Arts and CultureSan Francisco

The Bold Italic to Reopen Without Any Original Staff

The Bay's best newsletter for underground events & news

the bold italic

image from kqed

Earlier this morning The Bold Italic announced that it would be reopening in San Francisco. This is exciting considering what a blow to the Bay Area media landscape it was when TBI closed in April.

The curious thing is that it appears not a single of TBI’s original employees is involved with the reincarnated website. The Bold Italic’s parent company Gannett has sold The Bold Italic and while, I’m waiting for confirmation on who the new owners are, the following tweet confirms that it is now being run by Sunil Rajaraman and Sonia Arrison. According to their twitter profiles, Rajaraman confounded Scrpited, a content creation website, and Arrison is a writer who focuses on technology.

Screen Shot 2015-06-22 at 11.00.28 AM

 

While I’m curious to see what the new Bold Italic will produce, I find it baffling that nobody from the team that helped build the previous incarnation into a media juggernaut that got millions of monthly views was hired back.

Please check back here for more updates.

Update: I just got off the phone with Sunil Rajaraman who said that he and Arrison formed a new media company to buy TBI from Gannett. He also said their initial impulse was to make sure all the TBI’s content wasn’t taken down and they are currently discussing the brand’s next steps. When asked why nobody from the former staff was hired on, he said that he had meetings with many of the members of the original Bold Italic staff and that no final staffing decisions had been made yet.

That said many former TBI staffers I talked to feel heartbroken not to be involved in the new company.

Previous post

Submit Your Picture, Become a Piece of Art

Next post

Win TIX to Sunday MASS feat. YACHT


Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, is a travel writer, poet, TV host, activist, and general shit-stirrer. His website BrokeAssStuart.com is one of the most influential arts & culture sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and his freelance writing has been featured in Lonely Planet, Conde Nast Traveler, The Bold Italic, Geek.com and too many other outlets to remember. His weekly column, Broke-Ass City, appears every other Thursday in the San Francisco Examiner. Stuart’s writing has been translated into four languages. In 2011 Stuart created and hosted the travel show Young, Broke, and Beautiful on IFC and in 2015 he ran for Mayor of San Francisco and got nearly 20k votes.

He's been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle, "an SF cult hero":SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York.