I try to understand a subject before I write about it. So I won’t have much to say about the changes taking place at TBD.
Here’s what I will say:
- Working at TBD has been a highlight of my career. I am proud of what we have achieved. Working with the staff and the colleagues here has been a delight and a privilege.
- I could not be prouder of the community engagement staff: Mandy Jenkins, Jeff Sonderman, Lisa Rowan, Dan Victor and Nathasha Lim. They are stellar, pioneering digital journalists. If they want any of the jobs that remain, I hope TBD will keep them. If they choose to leave or lose their jobs, someone should hire them swiftly.
- My other TBD colleagues amaze me every day.
- I have great admiration for Jim Brady, who hired me, and Erik Wemple, who has led TBD since Jim’s departure.
- TBD has not failed. A venture has to be given a chance to succeed before it can fail. And the staff who remain will excel at WJLA.com and the smaller TBD.com.
You can read lots of news reports and blog posts about what’s happened at TBD and I don’t have the energy after a long day to curate them all here. So I’ll just pass along two:
- Mallary Tenore of Poynter compiled a nice history of TBD.
- Jeff Sonderman, in a classy move to tell the story even when he was part of it, curated Twitter reaction to today’s news (thanks to all who shared kind words on Twitter and by email and elsewhere).
Addition: Since people have asked, I should say that I did not lose my job today. But I ache for colleagues who will be losing their jobs.
Hang in there, Steve. You and TBD have inspired my students — those who heard you speak at Newstrain and those who evaluated TBD as their midterm last semester. TBD has been an exciting, innovative experiment, and those of you who have made it a journalistic success will keep the momentum going wherever the next step might be.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Steve Buttry, ljthornton, Bill Doskoch, Denise Graveline, Jeff Sonderman and others. Jeff Sonderman said: RT @stevebuttry: I don't have much to say, but working at TBD has been a highlight of my career: http://bit.ly/fGxi1i […]
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What will you be doing? Someone was quoted as saying there would be conversations about individual assignments.
I’m happy you still have your job, but, of course, I know you will remain or go based on your values and principles. It won’t surprise me if I see a new post on you turning the new niche site into something amazing, or if I hear you’ve gone on to something new and equally amazing.
Good luck!
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Last I heard, Steve, you didn’t lose your job. Not sure why you’re writing as if you did. The unfortunate aspect of all of this is you did fail. You failed to give the project a chance and you failed at marketing the products you had.
This crapola that “we did not fail” is just hogwash. But, let’s be clear: those running the ship are the failures. Those holding the purse strings are the failures.
The staffers who started work every day and pushed hard to make a start up viable to new readers was laudable but let’s not be sensitive to the truth: FAIL.
You couldn’t engage enough people off the bat. But everyone is right so far in that no start-up is going to be a revenue maker in seven months. To think it will be is juvenile managing and just plain dumb.
TBD may have worked if the idiots running the ship found a way to keep it afloat for two or three years.
Let’s just hope AOL doesn’t do the same thing. The Patch sites show promise, but anyone who thinks you can double engagement when a site has been live less than a year isn’t living in reality.
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Lane,
Thanks for your response. I added the final line to clarify that I did not lose my job.
As for failure, we disagree. The TBD concept was not given a chance to succeed. What startup ever succeeded in six months?
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We, who watched the great TBD experiment from the sideline, salute you and your staff. It was fun and inspiring to watch. I fully expect others to study your playbook and make a go of it. TBD will remain an important data point on the timeline of the evolution of journalism.
Wishing you the best,
JS
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Back atcha, Joel! You folks at NPR have some great things going on as well.
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Steve, That is basically what I was saying. The execs failed. No start up will succeed in such a short period of time. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
The “you did fail” was not you specifically but those who thought of this idea and put the little funding behind it.
There is nothing I dislike more than hearing a company say we’re making some changes and no one’s job is at risk and then two weeks later hand out the pink slips. I realize this is the nature of business, but it still is disgustingly unfortunate.
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Thanks, Lane.
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Steve — thinking of you and your team — TBD’s impact extends throughout the online media world no matter what happens. We’ve become a world where instant results are what counts, but what you’e done will resonate for a long time.
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Thanks, Steve!
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[…] of TBD, a Washington-based local news site that launched in April, attract my attention because a talented friend of mine joined the venture last spring. I remember wishing him well in a coffee shop 11 months ago while […]
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[…] website that is not even seven months old has not yet had a chance to succeed,” said Buttry, who did not lose his job. “If you haven’t had a chance to succeed, then you haven’t […]
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[…] have refrained from saying much publicly about the recent cutbacks at TBD because … well, because. The reasons are complicated and I still work here. I am reluctant to […]
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[…] addressing whether our company made the right business decision to cut the TBD staff and redirect efforts, I can say the news business and Washington news consumers are poorer because this group never got […]
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[…] Feb. 23 was an awful day for TBD. Most of the staff, including Jeff, learned that their jobs would be eliminated. This had to be one of the most emotional days of his career. But Jeff’s a newsperson at his core, so he reacted by covering the story, curating the social media response on his blog using Storify. (Jeff later was named managing editor of the combined web production desk for TBD.com and WJLA.com, which relaunched today, with Jeff handling much of the planning and testing.) […]
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[…] time on the community engagement team was short. The month after he joined, our company decided to change directions with TBD and cut the staff, including the community engagement […]
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[…] Ideas and tips. Solicit story ideas from the community. This can be an old-fashioned tip line for people to call in story ideas. It can be an appeal on Twitter. Molly Rossiter, who covered faith and values at The Gazette when I was in Cedar Rapids, would ask her tweeps for suggestions when seasonal stories such as Advent and Lent rolled around. You can solicit story ideas with a submission tool on your website. Some sort of reward for the best tip of the week or month might keep the tips coming. You can use the community as your assignment editor, as Daniel Victor did when he was at the Harrisburg Patriot-News. (He was planning a similar project at TBD when the owner decided to cut our staff.) […]
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[…] ways with owner Robert Allbritton last November. By February, Allbritton changed the mission and cut the staff. By May, I was […]
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[…] Working at TBD has been a highlight of my career […]
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