December 18, 2005
Coda
Post-Mortem
From December 2002 until September of this year, I was the sole writer, editor, and publisher of this site, a widely-acclaimed "experiment in amateur journalism and hobbyist reporting" (as my boilerplate went) which focused on Portland politics.
During that time, I partook not only of the standard blogger's refrain of linking to and commenting upon other news sources, but also spent countless hours at election campaign events, neighborhood meetings, and wonkish sessions on City policy, contributing to the local media scene my own brand of original and opinionated reporting.
It was a full-time endeavor, both my avocation and my vocation, made possible through a combination of advertising revenue (several local political candidates advertised on the site) and reader contributions -- although the latter category would include members of my family back in New York, who in essence subsidized what the Portland market for the site never managed to support on its own.
When people asked me what I did, I replied: "I write a website about local politics." Sometimes, once they asked what it was called, they at least vaguely recognized the site's name.
And then, on September 24, I announced that I was finished. In that post, I said that at some point I would return to offer something of a post-mortem. Using as a springboard an article of mine which appeared in today's Sunday Oregonian (the full version of which also is available), what follows is that post-mortem.
