It’s with sadness that we read this week that the independent news website SalfordOnline.com is to formally close for business after 10 years of activity. The community-focused news and features website had built a weekly readership of 35,000 unique visitors and over 10,000 followers on Twitter.

From reports we’ve read News Editor and Director Tom Rodgers has admitted that it was no longer financially viable to keep the company afloat, conceding that after an internal review revealed that although they had hit their editorial targets, they were still unable to “leverage a sales team to take advantage of our massive reach to scale the business in any meaningful way”. Making the tough but responsible decision to close down the company, Tom Rogers stated that it had “been an incredible journey”, and thanked the team at SalfordOnline for their hard work.

Tom Rogers began his career with SalfordOnline, arriving as a volunteer writer and photographer in 2007, without journalism experience or qualifications. Here at Pitch, we can imagine how close this company is to his heart; it’s sad to learn that a much loved news source and community forum will be closing its doors despite a large readership. Proving that it takes more than users to keep a website running, Tom Rogers disclosed that “the site grew more rapidly than the infrastructure that was available to support it”.

Pitch hope that due to the planned expansion of MediaCityUK, also located in Salford, that the investment in the media haven will present many opportunities for community engagement and projects that will reinforce the North West’s thriving media-hub and keep it at forefront of media innovation and delivery, along with providing a new home for talent from Salford Online who’ve found themselves open to opportunities.