I was traveling and leading workshops this week for the anti-climactic final end of TBD. I didn’t have time to weigh in then, except on Twitter, after my former TBD colleague Jenny Rogers broke the news:
TBD’s long, slow, painful road to death is over. TBD.com now reroutes to WJLA.com. So that’s that!
— Jenny Rogers (@jennyrogersDC) August 15, 2012
I’m way past pain. MT
@jennyrogersdc: TBD’s slow, painful road to death is over. tbd.com reroutes to wjla.com. — Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) August 15, 2012
@skenigsberg@jennyrogersdc Fond memories of great colleagues & a great start. But I’ve turned the page. Miles to go before I sleep. Or weep — Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) August 16, 2012
I don’t have a lot to add, but I’ve blogged a lot about TBD here, so I should note the denouement. TBD made our mark in part through effective aggregation of Washington local news, so I’ll note its passing with some aggregation on its brief history. It won’t be complete, but I invite you to add some more links in the comments. Where I aggregate content from TBD, I should note that I don’t know how long it will remain available. Archived content appears to be online, though the home page and some searches redirect to wjla.com.
Before we get to the actual demise, I have to share a link and screenshot from the coverage of our launch: 
I don’t believe any elaboration is needed here.
As for coverage of the actual death, it was pretty muted, perhaps appropriately for an operation whose life and death throes were perhaps overcovered. Here are the best accounts I saw of the final demise (normally that phrase would be redundant, but TBD’s demise was drawn-out enough that I consider it appropriate):
Erik Wemple’s No more TBD.com (Erik was TBD’s editor and now blogs about media for the Washington Post:
This may be one of the last times that TBD.com does what it’s most famous for. Getting media attention, that is. … TBD.com has died its third or fourth — but this time final — death.
Cory Bergman’s TBD.com officially dead, let’s praise the experiment:
Local TV is so terrified of failure, the fact they took a swing at a hard problem should be praised from the rooftops. We need more experiments — large and small — without fatal repurcussions. … In fact, TV groups should carve out respectable chunks of their budgets to experiment in earnest, empowering talented teams to create disruptive new products. These efforts don’t need to be as big as TBD, but they should come with a dose of patience and an eagerness to learn.
Will Sommer’s Goodnight, Sweet Prince: TBD Disappears From the Web:
Once-promising news start-up TBD has been a ghost ship for a while now— transportation reporter John Hendel, the site’s last employee, left in June — but now even its reposting of WJLA stories is over.
Some other tweets about the ghost ship finally sinking:
TBD was the Abe Vigoda of web sites. When it finally died today, pretty sure most people thought it was already dead: wapo.st/OZ5OCB — Jim Brady (@jimbradysp) August 15, 2012
TBD shall rise again … at someplace smart. Mark my words. washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wem… — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) August 15, 2012
TBD.com, famously “of the web” not just “on the web,” is now officially “OFF the web” — gone washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wem… — Jeff Stanger (@jeffcdi) August 16, 2012
I like the “dead” tag: No more TBD.com – Erik Wemple – The Washington Post j.mp/OYPPo4 — Abraham Hyatt (@abrahamhyatt) August 15, 2012
RIP “Post-killer,” 2010-2012.RT
@erikwemple: TBD.com dies its final death: wapo.st/OwP8Xb — J. Freedom du Lac (@jfdulac) August 15, 2012
TBD.com has shut down… Again :washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wem… — themediaisdying (@themediaisdying) August 15, 2012
Amazed it took this long RT
@jennyrogersdc: TBD.com‘s long, slow, painful road to death is over. Now reroutes to WJLA — Sommer Mathis (@sommermathis) August 15, 2012
.
