“Ashburn Media Company has decided to stop publishing Daily-download.com,” Lauren Ashburn tells Poynter in an emailed statement.
Our grant from Maryland Public Television and the Knight Foundation ended and, as everyone knows, operating an advertising-based niche website without additional funding is tough going in this economy. Many thanks to our contributors, readers and funders for their support over the last two years. Here’s to new opportunities.
Andrew Kaczynski wrote about the site’s apparent demise Tuesday. The Knight Foundation told Kaczynski the grant period “ended Nov. 30.”
Howard Kurtz lost his job at The Daily Beast after he appeared in a bizzarre Daily Download video where he appeared to take a swipe at Jason Collins, who came out in a Sports Illustrated story. Kurtz’s connection with the Daily Download was nearly as weird: “I’m a contributor at Daily Download and receive some freelance compensation, but the advisory board is an unpaid honorary position with no oversight,” he told Michael Calderone. And yet Kurtz “tweeted over 120 links to Daily Download, around 20 links to The Daily Beast and even fewer to CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” the weekly media criticism show he’s hosted since 1998,” Calderone noted.
Kurtz later left his “Reliable Sources” gig as well. He now hosts a competing program on Fox News.
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