Curbed L.A.–a SoCal-dedicated offshoot of the national website Curbed–has ceased publication effective today. Going forward, there will be no local editions of the real estate and urban development-focused outlet, just the national Curbed brand.
Vox-owned Curbed will itself also be folded into another publication, functioning as a semiautonomous vertical of New York magazine, comparable to Vulture or the Cut. A Vox Media memo obtained by MediaPost describes the move as an effort to make the Curbed brand “more sustainable as a business.” Curbed L.A. editor Jenna Chandler will make the transition.
For now, the Curbed L.A. site remains online and the archives are available to read. A Los Angeles-specific email newsletter from Curbed will also continue to be sent weekly.
Vox Media, which also owns Eater, SB Nation, the Verge, and Polygon, acquired New York in late 2019, creating a combined company with a staff of over 1,250 at the time of the merger. But the company has faced mounting financial pressures, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.
Nine percent of Vox’s total workforce has been furloughed since May 1. Many employees at the company have been hit with hours reductions and pay cuts or have accepted buyout deals.
Curbed managing editor Mariam Aldhahi reported that the furloughs hit Curbed especially hard, sidelining half of the outlet’s staff.
Curbed’s national editor in chief, Kelsey Keith, departed the company in late April, just as the announcement that Curbed would eventually be brought under the New York umbrella first emerged.
“Working with this team has been the highlight of my career, and I truly believe we’ve changed the conversation around homes and cities, architecture and urbanism, in profound ways,” she posted on Twitter at the time.
While some Curbed content from L.A. and San Francisco is expected to continue being produced, local editions of the site in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit have now been fully closed. Curbed sites in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington D.C. were sunset in December 2019.
There is… so much to say about these sites, these writers + editors, and this era in local media. I still believe wide-ranging coverage of the built environment is one of the best ways we have to assess and celebrate and improve the way we live with each other in cities.
— Kelsey Keith (@kelseykeith) June 26, 2020
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