The lights are going out at the Circa News desk, for now
Circa News, a mobile news service founded in 2011, is going on hiatus, perhaps forever. The site has not been updated since June 21, and the CEO and co-founder Matt Galligan announced on Wednesday that his app and website will be on “indefinite hiatus” because of a lack of funding.
Circa News recently unveiled a new mobile-friendly news site to go along with its app, but a crucial investment could not be closed in time to keep the lights on at the company. Galligan wrote in length about the issue on Medium, expressing his disappointment that the service needed to be shut down.
Producing high-quality news can be a costly endeavor and without the capital necessary to support further production we are unable to continue. Our mission was always to create a news company where factual, unbiased, and succinct information could be found. In doing so we recognized that building a revenue stream for such a mission would take some time and chose to rely on venture capital to sustain. We have now reached a point where we’re no longer able to continue news production as-is.
Some of Circa’s 20-person team have already found jobs elsewhere, but the editorial team was left in the dark about what was happening with the news outlet. Circa’s editor-in-chief went public on Twitter Wednesday morning, before Galligan’s release, expressing his frustration.
I won’t stay silent on @Circa for much longer. Folks on the business side of things here owe it to us and to our users to provide an update.
— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) June 24, 2015
It’s a shame to see Circa shut down. They broke the news up into bite-sized chunks that were quick and easy to catch up on. It is still possible that the news service could be revitalized, as Daily Dot Media has expressed an interest in possibly acquiring Circa.