@tbd dead but its Twitter account is still running. Unfollowing… Now. — Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) August 18, 2012
Whoever was squatting the
@tbd Twitter handle (goo.gl/XydBP) can have it back soon. goo.gl/u3DYg— Steve Earley (@stephencearley) August 17, 2012
RIP
@tbd – we will remember you fondly: washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wem…#journalism#sad— Spark Media (@SparkFeed) August 17, 2012
@tbd RIP! You were a good twitter account.— Erin Ryan (@eranryin) August 16, 2012
Peeled the nametag off the outside of the coffin, more like RT
@erikwemple TBD.com dies its final death: wapo.st/OwP8Xb— Don Whiteside™ (@donw) August 15, 2012
Tonight,
@stevebuttry and I toasted to the late TBD.com, with water. Which is bad luck, and seemed completely appropriate. — Mimi Johnson(@mimijohnson) August 16, 2012
This Twitter feed will be shutting down soon. For the latest breaking news and information, please follow
@abc7news and@newschannel8.— TBD(@TBD) August 17, 2012
Fav, out of sheer schadenfreude. “
@tbd: This Twitter feed will be shutting down soon.”— ECC (@MsFiremoney) August 16, 2012
@tbd YOU DON’T EXIST ANYMORE.— Michael J. West (@themikewest) August 16, 2012
TBD no go. MT
@tbd: This Twitter feed will be shutting down soon.— Daniel Victor (@bydanielvictor) August 16, 2012
#sadtrombone RT@bydanielvictor: TBD no go. MT@tbd: This Twitter feed will be shutting down soon.— Adam Schweigert (@aschweig) August 16, 2012
call it! RT
@tbd: This Twitter feed will be shutting down soon.— Patrick Madden (@Patrick_Madden) August 16, 2012
Maybe the TBD mouse finally figured out how to work a keyboard? RT
@skenigsberg: why is@tbd still tweeting then?? cc:@erikwemple— Elliot Kort (@QuoVadimusDC) August 15, 2012
It’s a zombie, tweeting WJLA stories now. RT
@skenigsberg: why is@tbd still tweeting then?? cc:@erikwemple— Jeremy Binckes (@jbinckes) August 15, 2012
Hey
@tbd Are you buzzing like some eerie, post-mortem twitch? goo.gl/vOzpn@brfreed@yospyn#dc— Matt Dunn (@MattDunnDC) August 15, 2012
So
@tbd has been determined.— Bryan Rothamel (@FlucoVoice) August 16, 2012
Here are some of my blog posts about the brief but exciting good times:
- TBD
- TBD Community Network will provide lots of news, variety
- What’s the plan for the TBD Community Network?
- TBD is committed to accuracy; help us correct, verify
- Media bloggers are watching TBD even before we launch
- A public-relations rookie’s handling of the TBD launch (this includes links to coverage of the launch by lots of media outlets; I’ll cut and paste that list at the end of this post, to aggregate as much TBD coverage as I can in one place. But it’s a long list that would slow things down if I drop it here.)
- Answering more TBD questions from ‘tweet wall’ at American University panel
- ‘Anatomy of a News Startup’ examines TBD, Project Argo
- TBD swag saves an iPhone
TBD staff members explain what TBD was about:
- Daniel Victor’s How the TBD Community Network works
- Dan’s TBD community hosts: What we do, sort of
- Dan’s How TBD’s candy jar is a seamless metaphor for news site participation
- Dan’s My true motivation behind a month-long series on dating
- Live chat with TBD about the new site
- Lisa Rowan’s Behind the scenes at TBD
- Jeff Sonderman’s Learn about TBD from keynote panel at the Online News Association conference
- Jeff’s What TBD means to me
- Jeff’s My first TBD TV appearance
- Mandy Jenkins’ First try at using Xtranormal for news at TBD
- Mandy’s How TBD’s election day experiments turned out
- Mandy’s TBD’s big moment and a view from behind the coverage
- Mandy’s TBD experiments in community engagement: Week 1
- Mandy’s TBD 1.0 launches; now let the real fun begin
- Mandy’s Online news is always TBD
- The community engagement team’s joint contribution to Nieman Reports: Community Host: An Emerging Newsroom ‘Beat’ Without a Guide
TBD colleagues’ writing about the decline and demise of TBD:
- Mandy’s Lessons to be learned from TBD: International Edition
- Mandy’s Four key things TBD did right
- Mandy’s Farewell, TBD, it was good while it lasted
- Mandy’s TBD to eliminate most staffers, including yours truly
- Mandy’s TBD’s future it TBD, but then it always has been
- Jeff’s The TBD community shows what it’s all about
- Jim Brady’s Looking for talent? Meet the TBD staff (Part 1) and Part 2
Some coverage of TBD (we got a lot of coverage; this is just a sampling):
- Jeff Jarvis’ The birth of TBD?
