One of the newest news sites has a novel business plan: it hopes to go out of business as soon as possible.
Laura Rich and Sara Clemence, two former editors who were recently laid off from Condé Nast’s Portfolio and author and freelance writer Lynn Parramore are hoping to target and bring some positive news to victims of the economy with the launch Monday of a new and hopefully temporary news site called Recessionwire.com.
They have labeled their project a “pop-up” site because it will only survive as long as the recession lasts, and they are crossing their fingers that it will end soon.
“Like a pop-up store, it is meant to serve the public only temporarily. When the recession goes away, so do we,” reads the site’s description.
Dubbed “the upside of the downturn” Recessionwire.com's posts are upbeat and discuss ways people can and are adapting to the economic changes through news, analysis and humor.
There are several regular columns including “Lemonade Makers,” which profiles recession success stories and "Love in the Time of Layoff" that follows the life of one woman couple coping with her husband's recent unemployment. There are also features on severance and one on feel-good movies which points out some scenarios in films in which you'd be much worse off than you are now.
“It was just so obvious to me that there was a story that was the recession, and that there was going to be great change going on,” said Rich. “And there was a need for a central place for people to sort it out.”
Rich thinks the site will attract enough advertisers to remain up and running through what they predict will be at least a year, at which point they will happily turn to a new project. She's also looking at several potential partnerships.
Recessionwire.com is launching at a time when the poor economy is boosting traffic for job search (it was the fastest growing online category in 2008 according to comScore), and more experimental projects arise like the popular Twitter feeds The Media Is Dying and The Media Is Hiring that provide the jobless journos in the Twitterverse with constant updates and links to potential employers.
