Mr. Mohney. (Photo: Twitter)

Remember that poignant note from Tumblr founder David Karp about the elimination of its in-house editorial department Storyboard? You know, the memo in which Mr. Karp supposedly said he “couldn’t be happier” with the team, listed their accomplishments, and, instead of giving them a raise, fired them.

As Valleywag reveals, it turns out that Mr. Karp had Storyboard's then Editor-in-Chief Chris Mohney write the memo about his own firing. Being the wordsmith that he is, Mr. Mohney masterfully and subtly made Tumblr look like the clueless company that it was without Mr. Karp batting an eye. Mr. Mohney asked the higher-ups if he could pen a goodbye note prior to the announcement, and instead was offered something so much better: the opportunity to write Mr. Karp’s farewell note. He told Valleywag:

They asked me to draft the copy, and I was happy to oblige. Since we weren't told any more about the rationale for the shuttering than has been publicly acknowledged  that's how I wrote it. David made some very light edits and posted, and it was received about as well as might be expected.

Valleywag calls the letter the "most poetic exit fuck-you in Internet history." We're sure Mr. Mohney agrees.

(Photo: Twitter/successmagazine)

Earlier this week, Tumblr CEO David Karp took the stage at PaidContent Live for a panel called "Tumblr and the Future of Media." It was a poignant title considering that one of the topics discussed was Mr. Karp's recent, rather brusque blog post announcing the end of Storyboard, a high-profile editorial experiment that hired journalists to write features or film documentary video about Tumblr's community of "creators."

For example, this Storyboard piece about a photojournalist documenting a gang truce in El Salvador (on his Tumblr) was published by Mother Jones. One about activists and feminists using nail art (and the growing subculture on Tumblr) was produced in partnership with the Daily Beast.

“We decided it wasn't really the right tool in our tool box," a hoodied Mr. Karp told the conference goers gathered at the Time & Life building. "It was working in some regards. It wasn't working in the ways we intended."

That decision came as a surprise to Storyboard’s editorial staffers. “We were not warned that the department might be shut down,” Chris Mohney, Tumblr’s former editor-in-chief, said by email, in the first interview since he were laid off last week. As was previously reported, former executive editor Jessica Bennett got the bad news just before boarding a plane. Editorial producer Sky Dylan-Robbins declined to comment for this piece.

There was a similar lack of transparency regarding those unrealized intentions Mr. Karp mentioned at PaidContent. “We weren't given any more specifics about what we were doing wrong or right--or not doing at all--than David indicated either in the announcement or in his remarks at the conference,” Mr. Mohney said.

(In our recent report about the growing leadership vaccuum at Tumblr, one source cited Mr. Karp’s “wildly unpredictable and inconsistent” management style as a possible motivation for the executive departures, as well as Mr. Karp's tendency to play favorites.)

When Storyboard launched a year ago, its use of “almost retrograde feature journalism” to promote the Tumblr brand was closely watched by media insiders as a vanguard of a VC-approved way of making original reporting pay, like Facebook Stories, which followed that summer. Storyboard sounded like a more sophisticated version of branded content, which has rushed into the vacuum left by the waning media industry, blurring the line between advertising and editorial.

In Storyboard’s case, the mandate was to cover “Tumblr as if it were a digital city--the ideas, trends and culture coming out of it,” said Ms. Bennett. “I had no problem with that being deemed marketing as long as I was getting to produce the kind of rich, compelling content that I got into this business to do.”

But reporters considering working for brands or tech companies may want to take note. Tipping more towards journalism rather than branding might have been an issue for Storyboard.

“I sort of wonder whether part of the problem was that the content was actually too good,” Ms. Bennett conjectured. “Like, had we taken the simple ‘rah rah Tumblr’ approach, would we still be around? Who knows. But the reality is that we're journalists, not flaks. That's why Tumblr hired us in the first place!”

At the PaidContent conference, however, Mr. Karp seemed to insinuate a different reason for closing Storyboard: the fact that it picked favorites.

“We want to give you the stuff you’re going to love on Tumblr, but we don’t want to say what great stuff on Tumblr is. We don’t want to say what great content is, or these are our favorite blogs. We don’t wan [sic] to color it too much or scare anybody off.”

In response to those comments Mr. Mohney said, “It's worth noting that far more so than Storyboard, Tumblr's Spotlight and Radar have historically been about doing that exact thing. Of course, both those spaces are for sale, unlike Storyboard.”

Was Tumblr worried that Storyboard was encroaching on potential revenue opportunities? “Hah no. Storyboard was never a revenue thing, and never could have been with our resources,” Mr. Mohney said. “What I'm pointing out is that Tumblr has always promoted good content to users through Radar and the Spotlight, and now those two spaces are the things they are selling to advertisers. Make of that what you will.”

Like Ms. Bennett, Mr. Mohney is clearly proud of what Storyboard was able to accomplish, as well as its insistence "that the marketing mission could not compromise the the quality or tone of the editorial we published."

"If you want an example of how that dynamic can tilt toward PR and lose its ability to compel an audience, look no further than Facebook Stories--beautifully produced features that did just a little too much cheerleading for the patron platform, and so read as commercial," Mr. Mohney added. "The main unfortunate similarity between Facebook Stories and Tumblr Storyboard was that both were held at something of a nervous arms' length by their company, for what I suspect were totally different reasons."

