Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer

Its own timely demise

I shuttered Timely Demise today, 18 months after conceiving it, 16 months after launching it and three months after I generally lost my taste for publishing melancholy.
By most measures, the site was a success. I gained a ridiculous amount of knowledge about retail trends and the mechanics of restructuring. I received some fun press coverage. I developed a regular readership that, as of this writing, is still tuning in for news.
Google News added me as a source. I got the inestimable Choire Sicha to be my guestblogger. I began receiving anonymous tips, including one from an angry creditor pointing me to his debtor’s bankruptcy. And I had one actual news scoop hand-delivered by a company’s public relations firm.
I knew all along that this would be a tough subject to cover neatly. After all, I work for and with retailers; how can I be associated with bad news? So I tried to keep the blog objective and matter-of-fact, and that was usually enough. Yes, I know it had a rough name and a difficult topic. But at launch I felt a bit of provocation was appropriate for its moment in time. (See also: It Died, among others.)
Mostly, I found it all fascinating, as did my readers. I am much wiser about retail now than I was a year and a half ago. I suspect we all are.
A few months back, I registered timelyrevive.com with plans on shifting my focus toward expansion and profit statements. But I found that much harder to track from Timely Demise’s dedicated angle, which focused on consumer-level impact and not corporate maneuvers. Stories of 90-year-old corner stores closing make for better (and more trackable) journalism than Applebee’s #1997 opening in the local mall. I began running short on news.
So, three hundred and fourteen posts, five hundred fifty thousand page views, and eighty-nine dollars in ad revenue later, I’m hanging up my tough-news journalist’s hat. We’ll see if I can brew up something new–and more upbeat–for 2010.

1 Comment

  1. David said: “I’m hanging up my tough-news journalist’s hat.”
    Too bad. It’s sites like this and Market Ticker, Zero Hedge, Washington’s Blog and Cryptogon that deliver the truth and not the crappy pap being passed off as news by the lamestream media. Sorry to hear that you’re throwing in the towel and that we will “…see if I can brew up something new–and more upbeat–for 2010.”
    Good luck with that. Alas, I feel that your attempt at that will be as futile as timelyrevive.com
    Reality is a bitch. Don’t try to ignore it as most already do.

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