- Kevin Anderson’s: TBD: Hunting for a new business model for regional news
- Joy Mayer’s What “engagement” means to TBD.com
- Joe Pompeo’s Washington Post Is Condescending and “Passive Aggressive” About Its Newest Competitor: DC Startup TBD.com
- Jed Williams’ TBD.com Progress Report: Partnerships, Participation and Performance
- Some 60 pieces on Poynter
- Nieman Journalism Lab coverage of TBD
- FishbowlDC coverage of TBD
- paidContent coverage of TBD
Coverage specifically about TBD’s decline (you’ll see some of that above; some of these were cut and pasted from a blog post last year; I haven’t checked to see that they are all still active):
- Sarah Hartley’s Hyperlocal and working with legacy brands: former TBD boss Jim Brady
- Michael Schaffer’s TBD’s Night of the Long Knives
- David Kaplan’s TBD Drops Its Ad Network
- Rick Robinson on Business Insider
- David Kaplan of paidContent
- Michael Boyd Clark
- Jane Stevens
- Jonathan Weber of Bay Area Citizen
- Mathew Ingram of GigaOm
- Emily Bell of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism
- CJR Q&A with Jim Brady
- Dan Conover
- Paul Farhi of the Washington Post
- Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter
- Cory Bergman of Lost Remote
- Poynter’s Mallary Tenore
- Poynter’s Rick Edmonds
- Journal Register’s John Paton (responding to Edmonds, with comment from Edmonds)
- Mike Orren (a 2009 blog post, but he tweeted when TBD was cutting staff last year that it was relevant to TBD developments)
- Ryan Kearney’s And then there were two and a half
- Catherine Finn’s TBD announces changes to its network
- Jed Williams’ TBD Shelves Community Ad Network After Marginal Results
- Aaron Morrissey’s TBD Pulls Plug On Community Network Ads Due To Sluggish Sales
- David Kaplan’s Jim Brady Exits Hyperlocal TBD After Only A Year
How I delicately noted the painful death knells before leaving myself:
- Jim Brady leaves TBD
- TBD halting ad sales in network
- Working at TBD has been a highlight of my career
- Multiple views about changes at TBD (an aggregation of others’ coverage of the staff cuts)
- TBD has made mistakes but we understand our communty(ies)
Twice last year I blogged about lessons from TBD:
- A year after launch, lessons from the TBD experience
- Another TBD lesson: Transparency is the best approach in good times and bad
Most recently, I noted that the #TBDiaspora are doing OK.
Beyond that, I don’t have much to say, except one piece of advice to others attempting innovation, especially within a legacy media company: To succeed, you need bold and clear vision and you need leaders with the courage to change themselves and to lead others in change.
— Shani O. Hilton (@shani_o) August 16, 2012
Coverage of the TBD launch
This list came straight from the PR rookie post above; I haven’t checked to see if all the links are still active. These are news outlets that covered our Aug. 9, 2010 launch (or the launch preview the week before):
Poynter live chat on launch day
Ostroplog (a German blog, translated here by Google)
New York Times
Social Business Book
FishBowl DC, take one
Kelsey Group
Knight Citizen News Network
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