For the past few weeks, GeekWire has been chronicling the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Seattle tech community and the world, including job cuts at companies seeking to survive this sudden downturn.
Today, unfortunately, we are joining them.
We’ve made the difficult decision to lay off or furlough five of our colleagues, representing about 30 percent of GeekWire’s 16-person team, primarily in our business and sales departments. They include longtime teammates and others who joined us only recently.
After more than nine years in business as an independent media organization, operating profitably for much of our history, it’s the first time we’ve made any significant job cuts. It’s a decision we never wanted to make. We understand the impact that losing a job can have, and we’re doing everything we can to ensure that our colleagues can land on their feet.
We ask subjects and sources to be transparent and candid with us, and we feel it’s especially important to do the same ourselves in our communication about GeekWire with the community.
As reflected by our hiring in recent months, we were blindsided by these extraordinary economic circumstances. More than half of our revenue has historically been tied to in-person events.
While we have made significant progress in diversifying our business in recent years, it isn’t enough to weather unscathed what’s happening in the larger world right now.
One thing that is not changing: our dedication to journalism and the Seattle region’s tech community. We remain optimistic about GeekWire’s future, fueled by the efforts of our newsroom. We’re doing everything we can to ensure that our core team of reporters and editors remains empowered to do great work in service to readers and the community.
One of the ironies of this situation is that our online audience is larger than ever as readers seek out information and insights on the crisis unfolding around us. We do generate revenue from online advertising, but given the economic realities of digital ads, we’ve never counted on it as a major driver of the larger business, and those realities remain true to this day.
We’re not giving up on in-person events. We believe they will return, but perhaps not for many months, and even then in a different form and potentially on a different scale than in the past. We’ve already pivoted to virtual events, hosting a webinar on the CARES Act and a roundtable for GeekWire members about leadership in the age of COVID-19.
The cutbacks are part of a broader effort to reduce costs and reinvent our business to ensure GeekWire’s survival as an independent journalistic enterprise based in the Seattle region. Among other steps, we are also reducing salaries for the remaining members of our team. My co-founder John Cook and I are making more significant reductions in our own compensation.
We believe GeekWire has a strong future as a business in areas including events of all types, memberships, custom sponsored content, podcasts, newsletters, and underwritten editorial content. We’re doing everything we can to reinvent the company to ensure its survival.
It is going to take an immense amount of work, creativity and dedication to make it happen, as well as input, engagement and ideas from everyone in the community. We’re determined to make it through this with all of you, and we believe we can ultimately emerge stronger.
Most of all, it’s painful to part ways with some of our colleagues, and while we want to assure all of you that GeekWire is still moving forward, we don’t want to overshadow the impact on them and their families. We thank them for everything they’ve done for GeekWire.
Thank you, as well, for your continued support.
