So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Darienite.com is closing down within the next several days. No more articles and events listings will be posted after the next several days. For anybody who ever helped Darienite to get the news out, I can’t thank you enough.

There have been some technical problems with the website that have blocked the ability to post ads, and I’ve come to realize that overcoming those problems isn’t going to happen. I’ve shut down the newsletter already (I might revive it for several days.)

I’ll miss publishing it, and I hope someone (or even some group) will start another news organization, one that will regularly cover the important and useful news in town, and feature articles that will entertain Darienites and help us better understand the town.

Towns need strong local news providers. Plenty of other towns have that, and Darien has enough local businesses and organizations that would pay for advertising to support it. (New Canaan does, and it’s the size of Darien, both in population and potential advertising base.)

Publishing news with care, accuracy, fairness, professionalism, sometimes a little wit and some (limited) compassion for people who show up in police reports or other extremely embarrassing situations is a pretty fair outline of good journalism worthy of the name, including local journalism.

(Mistakes and even misjudgments are inevitable in any news outlet — we’re all limited by the faults of human nature, we all fail at completely overcome them. I apologize for any mistakes I’ve made, even the ones I don’t know about.)

I expect to delete all the articles, other web pages and images on the website. I won’t be selling the Darienite.com website, list of newsletter subscribers or Facebook page, but I’m happy to give all that away to anyone who wants to and can cover this town adequately. My phone number is 203**822**2603. Or email DGurliacci at gmail.com.

I don’t know where I’ll be working next.

— David Gurliacci, editor and publisher (but not for long)

P.S. It’s been said that the phrase used for the headline sometimes includes the idea that disaster is coming (as it does in Doug Adams’ book). That’s not what it usually means, certainly not here.