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Introducing Ask Torontoist
City of Toronto Releases Union Offer Details
Torontoist will be there to see the new year after all.
After announcing that the site would close at the end of this month, we received a totally unprecedented amount of encouragement from our readers and attention from lots and lots of media outlets here and elsewhere (and had an imitator or two to boot). The consensus—an encouraging one—has been that Torontoist can't and shouldn't end like this.
I decided to leave Torontoist only when I felt that the site could go no further in the direction I'd attempted to steer it, and that any potential progress would be necessarily stunted by financial circumstances that could only get progressively worse. As I put it a week and a half ago, "as it exists now, Torontoist can barely be sustained, let alone developed"—by any editor. Gothamist agreed, and planned to shut the site down in the new year as a result.
But a lot has changed for the better in the past week and a half, and a lot now seems possible for the site's future that wasn't before. And while Torontoist does not yet have the financial support it needs, we do have the support of our readers and our city, and that is what we've always needed most. So I'm happy to announce that up to, through, and past January 1, Torontoist will continue as Torontoist, with its existing name, existing contributors, and new content. (And, for now, it will continue to be supported technically and sustained financially by Gothamist.) It won't just be business as usual: it is the entire staff's shared mission to give the site one big concerted push, one that will see us in far better shape in six month's time and that should ensure not just our survival but our growth and success. We're going to do what we can to make Torontoist better than ever. It might, of course, not work. But we're not done—not yet.
Thanks for reading, and stay with us.
David Topping
Editor-in-Chief, Torontoist
Photo by Miles Storey.
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First to say YAY!!!
are you staying on as Editor then too?
@paige: yep.
quel drama!
It's like an early Christmas present!! : D
How big was the raise Topping?
Lets hope the site recognizes it's need to improve now.
Knock knock ... hey, it's opportunity!
Torontoist retains the confidence of the netizenry, and narrowly avoids blog proroguing, not to mention rogue pro-blogging!
yay! this is great news!!
I don't know about confidence. If Topping's going to threaten to take their ball and go home every time he gets anxious...
This is great news! Now I don't have to depend on that gawd awful site mightygodking.com for my daily entertainment. Good to hear your keeping up the fight DT!
Perhaps now that you're staying, we can expect the frequency and quality of updates to be comparable to what Gothamist pushlishes?
Fingers crossed...
this is like when i was 12 and my cat got hit by a car and we buried it. my cat showed up three weeks later and it turns out we had just buried one that looked exactly like it. all that grieving for nothing. i'm excited you're staying up, though!
Good news. Is there any way you can become more autonomous from Gothamist? Torontoist is clearly just another franchise to them, and one they don't consider to be all that important.
Fantastic! This is the best news I've heard all day.
Hah! Take that, Andrew Ryan Fox!
Glad you're staying on.
>rogue pro-blogging
Well played, SpupEh :).
Be careful Topping, you wouldn't want to be known as the "boy who cried wolf".
Hooray! Best Christmas / birthday present I could have asked for from the interweb.
made my week.
this is incredible news.
what can we do to help keep things moving?
By the way, was this one of the "surprises" that you alluded to in the takedown notice?
MERRY CHRISTMAS! this is great news!
Bonus!
@12 - that could depend on whether you're willing to write for it or otherwise help. According to Jonathan Goldsbie's message on the FB group, there is a call for new people to help. I will certainly be thinking about what it might be possible for me to contribute.
wondeful news. keep on truckin' david.
Wow, this is definitely exciting news!! It's a blog worth keeping online, that's for sure.
awesome! best xmas present i'm getting!
Good stuff!
Really happy about this...!
Great news David! Where else would I get my updates on cockroach/rat infested restaurants from?
Good news.
Could there be a mechanism built into the site by which freelance and community contributions could be submitted for review (and potential publishing) onto the Torontoist blog?
I believe that if this were the case, it would provide for some additional content, even more devoted following, and still retain strict controls over the quality of content being posted.
This is a model that is already being applied to the photographs via the Torontoist Flickr pool, so why not written word as well?
This is good news!
In the spirit of celebration, seasonal and otherwise, I, personally, will give dissatisfied readers their money back if they can't stop themselves from posting flamebait by February 1, 2009.
Woohoo!
(I'm doing my happy dance)
Fantastic!
It's a Christmas Miracle!
Huzzah!
narthnib's idea sounds like a plan...
