• by Sara Guaglione , April 10, 2018

MediaShift is letting go of most of its staff to focus on online training. It will suspend publishing its editorial stories, newsletters and weekly MediaShift podcast.

Created 12 years ago by Mark Glaser as part of PBS, MediaShift covered the intersection of media and technology and the future of news.

Now, the business will “focus exclusively” on “panels and peer group trainings, events like our private roundtables, and our studio work for outside companies and publishers," Glaser wrote in a post on the MediaShift site announcing the changes.

MediaShift’s website will no longer be updated on a regular basis.

The masthead on the site shows seven other employees at MediaShift, in addition to Glaser. He said these changes are not the result of a failure to “pivot to something” or the duopoly of Google and Facebook.

Instead, it is about “my own personal burnout,” he wrote.

Running an online, independent publication is an “incredibly rewarding but also very stressful and time-consuming” job, Glaser wrote.

“This was not an easy decision for me, but it was a necessary one,” he added. “It is time for me to step away from this work to clear my head and consider what might come next. I have nothing in mind, but am open to new adventures in media or beyond.”

Glaser noted this does not necessarily mean the end of the the site, newsletters or podcast. He is in talks with “numerous media companies, associations and journalism schools” about buying those editorial franchises and “keeping them up and running in the months ahead.”

“I am hopeful this will happen, so the site can continue and serve the media industry,” he wrote.