The release revealed that Sinclair acquired the technology for $800,000 in August (it had raised over $5 million from investors), and that at its peak, Circa News had 300,000 unique mobile users (a number it was reluctant to share throughout its three years of operation).
The new Circa will be helmed by John Solomon as chief creative officer. (Solomon comes to the new Circa from The Washington Times.) The news site will run original reporting and “user-generated content.” Its coverage will attempt to fill what Rob Weisbord, vice president and chief operating officer of Sinclair’s Digital Group, told The Wall Street Journal was a void in non-left-leaning news for young audiences. “When you look at the Vices and Voxes of the world, they tend to be far-left,” he said. (Sinclair has a reputation for leaning right.)
Solomon told the Journal he’ll be bringing on 70 journalists to the new Circa effort, and that his group will have access to video from the 172 Sinclair-owned TV stations around the U.S.
The Journal reports:
Under Sinclair, company executives say, Circa will be a bit more open-minded about its business model than in its previous iteration, in which it focused on so-called “native ads” and shunned off-the-shelf advertising formats. Mr. Solomon and Mr. Weisbord said native ads, documentary sponsorships and more traditional ad formats like pre-roll video advertising will all likely have a role to play, but the initial focus is to attract an audience. Circa’s first year operating budget will be “just under $10 million,” the company said.
Long term, Mr. Weisbord hopes to use Circa’s intellectual property in Europe to expand the digital brand internationally, he said.
‘We expect it to be as significant as Vice and Vox and BuzzFeed,’ he said. “They all went to broadcasting companies for investments. They want to expand into broadcasting. They started out as pure-play (digital) and they are now entering into our field. We are going the other way.”
In other words, it doesn’t sound like much about the new Circa will resemble the old Circa. The plans for the new news site have been met with not altogether unexpected skepticism.
@AntDeRosa Not sure how they're going to hire 70 people and run the app with budget "under 10 million", but I wish them well!
— Mark Coatney (@mcoatney) December 7, 2015
Sigh. Sinclair. You're missing the point of what Circa was supposed to be vs. Vox and Vice. https://t.co/Ij3ppZm7kU pic.twitter.com/ozBQfRoBgK
— Justin Karp (@jskarp) December 7, 2015
I just can't get over the idea of a "far-left" Vox.
"The violence of capitalism, explained"
"How to heighten the contradictions"
— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) December 7, 2015
Sinclair’s not the one to do it, but there is an interesting critique to be done of the left-of-center nature of millennialish news sites.
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) December 7, 2015
This is, uh, not really the second life I'd expected Circa to have. https://t.co/Q13sT2jssy
— Mark Coddington (@markcoddington) December 7, 2015
Ouch. RT @DJBentley: “We expect [Circa] to be as significant as Vice and Vox and BuzzFeed.”
https://t.co/fEOwSyVVYm
— Anita Zielina (@Zielina) December 7, 2015
I was excited for the @Circa resurrection until I read this https://t.co/MyaRvYXW4O pic.twitter.com/86tE5ao2LT
— Alec Perkins (@alecperkins) December 7, 2015
But some were excited:
YESSSSSSSS!!!!! https://t.co/vPvQa7g9Tb
— Wil Wheaton (@wilw) December 7, 2015
