February is not turning out to be a great month for TBD, the Washington D.C. metro news site, owned by Allbritton Communications.

On Feb. 9 it was announced that Allbritton's WJLA-TV would be taking over TBD.com and that General Manager Bill Lord would become responsible for website. Now, news of staff layoffs has emerged and TBD, one of the most ambitious local online launches in 2010, has turned out to be a victim of crib death, as Poynter's Rick Edmonds put it.

As the Washington City Paper reported, TBD editor Erik Wemple announced that significant layoffs were on the way and that TBD will become a niche site focused on arts and entertainment. "The layoffs, according to two staffers, eliminate the site's sports staffers, and will also take away most, if not all, of its news staff", the article reported.
The launch of TBD.com last summer was welcomed as "a possible oasis" in "a desert of too-scarce good news about the news business" and it was presented as the nation's first combined local online news startup/24-hour news channel.
Expectations were high: "if it turns profitable within two to three years, it may become a prototype for digital/video/TV city-based news businesses", said Ken Doctor of Newsonomics.

So what went wrong?

Poynter's Edmonds and Mallary Jean Tenore reflected on the fast rise and fall of TBD and how its story raises questions about failure and success in the new world of journalism.

When TBD launched, many (including Poynter) suggested the site could provide answers to questions about the future of online news. Its leadership emphasized experimentation and failure as pathways to success, Tenore noted.

Edmonds analysed a number of things that, looking back, went wrong, summarizing six business lessons we can learn from TBD's early demise.

1. Branding matters: Why trade the brand equity of a successful television station for a vaguely clever but meaningless acronym? (TBD is the abbreviation for "to be determined").
2. Effective ad sales are paramount: digital advertising requests digital advertising experts; asking a legacy television or newspaper staff to carry the load on developing digital advertising don't appear as a good strategy.
3. Fill an existing need: does the typical metro resident feels starved for local news?
4. Pedigree does not equals strategy: the big famous editorial leadership names (Jim Brady, from the Washington Post's site - who actually left in November due to disagreements with the company - in charge, Steve Buttry, Community Engagement Director, and Erik Wemple as editor) revealed not to be enough as far as strategy was concerned.
5. Building out big is a risk: TBD has added 50 jobs positions and, as Doctor said "The cost side is one of the areas that distinguishes the TBD experiment; it's two to four times bigger than most of the local online news startups we've seen."
Tenore quoted Social Media Producer Mandy Jenkins, whose position were also eliminated, who said: "It really just seemed like they were not necessarily prepared to spend the kind of money that's been spent and that would need to be spent to keep the experiment going."
6. Fail fast: Much of the commentary today suggests that Allbritton Communications bungled the details (doubtless they did bungle some) and did not give the ambitious site time to find its footing - Edmond noted. "Anticipating that a venture may take three to five years to prove itself a success, does not mean that early results don't matter. I'm not privy to the key business metrics, but I'm sure that ad revenues were far from on track. In that respect, credit Allbritton with an investement in the digital future, and an honourable real-time rollout and failure from which others may learn. And for quitting when it was time to quit".

Sources: Poynter (1), (2),(3), Newsonomics, Washington City Paper