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Monday, June 18, 2012

City / Media PubliCola Purchased By SagaCity Media, Owners of Seattle Met

Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:26 AM

PubliCola lived for three and a half years as an independent online news start-up founded by former Stranger News Editor Josh Feit and kept afloat by Urban Visions CEO Greg Smith and Concur Technologies COO Rajeev Singh.

Then, in March, it went dark.

Then, for about a month, Feit and co-editor Erica C. Barnett (who's also a former Stranger news editor) worked on a freelance basis for Crosscut.

Then, on June 12, Feit and Barnett announced they'd left Crosscut and, in advance of a new evolution, "gone fishin.'"

Then, on June 15, Crosscut announced serious cutbacks and "reduced summer hours" for staff.

One moral of the story: Though there's been a lot of hype about the promise of new media, so far it's very hard to make it financially as a small, local-politics-oriented, online-only news site.

Now Feit and Barnett are linking back up with a print product, Seattle Met, and will henceforth be known as PubliCola@SeattleMet. They'll be writing for Seattle Met, but also online at their old site, which was purchased by SagaCity Media, the owners of Seattle Met, for an undisclosed sum.

"What a short, strange trip it’s been,” Feit said in a statement.

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After their bad luck rubbed off on Crosscut I wonder what will happen to SeattleMet.

Posted by Baconcat on June 18, 2012 at 11:33 AM

C'mon Baconcat...

...Crosscut sucks. Josh and Erica ALMOST made it worth reading, but then they had a prominent post by the idiot Ted VanDyk about de-funding Colleges and Universities in Washinton State.

Typical Crosscut bullshit.

Josh and Erica do a great job...I can't wait to get back to PubliCola.

Posted by Rujax!

on June 18, 2012 at 11:44 AM

Now you're just somebody that I used to know.

Posted by Sellouts on June 18, 2012 at 11:53 AM

Given that Barnett and Feit are billed as "co-owners" I guess they were able to negotiate a decent deal with SageCity Media while working for non-profit Crosscut. Neat!

I wonder if they will get equity in SageCity Media or just the remnants of their formerly independent entity.

Posted by Aaron on June 18, 2012 at 12:11 PM

I'm happy for them..they're good eggs.

Posted by SeMe on June 18, 2012 at 12:25 PM

@4: Why would a company pay anything substantial to buy a failed blog that has proven it can't bring in any significant revenue? I'm guessing Josh and Erica are happy just to have someone keep them afloat a while longer.

Posted by bigyaz on June 18, 2012 at 12:37 PM

What?

Is someone trying to get funding for another tunnel and they need some lapdog reporters to ballyhoo for a year or so?

Or maybe the Sodo stadium guys are fronting it...

Posted by Supreme Ruler Of The Universe

on June 18, 2012 at 1:02 PM

Great to know that such investigative journalism as their shameful coverage of Drew Constantine's personal life has found another host to infect.

Posted by stinky on June 18, 2012 at 1:16 PM

I'm glad to see them come out on top. The Crosscut merge didn't seem a very comfortable fit.

Posted by M. Wells on June 18, 2012 at 1:20 PM

Feit lost all credibility as a news writer when he wrote that bullshit article about Dow Constantine and mentioned Dow's girlfriend by name. He's become a gossip columnist. Should be perfect for Seattle Met.

Posted by lamefest on June 18, 2012 at 2:55 PM

I started reading the Stranger years ago because of Erica and Josh. The rest of the rag is not exactly my demographic but E&J had the best local and state government coverage of any local publication (and that means you Seattle Times and PI). I was sorry when they left the Stranger, cheered for PubliCola, find Crosscut to be pretentious crap, and now wish them all the best in their new endeavor.

Posted by crone on June 18, 2012 at 3:20 PM

Hard to wish those clowns well.

Posted by ohthetrees on June 18, 2012 at 3:45 PM

I love Dow as much as any proper Democrat in the area, but how are his personal issues any less of note than those of the right or politicians in general?

It sucks, but if you run for office willingly, you put yourself in the fish bowl. You give up a substantial portion of your freedoms in this sense in exchange for power, authority and money.

Posted by Joe Szilagyi

on June 18, 2012 at 4:27 PM

The train wreck continues.

Tip to the new media wantabes. All successful media is social. Old media is replaced by media that is more social, not less.

Engage your readers, and commenters, or ignore them at your peril.

Lastly, the group is usually smarter, so give up the "voice of media authority" once in a while and simply as "why" do your readers thing something is as it is.
That's something dead trees will never be able to compete with.

Good luck.

Posted by MrBaker

on June 18, 2012 at 5:08 PM

It's weird how these people had a job at one place, then for a couple years they worked someplace else, and then a new place for only a month, followed by a job someplace else.

I've never met anybody who changed jobs every few years. And in one case within a short span of time!. Who lives like that? This Feit and Barnett are out of touch freaks. Journalists today, I tell you...

No wonder those of us (the majority!) who have worked at exactly the same place day in and day out for our entire adult lives feel like we have no voice.

Posted by Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn