The Seattle PostGlobe, which launched in 2009 as an early online nonprofit newspaper venture with help from public broadcasting station KCTS 9 in Seattle, is closing, it announced today (July 29). "Donations have fallen off. Ads have generated no meaningful revenue — ever," writes Sally Deneen, co-founder and curator. "We began with no startup money. We obtained no grants. All of which actually provided unusual freedom. But as a volunteer-run site, we’ve run out of helping hands as unemployed journalists have left for jobs. (Which is a good thing!) So this is our final month."
The news site was created after the March 2009 closing of the city's nearly 150-year-old Post-Intelligencer newspaper. KCTS President Moss Bresnahan initially offered workspace in the station to some 20 laid-off journalists (Current, March 30, 2009) and for a time the station was PostGlobe's nonprofit fiscal sponsor, allowing KCTS donors to earmark money for the PostGlobe. The PostGlobe site also ran content KCTS created with InvestigateWest, another newsgathering operation started by former P-I journalists.
As Deneen says, "It’s been an eventful two years – sometimes fun, sometimes a mountain of work, but always worthwhile."
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