Newhouse (they own The New Yorker) folded the Pharmalot blog over the weekend, putting an end to one of the newspaper industry's more successful forays into online journalism. Ed Silverman was an indefatiguable reporter and writer on all things pharmaceutical, a logical niche market for a newspaper (the Newark Star-Ledger) located in New Jersey, which has long been a center for the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. You can read Ed's last post here. Here's my goodbye comment to a valued colleague:

Ed,
You set a great example for how journalists can operate in this new medium: you found a niche; you offered fast-hitting news and opinion; and you built a readership. Congrats!

While 11,000 unique visitors daily may not seem like much to some, that level of readership is no different than what most reporters get in print. What papers forget is that their daily broadsheet circulation is nothing more than an aggregation of niche audiences, made up of people like me who read only one or two of its many features.

I hope the fact that Newhouse allowed you to go does not bode ill for similar efforts in the future. You should be proud of the fact that your experiment was a raging success.

Merrill (GoozNews)