On 23 April 2010 word came from Vancouver that NowPublic, the participatory-journalism start-up, had laid off most of its staff, eight of a team of eleven, and might be about to shut down. The report was filed from the International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin and updated through the day as the company responded.
NowPublic had been bought by Examiner.com the previous September. At the time of the sale the plan was for the two to operate independently and keep their own brands and offerings.
The first reaction came from NowPublic’s community manager, Amy Judd, who described the day on Twitter as “a terrible day, beyond sad.” Joy Gugeler, until then the company’s vice-president for publishing, content and partner acquisitions, said by e-mail that she was hugely disappointed that NowPublic’s potential and expansion would not be pursued as the staff recruited after the purchase had envisaged. Improvements to editorial quality, design, professionalism and writer compensation had been developed, she wrote, in the full expectation that they would be realised.
The company then pushed back. Co-founder Mike Tippett wrote on Facebook that “reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated”, and co-founder Len Brody said on Twitter that NowPublic was not closed: there had been layoffs because of the sale, but the company was moving forward.
The post’s closing assessment was that NowPublic would continue in some form, with a greatly reduced dedicated staff, and that what it would become was an open question.