I think you’re using the term “they” to be kind and not name names. I respect that so I won’t use their name either. I assume most of us know anyway. I also understand that you value the content and are a subscriber, so I don’t mean this as an attack, but more to explain why I don’t hold it against them the way that some people do.
In a way, by using “they” when we’re talking about one person, it clouds the reality that one person made the decision to sell (right or wrong), not the whole of the team, and that led to the eventual decision by the employees, the users, and even that person, to express regret and take a massive risk to do something new. That person has admitted they made a mistake, even if it may have enriched them. We all make mistakes, but not all of us are willing to dig back in and try to fix that mistake, even if it means a new model that may upset some subscribers. For that reason, while I’m sad it happened, I don’t hold it against them.
If the first paragraph is talking about the old Cyclingtips site, then I have a point of information.
At first, CT’s funding was from ad revenue, not memberships. That creates inherent conflicts of interest that all the media space has to navigate. Generally I thought they did a good job.
They raised capital from that private equity firm later on, but before going to the membership model. Generally, I would not generally expect this to pose conflicts with editorial independence. That is, I don’t think you can say that they’ve lost their editorial independence just because they went and raised capital.
Anyway, some time after that, they launched the membership program, but they still had advertising revenue coming in.
I said “don’t generally expect” above because yes, their corporate owners did interfere and get them to pull one article on Sagan and NFTs. Those were the second corporate owners. The first set of owners were fine as far as we can tell from outside. That was a stupid decision, and the staff and all the readers were not happy. That sort of thing was the exception to the rule as far as I know. Keep in mind I’m talking about editorial independence here. If you are talking about corporate independence, then that’s fine.
It’s also not fair if you are saying that the downfall of CT was a foreseeable consequence of deciding to raise capital. They trusted the original investment firm. It isn’t reasonable to expect them to foresee that they would get passed around to some guy who made knucklehead decisions.
Wow that is a huge bummer. He literally just recorded a Geek Warning on the new GRX that I listened to this morning. I have to say James’s content was a significant reason for my love of Escape…
Ditto. I’m half-way thru that podcast and already lamenting his loss. I love Dave and his take as well, but James was a HUGE reason for my sub to EC. Will just have to see how they continue for future sub, but I hope they keep up the great tech coverage I value.
And since I tagged him earlier this week, just want to say an official ‘Thank You!’ to @angryasian here based upon the announcement. You will be missed, but best wishes on whatever comes next.