Neither project, he explained, was acknowledged or promoted by the parent company. "I'd imagine the segment of Facebook users who knew about Facebook Stories was even smaller than the percentage of Tumblr users who knew about Storyboard," he said. Why Tumblr opted for that route, "only management knows for sure," he said.

Mr. Mohney also had some advice for anyone considering launching this kind of hybrid endeavor. "Make sure, from the start, that there is a clearly expressed purpose in line with the goals of the organization, and that there is sufficient buy-in from the people in charge to see it through to achieving that purpose. We thought we had done so internally--several times--but obviously not."

As for another remark Mr. Karp made during the PaidContent conference, calling profitability "not a metric that is particularly important to [Tumblr]" both Mr. Mohney and Ms. Bennett declined to comment.

Tumblr's Mr. Karp (Photo: wikipedia.org)

We've seen some late-afternoon news dumps, but this takes the cake: Tumblr CEO David Karp just announced that the company is shutting down Storyboard, the editorial experiment meant to highlight the work of the social network's much-touted "creators."

Even though Tumblr “couldn’t be happier with our team’s effort,” Mr. Karp wrote that, "What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now.” The editorial team “will be closing up shop and moving on.”

"I want to personally thank them for their great work. And please join us in wishing them well," he added.

A Tumblr spokesperson tells us it's just three employees that'll be riding off into the sunset.

Based on this Tumblr post, it looks like honcho Chris Mohney is among the departed (though we're still in the process of confirming that update: confirmed). Editorial producer Sky Dylan-Robbins has also posted a farewell. Meanwhile, it seems executive editor Jessica Bennett is handling the news about as well as can be expected. She just posted to her own Tumblr (natch):

RIP TUMBLR EDITORIAL. WE PRODUCED SOME AWESOME MOTHERFUCKING SHIT / REDEFINED JOURNALISM / WON SOME AWARDS / OBSESSED OVER ONE DIRECTION / ALL THAT. IT WAS A GREAT RIDE> NOW: ANYONE WANT TO HIRE ME?

ALSO: Drunk on a plane. The only way to go out (or down?! It’s really bumpy.) Sorry for the all caps! XO

Tumblr has introduced a number of new initiatives in its quest for profitability, which Mr. Karp has said he believes the startup will hit this year. About a year ago, Mr. Karp reversed his previously disdainful position on ads when the company began selling access to the Tumblr Radar for advertisers.  And in March of this year, the company edged even further away from its prior "art project" mentality, introducing ads to its mobile product.

Meanwhile, keeping the Tumblr team in GIFs and beer has its costs. Though it's raised $125 million in venture capital since 2007, the company still has to pay rent on its swanky Flatiron HQ--not to mention keeping all those servers up and running.

Got more info? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com. 

Mr. Karp (Photo: Wikimedia)

Twitter only recently started to mission creep over to the media side, but microblogging platform Tumblr has always chosen to define itself as a media company. In fact, in an interview with IT Pro published today, CEO David Karp said explained how that self-perception informs their long-awaited attempts to monetize. 

Said Mr. Karp:

"Instead of focusing on the hyper-targeting that Google and Facebook are selling [to] advertisers right now - a direct response from the audience - we have built our advertising products around creative brand advertising because we're a media network. We have advertisers who are, rather than trying to capture intent, are trying to create intent."

The subtext here is that rather than banner ads or click-throughs, Tumblr wants to go old-school, with something more elusive. In an advertising climate that demands measurable data, Tumblr is swimming against the tide. "Success will be in making people care," IT Pro notes.

And as every "media network" knows, readers want see original content, which Mashable says is not something Tumblr has traditionally been known for. To demonstrate otherwise, Tumblr's editorial department launched a new site called Reblorg yesterday, a play on the "reblog" button. The company is billing the site as "Tumblr’s hub for original creative work," which includes, "video, animation, GIFs, glitches, music, paintings, challenge posts, contests, games, tech toys, collage, haiku, limericks, and kabuki coding." Users can submit posts by tagging them #reblorg.

"Our submission rules are simple: you must have made it, and it must be new."

Reblorg comes on the heels of Storyboard, Tumblr's attempt to curate the curators by interviewing creators on Tumblr and offering readers "tales from behind the dashboard."

To introduce Reblorg to the world, Tumblr commissioned its own Taiwanese animation video from Next Media Animation. That counts as "original," right?

Screengrab

Many Tumblr users call themselves "curators," so it seems only natural that Tumblr has launched its own curation effort with Storyboard. In a video posted on the new site, Tumblr's Editor-in-Chief Chris Mohney described Storyboard as an effort to highlight content the average Tumblr user might not discover "through their natural organic reading of Tumblr."

The first posts highlight content from celebrities (Michael Stipe), photography from Afghanistan and a fascinating piece about the New York Times's "morgue," authored by Tumblr's Executive Editor, Jessica Bennett.

Storyboard editors insist any Tumblr user's content is eligible to show up on the blog:

There’s never enough time or space to tell every story, but there are many ways to tell it. If you’re interested in submitting a story or story idea to Storyboard, just create a Tumblr post with the #storyboard tag. Our editors will read them all — liking, replying, reblogging, or promoting the cool, creative, and compelling stuff. And if the story seems really good, we may ask to tell it here.

This sounds like an excellent opportunity for Tumblr to further engage its user base in a classically "Tumblr-y" way, as long as they ensure they Facebook and tweet the links so the curated content has maximum opportunity to eventually be reblogged back onto Tumblr again as if it were never posted there in the first place.