut Consumerist and Valleywag. In fact, Consumerist is up for sale if you’ve got some old money sitting around.
http://consumerist.com/5084569/consumeri…
Valleywag is getting folded into Gawker sometime soon. Consumerist should find a buyer, and Fleshbot probably will as well. As for the rest of the Denton Empire, Deadspin seems to be holding its own despite losing Will Leitch, io9’s traffic is surprisingly good, and the others seem to be setting themselves up for sale.
Denton’s strategy is pretty simple: Use the four core blogs (Gawker, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Kotaku) to fund new ideas (Deadspin, Idolator, Sploid, etc.), then either build on a successful idea (Deadspin), sell the idea to someone else (Idolator), or kill it if it’s unsuccessful (Sploid). Use the sold capital to fund new blogs and prop up the marginal ones. Repeat.
Oh, and do it all on a shoestring and an insane publishing schedule.
One could argue he’s being completely contrarian, but at the same time, he’s selling decent online properties in a time when online advertising budgets are rocketing up and there’s still capital out there to buy online properties.
Thanks for the tip to Way to Suck That Dick. Funny, although I think it could be funnier.