Will Tell's Tumblog

Thank you, Tumblr (and Twitter, and Facebook)

producermatthew:

After ten months, I’ve decided it’s time to close this project.

Let me explain, in the most ineloquent way possible:

Last year, I was let go from a television station in Northern California. To keep my writing skills from getting rusty, and to keep my sanity intact, I turned to Tumblr as a way to exercise my newsgathering, research and reporting skills. When I started proactively using Tumblr, I had just over 80 followers — most of whom were personal friends. Today, that number is significantly higher thanks to an amazing network of people and organizations that I’ve feel privileged to know.

After covering some incredible stories from December of last year to now — including the January Tucson shooting, the Domodedovo airport terror attack, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Southwest Airlines Flight 812 incident, the non-presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, the death of Osama bin Laden and the failed Harold Camping rapture event — this project not only kept my skills from getting rusty, but it also became an incredible resources for thousands — at, at times, hundreds of thousands — of people during major news events.

This was not only a platform to research and report, it became a platform of experimentation. Sometimes, things worked. Sometimes, things didn’t. B

The project also set the bar incredibly high for the ever-evolving field that is social journalism. I’ve learned a lot about the future of this industry from the time I spent on here, and I hope that I was able to share some good ideas along the way. This was meant to be an honest approach to fact-based social journalism with very little commentary, and I hope that I earned your trust.

So why close down shop now?

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