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After Just Eight Years, Examiner.com Is Closing Its Doors And Shutting Down

By Danny Cox
Published on: 11:45 PST, Jul 7, 2016

The blogger platform known as Examiner.com made its debut about eight years ago and it has since brought forth countless people who wanted to write. They wanted to share their knowledge and ideas with the whole world, but they never had much of a platform to do it on. Examiner.com and Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz gave that to them, but that time has come to an end as the popular website is closing its doors and shutting down.

As reported by CBS San Francisco, the online content creators are going to be shutting down their site and it is going to happen somewhere around July 10, 2016. All the writers, known as Examiners, were sent an email at the beginning of July which let them know that Examiner.com would soon be no more.

That shift in “business priorities” means that the focus is now going to the live entertainment platform known as AXS.com. No longer will the vast website of everything from TV reviews to news reports to sports happenings and everything in between exist, but the shift will move on to different things and not stay as broad.

Justin Jimenez is the spokesman for AXS.com and the previous senior director of content marketing for Examiner.com, and he told The Denver Post this was not a decision that was made quickly.

“The media landscape and media consumption, it’s transformed dramatically. It wasn’t an easy decision. The Examiner.com experience has been a very positive one.”

Examiner.com had more than 80,000 contributors (Examiners) and brought in an average of 10-15 million unique visitors a month.

AXS.com has invited a number of former Examiners to join them as writers for the digital ticketing branch of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). It bought Examiner.com from Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group in 2014 and sort of merged the two companies, but it has come time for there to be only one.

Examiner.com stopped taking new submissions at the beginning of this month, but they are still up and visible as of this time. In the coming days, the site has not said exactly what will happen, but has recommended that writers save any work they wish to keep since operations will be shut down entirely on or around July 10, 2016.

AXS.com has truly grown in the past two years and it now includes a music-related TV channel which works with CBS Corporation, Ryan Seacrest, and Creative Artists Agency. As it has blossomed into what it is today, and will be in the future, it has caused Examiner.com to be pushed out.

The site promotes a lot of upcoming music concerts and other shows, and that is where AXS wants to focus all their energy as per Michael Roth, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for AEG.

“We’ve shifted our content focus to AXS.com and growing that platform.

“We’re still going to have hundreds of music and live-entertainment contributors to AXS.com, and I’m anticipating that some of our Examiners from Examiner.com will be applying for jobs, and perhaps many of them will stay on.”

In 2012, a number of senior staffers at Examiner.com had been let go at the Colorado headquarters for Examiner.com and most of the other staffers were relocated to Los Angeles.

Phil Anschutz had a great idea and it truly worked well for almost a decade with Examiner.com, but sometimes, ideas just run their course. It was an experiment that many thought wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, but it managed to survive and grow for eight years. Now, all of those who provided content for Examiner.com will look elsewhere or just let their writing dreams fade away.

[Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images]

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