The End Of The Obscure Store

“For nearly a decade — starting in 1989 — I published a print ‘fanzine’ called Obscure Publications. Its mission was to review fanzines and profile their editors. In early 1998, I decided to start selling fanzines online through a new site called The Obscure Store. My challenge was to get ‘customers’ to my website. I decided to do that by linking to stories that I found interesting. I had general interest articles on the top of the page and ‘Media Gossip’ items on the bottom half. In May of 1999 I decided to create a separate site — MediaGossip.com — for those media stories. It was a life-changing decision: the Poynter Institute heard about Media Gossip (via this story), hired me, and let me work on my own out of coffee shops in the Chicago area — while paying me a salary that I never thought I’d make as a journalist.”
 — Jim Romenesko is not only semi-retiring from Poynter, he is also shutting the door on his much-loved (by us, especially) Obscure Store. Here’s the goodbye note.