‘The Bold Italic’ Shutting Down For Unknown Reasons

The popular San Francisco online magazine, the Bold Italic, is shutting down, but no one is quite sure why.

We love you, San Francisco. It’s been a great run! Thanks for being a supporter on our journey. http://t.co/7tcn8NHEYD

— The Bold Italic (@thebolditalic) April 7, 2015

In a statement on their site on Tuesday, Bold Italic announced their “difficult decision.”

“Since our launch, The Bold Italic has strived to faithfully serve San Franciscans near and far, whether born and bred here or having just arrived in the city. We have a great passion for the Bay Area and all that it has to offer — and have had a lot of fun sharing our enthusiasm with you. Together we have built a strong community of followers, contributors, and partners. However, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations. It’s been a great run and we supremely thank everyone who has supported us along the way.”

According to ABC7, the online magazine’s mission was always to “to celebrate the freewheeling spirit of living in San Francisco,” which they did for six years.

While many are shocked that the Bold Italic has decided to call it quits, Maness, a spokesman for Gannett, the Bold Italic‘s parent company, said that the plan had been to “expand the Bold Italic to other cities”, but that “after six years, it still hadn’t.”

So what does this mean for readers?

According to Mission Local, ” the Bold Italic‘s demise means San Francisco is without a fun-loving, graphically-rich, and persistently young take on life in the city.”

The site, which never claimed to be a news site, wrote and promoted stories about San Francisco that you really wouldn’t find anywhere else.

One of the site’s editors, Jennifer Maerz, shared her thoughts about the site and it ceasing operations, as seen on Mission Local.

“Where else would you see essays about race (“I’m Not Your ‘Black Friend’,” or “Are There Fat Asians? Yes. I’m One of Them”) coexisting with content about “Guys with Fancy Lady Hair” or our kid food review series, which landed one four-year-old on Good Morning America?…”

“The Bold Italic was an experiment in trial and error. We didn’t have strict guidelines about what we could or couldn’t cover, and we used our space in the media world to try out so many ideas, some of which resonated and others that fell completely flat or instigated streams of wrathful comments. But through everything, those of us committed to this site?—?from the staff to our wonderful pool of freelance writers and illustrators and made-up chart makers and photographers?—?we created this site out of love for our city and a passion for expressing that love in new and unusual ways. I’ll be forever grateful to Gannett for letting us help tell our cities’ stories in our own way.”

While the Bold Italic stopped publishing articles as of Tuesday when the announcement came, the site will still be viewable for a few months.

[Photo Courtesy of KQED]