Since its creation in 2004, the urban blog Torontoist has posted articles arousing praise, anger, attitude and amusement.
A website about the daily life of Canada's largest city, Torontoist wrote about everything from corporate graffiti to city hall shenanigans, an ongoing narrative for and about the Hogtown experience.
But that discussion turned inward this week with an announcement that the site would shut down on Jan. 1.
Editor David Topping posted a message on Dec. 12 stating that he was resigning his post and that Gothamist, Torontoist's parent site that operates online outlets in 13 different cities, "has decided, as a result of both my resignation and the recession, to close Torontoist on January 1, 2009 and concentrate on their more lucrative American sites."
The news was met with shock and disappointment by Torontoist contributors and readers, who mourned the impending loss in modern style: in the comment section.
But now, questions are being asked about whether the site will really close.
"There's been a huge amount of interest in keeping it alive," said Mr. Topping, a 21-year-old University of Toronto student who has run Torontoist for 2½ years. "I'm not sure what will happen over the next couple of weeks."
Mr. Topping said that because of financial tightening felt across North America, Gothamist directed some changes, suggesting it become more of a news-focused site supplied by a smaller pool of writers - an idea he rejected.
A regular source of inspiration for the city's journalists, Torontoist accused the Toronto Sun of plagiarism, landed the first interview with Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson, the Ontario College of Art and Design student charged with placing a fake bomb at the Royal Ontario Museum, and pushed the envelope by outing the anti-customer food snobbery of local dining hot spot Terroni.
Joshua Errett, who co-founded Torontoist in 2004 with his now sister-in-law Sarah Lazarovic, said that financial concerns and contributor issues are not reason enough to close a largely volunteer operation.
"My take on it is that it's kind of like a jealous-boyfriend thing," said Mr. Errett. "[Topping]can't have the site any more and he won't let anyone else."
But Mr. Topping said he believes Torontoist won't work without a large number of writers who can bring a breadth of perspective.
"Quality and diversity necessarily suffer if, say, five contributors are writing five articles a day each, rather than 20 contributors writing two articles a week each," he said. "I had a clear vision of how I saw Torontoist working into the future, and I didn't see it continuing to get better if we were forced away from the model that I'd built up."
Of Gothamist's many sites, Torontoist is the only one losing money, but with low operating costs and a city full of contributors willing to provide content without payment, it is well positioned to survive any economic downturn.
Mr. Errett believes that cutting down on paid contributors was not an unrealistic demand from Gothamist, and that the site could have continued - and improved - with a tightened belt.
Torontoist contributor Sarah Nicole Prickett said she will miss the range of voices that wrote on the site.
"All of the people who wrote for the site love Toronto," she said. "I think a lot of the contributors will reband somewhere else or the site itself will survive," she said. "I don't really think this is the end."
Of course, Gothamist owns the site, and can ultimately decide to keep it alive.
Although Gothamist editors are not commenting, Mr. Topping said they are open to reviving the site if advertisers express interest. Torontoist contributors will hold an emergency meeting over the holidays to discuss what they can do to keep the blog running.
With more than 5,620,007 visits in its lifetime, Torontoist boasted a readership that should have made advertisers salivate: young, university-educated, with money to burn and an interest in spending within their city.
"We had the amount of traffic and the right kind of eyes for advertisers, but it never really worked out," said Mr. Topping. "We were always just fighting to maintain."