More Media Layoffs — Politicker Sites Go Dark
It's been the buzz of the blogosphere today: Of the 17 Politicker.com state websites, 12 will be shuttered. Vermont is one of those sites, according to a Colorado newspaper.
The Colorado Independent reports that Politicker.com sites in New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania will remain operating. Sites in Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Vermont and Washington state will disappear.
Here's what Owen Thomas at Gawker had to report:
At a holiday party Thursday night for the New York Observer — pizza and a keg in a conference room — Kushner gave a speech praising Politicker "despite what it has cost," an eyewitness tells us. If he planned to cut those costs the next morning, he gave no indication. But the problem with Politicker isn't what it cost; it's how little money it made.
The problem was finding the advertising money to support all those bureaus. Local reporters, thanks to newspaper cutbacks, are easy enough to locate. But advertisers, especially advertisers willing to spend small amounts at high rates to reach tiny, localized audiences, are scarce. Building relationships with those advertisers takes time and money on its own — and may not always prove worth the investment. A cautionary tale for those who would supplant newspapers in their local coverage: ink, paper, and printing presses aren't the only things wrong with the newspaper business.
At least 70 percent of Politicker staffers nationwide have been laid off. Laid-off staffers lost their email access and posting rights within an hour of an early-morning conference call announcing the cuts, according to a report on The Stranger's staff blog, Slog.
For additional stories about Politicker's demise, check out Politico.com.