Interestingly, Parisist (Parisist.com) was put "on hiatus" last year.
David, you tease.
Page views may not reflect this, but I have to wonder (and gripe a little) at Torontoist ending columns that generated a fair amount of discussion (Foodist, for a recent example) while others (daily photos, articles on sports) rarely get more than a handful of comments. I don't remember the last time I saw a comic posted here, and both of them were popular (for opposite reasons).
Good news though, I look forward to 24 more weeks of Vandalist posts and davedave complaining.
Excellent news, David!
Brad Ross
yippee!
That's awesome.
It is a Festivus miracle!
This is really good news.
Perhaps Gothamist would consider killing off Phillyist, since it is basically generic crap. Or maybe spin that off to some sort of comic book/popular movie/pop culture thing.
This honestly made my day. Let us know if you need volunteers, I'm sure a lot of us people would be happy to contribute free of charge, especially if they're attending events or things anyway.
Well played Toby von, well played...
Hey...I agree, good news. Another win for the little guy and all that...
There is lots of white space available for ads when there is 44 comments on a post...
Thanks everyone. Just to quickly reply to some stuff:
@x_the_x: actually, because of the reduced money we now have coming in, for the interim I'll be volunteering as editor so that I can keep the current pay scale for contributors intact and accommodate new contributors. It's the only way this'll work.
@PickleToes: this definitely wasn't planned or expected, no. When I mentioned "surprises," I was thinking of content that was already planned out for the rest of the month—like Heroes and Villains (coming on Christmas and Boxing Day), the pun hunt (coming shortly thereafter), and a few cool things in addition to that.
@tyrannosaurus_rek: we don't ditch columns (or contributors) based on low pageviews—that'd be a mostly quantitative way to measure something that's mostly qualitative. I think you're referring to Wild Toronto and Urbanaut (what's Foodist?), both of which ended not because we pulled the plug on them but because their creators, Rosemary Mosco and Rey Ortega respectively, didn't have the time to continue them. (We really do work with a finite budget, and the number one reason most people stop contributing to Torontoist is that they can no longer balance it with other commitments.) Pageviews notwithstanding, Wild Toronto and Urbanaut were two of Torontoist's most well-liked features (by readers, staff, and me) while they ran, and I'm definitely disappointed that they couldn't last longer. But if it's any consolation, I can tell you that at least one of them will be back for one final edition in time for the new year.
@narthnib: that's an interesting idea, one we've thought about before, and one we'll definitely discuss at our staff meeting in January, though there are plenty of consequences, complications, and hurdles that may not make it worth it. For one, I really like having contributions come solely from a dedicated staff—people who I and our readers come to know—rather than opening up submissions to anyone, even if those submissions are moderated. I'd encourage anyone who saw themselves contributing articles to us on any sort of regular basis to apply to be a staff member—while we're really picky about who makes it on staff, the requirements to stay once you'd made it are really quite reasonable.
@jonnyr00: To help? Keep reading, keep commenting, and tell your friends. As dowlingm pointed out, we could always use more contributors on board, and I'll absolutely be bringing on several new people in the new year. And if you know anyone who has like a billion dollars lying around, by all means e-mail me.
sex!
this really made my day. long live torontoist!
amen....i can finally envision life after the new year...and by way of suggestions...why don't you start improving the site by removing the stale picture of jack layton,that oportunistic _ _ _ _ _ (you fill in the blanks...),it's gathering mould under the moustache...
This is good news - don't let criticism from anyone get you down, David. Though I hate graffiti and have posted my view, I recognize some see the beauty in it. Keep it balanced with gems like Historicist or Wild Toronto and I'm happy. The place doesn't compare with blogTO which isn't as intelligent or as fun.
I am speechless in my happiness! :D Our support made a difference after all! Yaaayyy!
A Hannukah miracle and just in time for Festivus - I was airing my grievance to my mother about how Torontoist was dead. Hurray!
I am so glad to see Torontoist is back in action.
You don't know how happy this makes me :D
We at Prospere Magazine are glad to hear that you're still going to be around!
thank you lord jebus
thank you lord jebus
wow. thats so toronto.
can we shut down the phillyist (and their horrible posts + poor attendance) now?
Despite being painfully slow to comment, I'm really delighted about this! I'd have been devastated without Torontoist, the gaping void would have been impossible to fill.
I'm really happy you're staying on, David.