APBNEWS.com CLOSES DOORS, FIRES STAFF

By: Joe Strupp Well-Regarded Site Ran Out Of Money



APBNews.com, the online crime news site that garnered numerous awards
and industry respect during its brief lifetime, announced Monday it had
run out of money and fired its staff. Although the 18-month-old Web
outlet planned to remain alive through volunteers and a scaled-back
reporting base, company officials said all 140 employees were let go
and future funding remained in doubt.



'At a company-wide meeting this morning, APBNews.com Chairman and CEO
Marshall Davidson announced to employees that the company has exhausted
funding,' said a statement released to the press. 'While the company
continues to seek additional investment, including continuing
negotiations with major media companies, the company and site will
operate on a limited basis.'



One employee who attended the announcement said, ''People were very
subdued, but they sort of expected it. We were told there was no more
money to pay us.'



Sources close to the Web site said negotiations had been ongoing with
several companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., but nothing
had been brought to fruition yet.



Randy Dotinga, a former newspaper reporter who left a Southern
California daily last fall after seven years to write for APBNews.com
from his San Diego-area home, said he knew joining a dot com was risky,
but believed this site was doing better than most. 'They seemed to be
really flush with money and it seemed like a good operation,' he said.
'There was no real sign of a problem.'



Employees said e-mail messages from company executives last month
indicated that negotiations for a sale to a larger media outlet were
ongoing. The company at one time considered going public, but those
plans were scrapped.



Davidson said the company had been in its third round of financing just
before the recent dot-com stock fall. 'Following this downturn was a
difficult time to raise capital for most Internet companies,' he said.
'Negotiations with strategic business partners have taken longer than
anticipated.'



Since its launch in November 1998, APBNews.com had made a name for
itself among both online and traditional media outlets. Its efforts to
dig up government records and sue for the right to receive confidential
documents from several public agencies drew praise from many journalism
veterans. In its short lifetime, the site received awards from the
Scripps Howard Foundation and The Society of Professional Journalists,
while also signing on notable personalities such as O.J. Simpson
prosecutor Marcia Clark and Pultizer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg to
pen columns.



'We began APB with a sincere desire to inform and serve our users, and
I am proud that we have lived up to that mission,' Davidson said in a
statement. 'We wanted to produce great content, and our users and
content partners and the journalism awards say we have done that.'



Davidson gave no indication how likely future funding might be, but
would not rule out a rebirth of the site's full-time activities
somewhere down the line.