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The center for American progress, the think tank behind the editorial venture, says the lack of a buyer led to the shutdown.

Heather Murphy

Progressive website ThinkProgress shut down Friday in another sign of how much the media landscape has changed over the past decade.

The development was not a big surprise to current or former employees. In July, the Center for American progress, the progressive think tank behind the editorial venture, put the site up for sale.

In a statement Friday, the think tank blamed the lack of a buyer for its decision to close the site. The closure, which led to the layoffs of a dozen remaining employees, was first reported by the daily Beast.

“We are very sad to announce that after more than two months of searching, we were unable to identify a new publisher for ThinkProgress and we were left with no choice but to close ThinkProgress as an independent entity focused on original reporting,” the statement said.

Judd Legum, the site’s founder, who left the site in July 2018, said he did not expect anyone to come forward with his goal. “It was not built to be a profit center,” he said in a telephone interview.

Luke Barnes, who has been a reporter at the site since August 2017, said he knew this moment would come sooner or later.

Amid packing his belongings at the site’s office in Washington, he said he was proud of his work but that the closure was “a relief in a way.”

“Things have been kind of dragging on for quite some time,” he said.

ThinkProgress was founded in 2005 and came out of a newsletter that Mr. Legum wrote for the progressive think tank.

“It’s basically just spinning out of my interests in the emerging blogosphere,” he said in 2018, when he left the site to start a newsletter that allowed him to write more and manage less.

ThinkProgress became known as a reliable critic of the George W. Bush administration. With the advent of social media, the site’s noted progressive report has taken off and employees have grown.

Highlights for Mr. Legum include an article about the Kuwaiti Embassy’s decision to move a planned annual celebration to the Trump Hotel after the 2016 election and a 2017 investigation into the link between white nationalism and wealthy institutions. The alumni list includes a number of well-known writers and Faiz Shakir, who is currently Bernie Sanders ‘ campaign Manager.

Matthew Iglesias, another graduate, was critical of the Center for American progress’s decision to withdraw funding from the site.

“I want you to make accurate, well-reported, well-written stories about GOP politicians doing bad things” it would be perfectly reasonable to spend money on, “he wrote Friday on Twitter in response to a thread about Democratic donors’ lack of commitment to independent but left-wing media.

Like most media of that era, the site was struggling with trying to stay ahead of social media algorithms and trends in the industry developed. By March 2017, Facebook had ceased to be a traffic driver on the site, as it had been a year earlier.

The site will live, without journalists, as a place for academic writing. ClimateProgress, a section of the site that began as a separate blog, will continue under the leadership of its founder, according to a statement.

On Friday, the ThinkProgress Twitter account did not mention its upcoming closure and instead posted links to articles from Thursday.

Heather Murphy is a General assignment reporter who often writes about advances in DNA technology. @heathertal

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