MessyMedia ceases publishing
Today, we're shutting down Westmonster, our UK political website. Last month, we closed our other site, Glitterditch. So we're no longer in the digital publishing business, and we're focussing instead on digital consulting to the UK media, NGO, and advocacy sectors.
We're not taking the decision lightly, but the fact is that the audiences for these titles didn't warrant continued investment, particularly in the light of the advertising downturn the media sector is wrestling with.
When we launched last year, it was with the belief that there was an unserved niche for stylised reporting and content that fell between what the large media companies were doing, and what independent bloggers were providing. We're not saying that isn't true, but we are saying it's going to take significant amounts of investment in marketing and audience-building to build a business in there, for all sorts of reasons.
We've also found it really hard to recruit writing talent for the titles. We started with the working assumption that there was a significant tranche of young journalists in the UK willing to take a punt on a small publisher in return for increasing their own profile - we were offering pay, of course, but linked to audience and posting levels. What we found was that, at least at this point in time, those writers just don't seem to exist in any significant numbers in this country. While we were able to find some very dedicated and talented writers, the effective advertising CPM we'd have needed to pay them a reasonable wage only existed at an audience size orders of magnitude larger than we were able to achieve.
That said, we've had a lot of fun during our brief stint as media moguls. Despite the size of the audience, Westmonster in particular had moments where it punched well above its weight, attracting the attention of the traditional media and of the blogosphere.
To all of those who read and supported our titles, and particularly to those few intrepid writers who were willing to have a go, we'd like to extend our heartfelt thanks.
We're still working on things, separately and together, and MessyMedia does have a future. But not, for now, in digital publishing.
--Lloyd Shepherd & Andrew Levy, co-Managing Directors, MessyMedia
8 Comments
Well done for giving it a go guys!
You're comment policy was off putting, there never seemed to be anyone on your posts to chat/debate/shout at hence the blog lacked vibrancy and community. No blog can survive without both of those.
Sorry to see westmonster go, much enjoyed the clever tone. Best of luck with MessyMedia2.0
Leon - wow, you're right! If only we'd thought of that!
Schlunzi and Ed - many thanks.
If you'd like, we'd be happy to take a look at acquiring the properties, and to get the writers writing again :)
I think that this comment of yours is really interesting:
"We started with the working assumption that there was a significant tranche of young journalists in the UK willing to take a punt on a small publisher in return for increasing their own profile - we were offering pay, of course, but linked to audience and posting levels. What we found was that, at least at this point in time, those writers just don't seem to exist in any significant numbers in this country."
Whatever other faults there may have been in your business model, I do sense that you are on to something. I, too, am not sure that the next generation of journalists in this country have really grasped how hard they will have to work, how creative they will have to be, how original and relevant their writing will have to be. It's not because they are crap, it's just that I think the upcoming generation will have just as much a problem in adjusting and adapting to New Media as old gits like me.
Good luck with the rest of the biz,
cheers
Charlie Beckett
Sorry to hear that, but well done, valiant effort dudes, and best of luck with whatever else you're up to.
I also agree with Leon, maybe next time start with the comments, and then write the articles - got that? Good.
I think you're right about the lack of a willing talent pool to draw from. We're heading into a period where lots of young hacks will want to enter the comfy world of mags or papers, but find significantly fewer jobs and that they should have learnt how to blog instead....