To round off what has been a truly rubbish year across the media, popular tech site, The Inquirer, has just published its last posts. The site will remain up until March but won’t be publishing fresh content over the next few months.
The decision to close came from the site’s publisher, Incisive Media, and apparently was a big surprise to staff.
On the site, editor Carly Page wrote: “We were informed by our publisher last week – Merry Christmas! Happy Tory landslide! – which has made the decision that due to a recent decline in digital advertising, along with a change of focus for the business, it was time for The INQUIRER to go dark.”
Speaking to Press Gazette, Chris Merriman, associate editor, said that the site still had a healthy audience, averaging about three million unique monthly visitors.
“On paper certainly it was in good health which is why from our point of view, because we have nothing to do with ad sales and campaigns and things like that, we weren’t to know there was anything wrong,” he said.
The Inquirer was founded by Mike Magee in 2001. It was purchased by VNU in 2006, who were in turn bought out by Incisive Media in 2007. Over its 18 years of operating, the site has published news, features, opinion pieces and reviews, most of which carried the site’s trademark humour.
Writing about her experience of the site, editor Page described it as a publication that “energised tech journalism with its fearless attitude, snarky reporting, world-reaching exclusives and its ability to have an, er, bit of fun now and again.”
The news follows a year in which publications faced a string of ruthless cuts and closures. BuzzFeed, VICE and New York Media all slashed their staff numbers this year, leaving a lot of journalists out in the cold.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.